Worn by French Minister Clara Chappaz, the initiative to have Tiktok’s hashtag’s hashtag withdrawn resulted in a global suspension of her research results. The measure, welcomed in Paris, comes as the European Commission still conducts an official survey on platform practices.
The Tiktok platform confirmed on Tuesday that it has blocked the results associated with the hashtag #Skinnytok, due to its growing association with content related to dangerous weight loss practices. Used to promote extreme diets, this keyword often referred to videos valuing risk behavior at risk, especially with a teenage audience.
At the origin of this approach, Clara Chappaz, a delegated French Minister responsible for digital technology and artificial intelligence, publicly alerted to the effects of this content from April. She then initiated a direct dialogue with Tiktok, going to Dublin at the end of April to meet the company’s Trust and Safety team. She was accompanied by Martin Ajdari, president of Arcom, and Marie-Laure Denis, president of the CNIL. No representative of the European Commission was present at this meeting, with the exception of the French MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courin (Renew).
Clara Chappaz welcomed the suspension of the hashtag in a message published on Sunday on X. She salutes there “a collective victory”, obtained in a bilateral setting, and affirms her ambition to better supervise minors to social platforms, which she would like to prohibit before the age of 15.
Paris acts, Brussels Investigation
Tiktok indicates that the decision to block the hashtag #Skinnytok is part of a “regular examination of its safety measures”, adding that the term is now associated with content related to unhealthy weight loss. No implementation date has been communicated, however.
The suspension applies worldwide. Users trying to access the keyword are now redirected to an information message accompanied by a link to the National Alliance for Eating Disorders. This redirection strategy, already used for sensitive terms such as thinspo Or bonespoaims to limit exposure to content associated with eating disorders. Its effectiveness depends, however, on its ability to continuously integrate the typographic variants used to bypass moderation systems, such as sk1nnytok.
In parallel, the European Commission has been carrying out a formal survey on Tiktok since February 2024 within the framework of Digital Services Act (DSA), for possible violations of the bonds of protection of minors. To date, no operational calendar or concrete measure has been made public. Taken short, the Commission appeared to be back in the face of the French initiative, which enabled a rapid response of the platform outside the formal European process.
