TikTok Pushes Serial Killers, Guns And Suicide To Kids: Raw Story

Last month, after the Wall Street Journal revealed that social media app TikTok served drug and bondage videos to teenage accounts, TikTok said it "in no way represents the behavior and viewing experience of a real person."

Photo Insert: Within 12 hours of opening a 13-year-old account, TikTok recommended content related to firearms and likewise suggested an account about serial killers that described the murder of a naked 14-year-old.

John Byrne, founder of Raw Story and investor in Softbank, one of TikTok's large early investors, and shareholder of Alibaba, Facebook, Microsoft, Tencent, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, has found TikTok’s claim to be false in an investigative piece published in Raw Story late on Oct. 26, 2021.

“A Raw Story investigation, however, found the TikTok experience — seen through the lens of a teen account that dwelled on law enforcement content — to be anything but safe. Within 12 hours of opening a 13-year-old account, TikTok recommended content promoting firearms, along with videos promoting body armor and rifle mounts that improve the accuracy of weapons fire. It also provided links to websites where they are sold,” Byrne stressed.

TikTok also suggested an account about serial killers that described the murder of a naked 14-year-old. Within several days, the app played videos that young users uploaded of their apparent failed suicide attempts, including one girl who appeared to be in a hospital.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is an app that provides a stream of user-uploaded videos. It recommends additional videos based on which videos users watch.

“Generally, it offers innocuous content like people doing funny dances. While the technology is effective at keeping users on the app, it can send users down rabbit holes of toxic content if they show interest in certain videos. It also tends to find more and more extreme videos about the type of content you watch.

Raw Story's simulated 13-year-old user initially dwelled on videos of police, service members, and hunting. Within two hours, TikTok showed hunting videos jokingly suggesting shooting a neighbor's dog and an Amish man.

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