TikTok now blocks search outcomes for #SkinnyTok

TikTok now 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 loss program behaviors. We have reached out to TikTok for touch upon this improvement.

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

Whereas blocking search outcomes for probably dangerous hashtags is a constructive step, it solely locations hurdles within the path of people that wish to hunt down comparable movies. “Customers are savvy,” Cornell College professor Brooke Erin Duffy advised The New York Occasions. “They know learn how to work these platforms and learn how to evade their content material moderation programs.”

A block on one hashtag is simply the newest in TikTok’s piecemeal method towards content material that would encourage consuming issues. In 2020 it positioned which may “promote a detrimental or dangerous physique picture,” resembling 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 12 months, it additionally launched a brand new to the For You web page in an effort to cut back the influence of watching too many repeated clips on a detrimental subject.