TikTok now blocks search results for #SkinnyTok

TikTok now 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 weight loss program 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 specific 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’ll shatter lives … the social networks can not escape their accountability.”

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

A block on one hashtag is simply the most recent in TikTok’s piecemeal strategy towards content material that might encourage consuming issues. In 2020 it positioned which may “promote a adverse 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 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 impression of watching too many repeated clips on a adverse matter.