TikTok now not reveals search outcomes for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. Critics who supported this block mentioned 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 towards this explicit 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 mentioned. “Digital instruments are marvellous by way of progress and freedom, however badly used they will shatter lives … the social networks can’t escape their accountability.”
Whereas blocking search outcomes for probably dangerous hashtags is a optimistic step, it solely locations hurdles within the path of people that wish to search out comparable movies. “Customers are savvy,” Cornell College professor Brooke Erin Duffy advised The New York Occasions. “They know how you can work these platforms and how you can 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 would encourage consuming issues. In 2020 it positioned that may “promote a adverse 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 assets 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 affect of watching too many repeated clips on a adverse matter.