Tiktok Takes Action on Videos Of Harmful Eating Habits

In an effort to repress content that encourages "disordered eating," TikTok announces that it had made revisions to its community guidelines. Videos promoting over-exercising and short-term fasting will be taken down following the updated rules.

Moreover, it will improve its system for detecting and removing clips that contain adult nudity, illegal acts, or those that pose a threat to youngsters' safety. The revisions came about as it was intended to answer concerns voiced by politicians and regulators.

In recent months, social media sites have been under heightened criticism for how they handle the well-being and security of the minors in their respective platforms, and TikTok's platform safety was also questioned in the United States last October. Eating disorder content was common on the site, according to senators at the hearings.

As per TikTok's report last September, the app is used by approximately one billion people every month. According to the report, 88 percent of the 91 million videos taken down in the third quarter of 2021 were seized before it was seen by their audiences.

TikTok states that its community guidelines have been updated to make things more understandable and avoid confusion as content containing ideas of misogyny, misgendering, and anything that supports conversion therapies had already been restricted. TikTok claims to have broadened its approach and will now focus on videos that encourage a wider range of disordered eating topics.

The Online Safety Bill, a new legislation proposed by the UK government, would impose hefty fines on social media platforms that fail to take adequate measures to combat inappropriate material. In a post on its website, the company wrote,

"We understand that people can struggle with unhealthy eating patterns and behavior without having an eating disorder diagnosis."

"Our aim is to acknowledge more symptoms, such as over-exercise or short-term fasting, that are frequently under-recognised signs of a potential problem."

The company is also working on a system that will recognize and block specific sorts of videos from being viewed by its teenage users. They are now developing several methods for its users to tag their material based on the age of the intended audience.

This year, TikTok plans to develop cyber-incident monitoring and investigative response centers in Washington, Dublin, and Singapore. Unauthorized access to TikTok content, accounts, systems and data is now a priority for the company as part of its larger campaign.