TikTok calls on social media sites to work together to eradicate suicide posts

TikTok suggested a partnership with nine other social media sites to collaborate to eliminate suicide material jointly and efficiently, after an event this month when a man killed himself on Facebook. In a letter to the chief executives of Facebook,Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit, the Chinese-owned app said it had laid forth its plan.

Vanessa Pappas, interim CEO of TikTok, noted that each of the sites has its own strategies to delete detrimental content and avoid its dissemination. We agree, however, that any of our individual efforts to safeguard our own users and the global society will be greatly boosted by a structured, collaborative approach to early detection and warning of particularly violent, graphic content, like suicide, among industry participants, “she wrote in the report.”

Pappas recommended a meeting with each company’s safety officers to hammer out specifics with a collaborative solution, “Which we hope would help us all improve our users’ safety.” After clips of the man’s suicide were inserted in otherwise inoffensive videos frequently posted on his global site, which is particularly popular with young teenagers, TikTok initiated its own investigation.

According to a warning TikTok sent to users on September 8, the original video originated from a Facebook livestream and depicted an American man taking his own life.