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TikTok Is Fighting To Remove Swarm Of Videos That Show Man Taking His Life
By Mikelle Leow, 09 Sep 2020
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Image via DANIEL CONSTANTE / Shutterstock.com
TikTok is grappling to pull down a chain of videos featuring disturbing footage of a man committing suicide.
The video first surfaced on Facebook Live, and has since sprung up in the form of innocuous-seeming clips visible on TikTok’s ‘For You’ front page, where users are offered recommendations based on the app’s algorithm.
According to a report from the BBC, many of these reuploads were disguised with innocent imagery, such as pictures of kittens.
“On Sunday night, clips of a suicide that had originally been livestreamed on Facebook circulated on other platforms, including TikTok,” a spokesperson for TikTok responded. “Our systems, together with our moderation teams, have been detecting and removing these clips for violating our policies against content that displays, praises, glorifies, or promotes suicide.”
The platform said it will ban accounts that make several attempts to share the graphic footage.
In addition, the company expressed its gratitude to users who promptly reported the offending posts, which it described to have “glorifie[d]” suicide.
[via BBC, cover image via DANIEL CONSTANTE / Shutterstock.com]
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