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 have been selling disordered consuming and different unhealthy or dangerous food regimen 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 by way of progress and freedom, however badly used they will shatter lives … the social networks can’t escape their duty.”

Whereas blocking search outcomes for doubtlessly dangerous hashtags is a constructive step, it solely locations hurdles within the path of people that need to hunt down related movies. “Customers are savvy,” Cornell College professor Brooke Erin Duffy informed The New York Occasions. “They know the best way to work these platforms and the best way 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,” similar to fasting apps and weight reduction dietary supplements. TikTok started a with the Nationwide Consuming Dysfunction Affiliation in 2021 to supply extra assets 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 influence of watching too many repeated clips on a detrimental subject.