TikTok is extremely popular among young users in particular. Many parents say that their children have become traumatized by seeing the images, which suddenly appeared after they thought they had clicked on a cat movie, for example.
Confused
A British mother tells BBC broadcaster her 14-year-old daughter ‘trembling like a leaf and crying profusely’ came in after she was confronted with the video. “I’ve never seen her so confused. It was awful, it took her ages to say anything about it.”
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Her daughter had come across the footage in TikTok’s ‘featured’ section. “She was scrolling through songs and funny videos a bit when suddenly a bearded man appeared behind a desk.” Moments later he would commit suicide on the screen.
Live on Facebook
The images surfaced for the first time last month as a Facebook live stream. They were also posted on other social media, such as Twitter. Facebook says it has removed the video as soon as possible. Copies have since been traced and removed by means of automatic image recognition.
TikTok apparently has more trouble with that. That is striking: just today it was announced that the app has signed the European Code of Conduct to investigate hate speech and incitement to violence within 24 hours. Illegal content must then be removed immediately.
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