TikTok is stopping customers trying to find “skinnytok” – a hashtag which critics say directs individuals in direction of content material which “idolises excessive thinness.”
Content material related to the hashtag contains movies exhibiting individuals’s work-out routines or what they eat in a day.
TikTok stated it had “blocked search outcomes for #skinnytok because it has turn into linked to unhealthy weight reduction content material.”
Folks utilizing the hashtag will now be redirected to psychological well being assist sources as an alternative.
Tom Quinn, from the consuming dysfunction charity, Beat, welcomed the transfer saying “skinnytok” and associated content material might have “devastating” impacts on “struggling” individuals.
Nonetheless, he pressured there was extra to do.
“We all know that customers will fairly often discover workarounds to content material blocks and there’ll nonetheless be damaging content material which is not shared beneath the “skinnytok” umbrella, which TikTok and different social media platforms should now deal with,” he informed BBC Information.
Based on the US-based Nationwide Alliance for Consuming Issues, the skinnytok hashtag has greater than half one million posts related to it.
It says the hashtag contains content material resembling low-calorie recipes which on the face of it seem to advertise wholesome life-style recommendation.
However the organisation says, in actuality, it “glorifies thinness and vilifies weight achieve” and “promotes disordered consuming behaviours.”
The development has brought on specific alarm in France, the place specialists have warned of how social media can push susceptible younger individuals in direction of growing consuming problems.
“The sufferers are utterly indoctrinated — and my 45-minute weekly session is not any match for spending hours every single day on TikTok,” the nutritionist Carole Copti informed the AFP information company.
The blocking of the hashtag has been celebrated by France’s digital minister, who wrote on social media that “skinnytok is over” due to lobbying by European politicians.
In its assertion, TikTok stated it usually reviewed its security measures to “deal with evolving dangers”.
“We proceed to limit movies from teen accounts and supply well being specialists and knowledge in TikTok Search,” it added.
It’s not the primary time TikTok has been compelled to take motion over content material which raised physique picture issues.
In March, it blocked so-called “chubby filters” – a viral device which made individuals seem chubby.
