TikTok Is Censoring Videos Of Disabled, Fat or LGBTQ; User Drags TikTok To Court Over Illegal Data Harvesting!

Tiktok has rapidly become a magnet for trouble, and this time, a student from California has sued the popular video uploading and sharing app for illegally transferring her information to China.

As if that were not enough, Tiktok has also admitted to censoring videos of some users that were ‘supposedly vulnerable’ to bullying. This has been a terribly misguided action on the part of Tiktok and has been criticized severely. 

Read on for the whole scoop!

California Student Sues TikTok For Illegally Harvesting And Transfering Data

TikTok has already faced severe backlash, not only from India, but from all over the world. This student from California, Misty Hong, has alleged that Tiktok collected her videos and her personal information, and transferred that information to ByteDance’s servers in China. 

As per her lawyers, TikTok did this without her consent. 

In the filings, the lawyers have stated, “TikTok’s lighthearted fun comes at a heavy cost. TikTok unjustly profits from its secret harvesting of private and personally identifiable user data by, among other things, using such data to derive vast targeted advertising revenues and profits.”

She has also alleged that Tiktok used her videos to create an online profile for targeted ads.

TikTok Implements Misguided Actions To Curb Bullying; People With Disabilities Kept Away

As per reports, the moderators at Tiktok labeled videos of people with disabilities and limited their reach, on Tiktok’s instructions. Tiktok also told them to identify those videos that featured queer and fat people. These were made into a list of ‘special users’. 

The videos were viewed as a means to bullying by default, despite what content was displayed in them and the reach of the videos was limited. 

The section of moderation rules is named as “Imagery depicting a subject highly vulnerable to cyberbullying.” As per the explanation given in this section, this covers users who are “susceptible to harassment or cyberbullying based on their physical or mental condition.”

Tiktok admitted to doing this, with an explanation of this not being a long term plan, which still sounds ridiculous. 

Tiktok said, “Early on, in response to an increase in bullying on the app, we implemented a blunt and temporary policy. While the intention was good, the approach was wrong and we have long since changed the earlier policy in favour of more nuanced anti-bullying policies and in-app protections.”