Tik Tok loophole sees users post pornographic and violent videos

Tik Tok loophole sees users post pornographic and violent videos

By Onlykhabar News Media Wed 21 April, 2021 ( about 5 years ago ) 🎤1106 Viewerstechnology

TikTok is banning users who are posting pornographic and violent videos as their profile pictures to circumvent moderation, in a unique viral trend.

TikTok has also banned the hashtags used to promote the offending profiles and is deleting the videos. Users say the trend is encouraging pranksters to post the most offensive or disgusting material they can find. Tom, a teenager from Germany, who first contacted BBC News about the trend, said: "I've seen gore and hardcore porn. Tom added he had reported multiple users to the app for posting the offensive profile-picture videos.

Videos about the trend are being posted in English and Spanish languages on the app. On the platform users can put videos as their profile pictures, rather than a still image. Some of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers waiting for the profile picture to be changed to something shocking. The offending accounts are often named with a random jumble of letters and words and have no actual TikTok videos uploaded to them apart from inside the profile box. 

And these videos are being recommended by the TikTok algorithm on the app's main For You Page. Regular users are able to find these accounts by watching otherwise mundane TikTok videos advertising usernames people should "search up" to find the most shocking clips. "TikTok has a rather positive reputation when it comes to trust and safety so I would not fault them for not having moderation policies and tools for a toxic phenomenon they were not aware of," Roi Carthy, from social-media moderation company L1ght, said. "TikTok fans should be conscious of the risks on the platform and parents should make an effort to learn what new apps their children are using, along with the content and human dynamics they are exposed to." Disabling a hashtag meant the term could not be found in search or created again, TikTok added. Its moderation teams are also understood to be analysing and removing similar copycat terms being used for the trend.

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By Onlykhabar News Media Wed 21 April, 2021 🎤1106 Viewerstechnology
TAGS: Tiktok Social Networks Cyber City
Tik Tok loophole sees users post pornographic and violent videos

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