Teen died because TikTok just turned off safety controls to see what happened
TikTok boasted about adding measures to protect teenagers from harmful content, but deliberately kept them from 15 million Americans until one killed himself, and then lied about being responsible. TikTok intentionally disabled new safety features for a control group of around 15 million Americans. Even before the US questioned the security of Chinese social media platform TikTok, the service's…
TikTok's parent company intentionally disabled safety features for around 15 million American users to observe the effects. This move came despite the social media platform's recent claims of enhancing protections for teenagers against harmful content. The incident unfolded even before the United States raised concerns about the security of TikTok, a Chinese-based service.
Earlier, various social media platforms had been criticized for their handling of teenage mental health, with Facebook scrapping plans to launch an Instagram version tailored for pre-teens. The Surgeon General had also urged the companies to bolster safety standards. Despite these warnings, TikTok decided to risk 15 million users in 2021 to gather data on the effectiveness of their newly introduced safeguards.
Written by urgent.news from AppleInsider's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
