TikTok is stopping customers looking for “skinnytok” – a hashtag which critics say directs individuals in the direction of content material which “idolises excessive thinness.”
Content material related to the hashtag contains movies displaying 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 out to be linked to unhealthy weight reduction content material.”
Individuals utilizing the hashtag will now be redirected to psychological well being assist sources as a substitute.
Tom Quinn, from the consuming dysfunction charity, Beat, welcomed the transfer saying “skinnytok” and associated content material may have “devastating” impacts on “struggling” individuals.
Nevertheless, 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 handle,” he instructed BBC Information.
In response to the US-based National Alliance for Eating Disorders, the skinnytok hashtag has greater than half 1,000,000 posts related to it.
It says the hashtag contains content material equivalent to low-calorie recipes which on the face of it seem to advertise wholesome way of life recommendation.
However the organisation says, in actuality, it “glorifies thinness and vilifies weight achieve” and “promotes disordered consuming behaviours.”
The pattern has induced explicit alarm in France, the place consultants have warned of how social media can push susceptible younger individuals in the direction of creating consuming problems.
“The sufferers are utterly indoctrinated — and my 45-minute weekly session isn’t any match for spending hours day by day on TikTok,” the nutritionist Carole Copti instructed 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 repeatedly reviewed its security measures to “handle evolving dangers”.
“We proceed to limit movies from teen accounts and supply well being consultants and data 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 considerations.
In March, it blocked so-called “chubby filters” – a viral device which made individuals seem chubby.
