TikTok now blocks search outcomes for #SkinnyTok

TikTok not shows search outcomes for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. Critics who supported this block stated some movies with that label had been selling disordered consuming and different unhealthy or dangerous weight-reduction plan behaviors. We have reached out to TikTok for touch upon this growth.

France’s Minister of State for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz was one of many politicians main the in opposition to this explicit hashtag. She has been campaigning in opposition to #SkinnyTok with each French and EU regulators since . “These movies selling excessive thinness are revolting and completely unacceptable,” Chappaz stated. “Digital instruments are marvellous when it comes to progress and freedom, however badly used they’ll shatter lives … the social networks can not escape their duty.”

Whereas blocking search outcomes for doubtlessly dangerous hashtags is a optimistic step, it solely locations hurdles within the path of people that need to search out comparable movies. “Customers are savvy,” Cornell College professor Brooke Erin Duffy instructed The New York Instances. “They know find out how to work these platforms and find out how to evade their content material moderation methods.”

A block on one hashtag is simply the most recent in TikTok’s piecemeal method towards content material that might encourage consuming issues. In 2020 it positioned which may “promote a detrimental or dangerous physique picture,” equivalent to fasting apps and weight reduction dietary supplements. TikTok started a with the Nationwide Consuming Dysfunction Affiliation in 2021 to supply extra sources for customers with consuming issues. Later that yr, it additionally launched a brand new to the For You web page in an effort to scale back the impression of watching too many repeated clips on a detrimental subject.