TikTok Struggles To Stop Suicide Video Clips From Spreading

A TikTok suicide video of a man continued to make rounds on the video-sharing social media platform since September 7. TikTok has been struggling to stop the video from spreading.

Clips of a man who had apparently live-streamed his suicide on Facebook have made it into TikTok and although the social network has been trying to delete these clips, but they continue to surface.

The China-based social network has been detecting and flagging automatically the TikTok suicide clips as they violate their policy of depicting and glorifying suicide eversince they started circulating last Sunday.

TikTok has also been banning the accounts of users who have been trying to upload the clips, according to a report on Forbes.

However, users have been complaining that the TikTok suicide clips continued to be shared and show up on the "For You" discovery page wherein many users scroll through.

Users may not be able to immediately avoid seeing the clip as the setup of the social network's "For You" page allows the TikTok suicide clips to potentially appear and automatically play as users scroll up the page, as stated in a report on the Business Insider.

According to the users, they have been reporting the video but TikTok only sends back a note stating that it is not against the community guidelines.

As a result, the users have taken upon themselves to warn fellow users to avoid TikTok with one user warning that if a video of a man with long hair and a beard and on the phone, better scroll away immediately.

According to a report on the BuzzFeed News, the man on the TikTok suicide clips was from Mississippi.

TikTok stated that they appreciated the users who reported the gory clips and warned other users of watching and sharing videos of those kind on any social network platform out of respect for the person's family and the person himself.

The TikTok suicide video is not the first time that the social network had trouble in dealing with.

TikTok received a lot of criticism early this year when a 19-year-old used the platform to live-stream his apparent suicide and it had taken them about three hours to report the incident to the authorities.

And, TikTok is also not the first social media network to face a problem such as the TikTok suicide clips. As earlier said, the clips came from a livestream on Facebook.

Facebook, Twitter and even online forum Reddit have had encounters with such thing as the TikTok suicide clips.

As of the moment TikTok in engaged in a fight against the U.S. government with President Donald Trump signing an executive order giving the social network's Chinese owners, ByteDance, three months to divest its operations in the U.S. In response, TikTok has also sued the Trump administration.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or has had thoughts of harming themselves or taking their own life, get help via The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255).

They provide 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations.

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