Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: TikTok now blocks search results for #SkinnyTok

Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2025 22:28:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-...

TikTok no longer shows search results for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. Critics who
supported this block said some videos with that label were promoting
disordered eating and other unhealthy or risky diet behaviors. We've reached
out to TikTok for comment on this development.

France's Minister of State for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz was one of the
politicians leading the pushback against this particular hashtag. She has
been campaigning against #SkinnyTok with both French and EU regulators since
April. "These videos promoting extreme thinness are revolting and absolutely
unacceptable," Chappaz said. "Digital tools are marvellous in terms of
progress and freedom, but badly used they can shatter lives … the social
networks cannot escape their responsibility."

While blocking search results for potentially harmful hashtags is a positive
step, it only places hurdles in the path of people who want to seek out
similar videos. "Users are savvy," Cornell University professor Brooke Erin
Duffy told The New York Times. "They know how to work these platforms and how
to evade their content moderation systems."

A block on one hashtag is just the latest in TikTok's piecemeal approach
toward content that could encourage eating disorders. In 2020 it placed
restrictions on ads that might "promote a negative or harmful body image,"
such as fasting apps and weight loss supplements. TikTok began a partnership
with the National Eating Disorder Association in 2021 to offer more resources
for users with eating disorders. Later that year, it also introduced a new
approach to the For You page in an effort to reduce the impact of watching
too many repeated clips on a negative topic.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-...
skinnytok-222836828.html?src=rss

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