The Italian Police announced on Tuesday the opening of an investigation against the Chinese social network TikTok, accused of allowing the disclosure of “dangerous content that encourages suicide, self-harm and developing eating disorders”.
The investigation, carried out by the Competition Authority, involves the Irish company TikTok Technology Limitedresponsible for relations with European consumers, as well as the English and Italian subsidiaries, specified in a press release.
The Italian headquarters of TikTok was the subject of an inspection on Tuesday by the financial police, in charge of the case.
The opening of the investigation was decided by the presence on the platform of “numerous videos of young people engaging in self-injurious behavior”, such as the recent challenge of marking the face with the call “french scar”, which has gone viral.
That challenge, described in many tutorials on TikTokconsists of pinching the cheekbones with such force and for so long that a bruise has to appear, but that it can even leave permanent marks, a dangerous practice according to doctors.
The antitrust entity criticizes TikTok for not having put in place adequate systems to monitor the content, “especially in the presence of particularly vulnerable users such as minors”.
TikTok hasn’t “applied its own rules, which include the removal of dangerous content related to challenges, suicides, self-harm and eating disorders”, underlines the authority in a press release.
Owned by Chinese giant ByteDance, TikTok it is also currently in the crosshairs of many countries for security reasons.
Source: Gestion
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