TikTok says it’s testing methods to keep away from pushing an excessive amount of content material from a sure matter, similar to excessive weight-reduction plan, unhappiness or breakups, to particular person customers.
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mike blake/Reuters
In style video-sharing app TikTok stated it could alter its advice algorithm to keep away from displaying customers an excessive amount of of the identical content material, as social-media platforms globally come underneath scrutiny for his or her potential hurt to youthful customers.
TikTok stated on Thursday that it’s testing methods to keep away from pushing an excessive amount of content material from a sure matter, similar to excessive weight-reduction plan, unhappiness or breakups, to particular person customers to guard their psychological well-being.
The buzzy app, whose month-to-month consumer numbers surpassed 1 billion in September, stated it was taking such measures to guard towards customers “viewing an excessive amount of of a content material class that could be fantastic as a single video however problematic in clusters.”
TikTok, owned by Chinese language expertise big ByteDance Ltd., serves up content material from viral dance movies to brief cooking demonstrations and is wildly in style within the U.S., the place it shot to fame throughout the early days of the pandemic when many Individuals had been locked down at dwelling. Since then, U.S. coverage makers and their world counterparts have been scrutinizing TikTok and its friends, significantly Meta Platform Inc.’s Instagram, over data-privacy considerations and the doable psychological injury these platforms could trigger to youthful customers.
In September, The Wall Avenue Journal printed an investigation that illustrated how TikTok’s algorithm might push younger customers right into a rabbit gap of content material about intercourse and medicines once they browsed the app’s For You feed, its extremely personalised dwelling web page serving up an countless stream of content material when a consumer first opens up the app.
TikTok additionally stated Thursday that it could permit folks extra authority to choose movies they need or don’t wish to view. One of many measures the app is engaged on is a function that will let customers decide phrases or hashtags related to content material they don’t want to see on their video feed.
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