TikTok’s Latest Trend Is…Flashing Your Boobs

Buzzfeed News managed to find more than 20 videos of Foopah Challenge in the hour following the possibility of being on the platform, to be shown more on the page for you because of this commitment. (Buzzfeed News will not bind or not include videos in addition to Andrews, because we cannot guarantee that all users participating in the legal age.) Even today, when the application is opened, Buzzfeed News has met Faopah challenge videos in four of the first five videos it has seen.

It is viral gold, combining sex and the feeling of obtaining one on a giant technological platform with an easily reproducible vanity. Andrews came across the challenge when he was overturned to his existence by his manager of Tiktok. She quickly produced a handful of videos, which led traffic to her children. “I got more traffic in the last two days just by doing these new Tiktoks against regular trends,” she said.

Tiktok moderates the content by first performing videos via an automated system that uses the vision of the computer to see if they can contain content that breaks that Its directivesWho “does not allow nudity, pornography or sexually explicit content on our platform”. Everything that is deemed suspicious is then examined by a human moderator, but the moderators should examine a thousand videos in a single quarter of work, which means that they cannot examine in detail the content of a video.

And in addition, said Andrews, there is no way of knowing with certainty that the people of the videos will flash. “Prove it,” she said. Some participating in the foopah trend clearly use their elbow or their thumb instead of a breast or a nipple appearing around the door. (Andrews cut himself off to become naked. “Yes, they are real,” she said, when he was asked if her videos showed her flashing her breasts.)

“This is still another case where a content moderation system is opposed to a younger entrepreneurial audience base,” said Liam McLoughlin, professor at the University of Liverpool, studying content moderation. “These moderators often have seconds to decide whether the content is breaking the rules, and according to the examples of Foopah that I saw, I needed a few minutes to spot. So, even if the content is reported by the filter, human moderators may not be able to follow. ”

The propagation of the Foopah challenge shows the power of the Tiktok page for you and the algorithms it uses. “He shows videos that are not penalized by Tiktok of the word go Can really go somewhere, “said Carolina, a scholarship holder studying the intersection between online abuses and censorship at the University of Northumbria in the United Kingdom. (Are he herself was the victim of too censored content moderation on tiktok.)

Tiktok blocked access to a number of hashtags used to broadcast videos, but the content using a hashtag, #foopahh_, was seen more than 7 million times overall, including 2 million views last week. Two -thirds of users engaged in hashtag are aged 18 to 24, according to Tiktok’s own data.

About half of the more than 20 videos that Buzzfeed News initially found had been deleted within 48 hours, many accounts behind them ended. But no more videos had appeared to replace them. A spokesperson for Tiktok told Buzzfeed News: “Nudity and sexually explicit content are not allowed on Tiktok. We take the appropriate measures against any content of this nature, including the prohibition of violable hashtags and the deletion of videos. We continue to invest on a large scale in our trust and security operations. ”

Are research on how social media platforms adopt an overly draconian approach to bodies and how content managers are often armed by those who do not like women or seek to gain power over them. “One of the reasons why this could happen, and one of the reasons why this strange format has started for a tendency is that the moderation of bodies on social networks is notoriously puritanic,” she said.

This is something thatrews, which has seen many of his accounts on Tiktok is prohibited before, agrees. “You are banished without explanation,” she said. “No rhyme. No reason. It’s stupid.”

In addition to his concerns about the propagation of explicit content to people who may not choose to consume it, McLoughlin is worried about the long -term ramifications of the trend. “Other content creators, who do not break the rules, could find themselves subject to even harder systems that target them directly,” he said. “I can certainly imagine those who talk about breastfeeding to be targeted, for example.”

This is something that concerns sex workers on Tiktok. Steph Oshiri, a Canadian adult content creator, tweeted The fact that the FOOPAH challenge was a “bad look for us” and would have a negative impact on the ability of adult content creators to publish safe content on Tiktok in the future. “The following two weeks, I expected to see many prohibited accounts or an update of directives,” added Oshiri.

Others were affected On the potential legal ramifications of creators exposing to minors of the application, given the relatively young user base of Tiktok.

Are, who have said that “the position is” I want breasts everywhere “, thinks that the controversy surrounding the challenge is more evidence of the double standard applied to women on social networks. “Because we are talking about bodies, and in particular the body of women”, are said, “everyone is a bit like”