TikTok Under Investigation For Promoting Sexual & Drug Content To Minors

Investigation Into Tiktok’s Algorithm Reveals It’s Serving Sexual & Drug Content To Children As Young As 13

A recent investigation has found that TikTok algorithm is promoting sexual, drug, and violent content to children as young as 13-years-old.

While the investigation was not done by real teens, WSJ used numerous bot accounts to find the results of the searches.

As part of a Wall Street Journal investigation, a ’13-year-old bot user’ searched for ‘only fans’ type content and discovered numerous sexual and p0rnographic videos pop up on the app.

One of the bots was served 569 videos about drug use with references to cocaine and meth, and advertising for drugs.

Some highlights from this:

🔴 TikTok served one account registered as a 13-year-old at least 569 videos about drug use, references to cocaine and meth addiction, and promotional videos for online sales of drug products and paraphernalia.

— Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) September 8, 2021

🔴 Hundreds of those videos were removed by TikTok after we shared them.

TikTok said the app doesn’t differentiate between videos it serves to adults and minors but said that the platform is looking to create a tool that filters content for young users.

— Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) September 8, 2021

Nevertheless, there were also over 100 videos popping up for pornography sites and sex stores where the accounts were labeled as adults-only but still appearing to adolescent accounts.

Other adult content that popped up included; alcohol abuse, disorders, violence. TikTok claims they currently don’t have a measure in place to separate adult and child content.

Despite this, the Chinese based app claimed that “Protecting minors is vitally important, and TikTok has taken industry-first steps to promote a safe and age-appropriate experience for teens.”

TikTok says did note that it is working on a filter tool to restrict content for teens and young people.

America’s children are being exposed to toxic, addictive adult content from a uniquely intrusive app that is part and parcel of Beijing’s covert data collection campaign

We know China-based TikTok is a cyber threat; now we know it’s a threat to kidshttps://t.co/OTNI0dv1Rj

— Christopher Weihs (@chrisweihs_) September 8, 2021