A dangerous new challenge is rampant on TikTok. Called “scar challenge”, it consists of filming yourself making a fake scar on your face by pinching your skin very violently. A manipulation that can have serious consequences…
With its short formats, its news feed boosted with algorithms, its creative filters, its many creation tools and its large community with which to exchange, TikTok is a huge success with young people. But all is not rosy in the world of the social network, which leads to a certain number of excesses: addiction, dangerous encounters, cyberbullying, inappropriate content… The list is long! Challenges in particular pose a real problem. Because most of the time it’s about innocent challenges, like beauty trends, cooking challenges or choreography reproductions, sometimes they are much more dangerous. We no longer count the number of challenges that regularly create buzz, like the blackout challenge – which encourages people to film themselves choking to fainting and which cost the lives of at least seven children –, the youngest users not necessarily being aware of the risks and just wanting to imitate the others.
The latest challenge is the “scar challenge”, also called “trend scar”, and consists of creating a fake scar on your face by pinching the skin very violently while turning your wrist until you get a red mark that will put – in the best case – several days to disappear. There are hundreds of such videos, some of which provide some sort of tutorial on how to do this. Yet another scandal that TikTok would do without, when it is in the crosshairs of the United States and is supposed to have tightened its moderation policy.
Cicatrice challenge: a challenge that leaves traces
A pinch of fingers and a spin. It does not take more to get a “beautiful” red gash on his cheek, as illustrated by many videos on the Chinese social network. “Tutorial” videos that accumulate hundreds of thousands of views and are particularly highlighted. Thus, when a user enters the letters “ci” in the search bar, TikTok suggests the keywords “scars on the cheek” – with the icon indicating that it is one of the most popular trends of the moment – , “scar”, “scar trend”. Enough to encourage the user to go and see what it is all about and, faced with the success of the challenge, push them to do the same in order to, too, know their hour of glory. The problem is that such manipulations can create spider angiomas, small persistent red marks on the skin, which can remain for several months or never go away – this can then require an expensive laser procedure. Suffice to say that dermatologists are strongly sounding the alarm.
But why does TikTok allow the publication and promotion of such a practice, especially since it goes – in theory at least – against its policy? Indeed, on his websitethe platform claims to prohibit the dissemination of content inciting self-harm. BFM-TV asked her for further explanation, to which she replied that she will not remove the posts – which nevertheless encourage young users to create superficial wounds – because they are not contrary to her terms of use, pinching the cheek that does not match his eyes is self-harm. It remains to be seen whether the firm consulted the opinion of doctors or psychologists before reaching such conclusions. However, she announced that she wanted to limit the scope of these videos by not recommending them in the “For you” thread. However, at the time of writing these lines, they are still put forward. One more reason to use TikTok’s control tools to protect your child (see our practical sheet).
TikTok: tougher moderation, really?
This decision is surprising to say the least given that, at the beginning of February, TikTok updated its community rules in order to apply a more drastic moderation policy, as announced in his press release. The goal: to help users better understand its rules and to crack down on those who constantly break them. This change comes as the social network tries to improve its transparency regarding the moderation of content and its recommendation algorithms, two elements regularly pointed out by regulators and other authorities. “Most members of our community strive to follow our rules, but there are a minority of people who repeatedly break them and whose behavior does not change.“, explains Julie de Bailliencourt, one of the managers of TikTok. This is hardly surprising given that, until now, the platform has sanctioned them by temporarily prohibiting them from publishing or commenting. We will therefore have to take action. ..
Thus, on February 2, TikTok announced the gradual deployment of the latest update to its community rules, one of the objectives of which is to remove harmful accounts from the platform more quickly and to set up a system of penalties. So, whenever a user posts content that violates any of the community rules, the content will be removed and the account owner will receive a penalty. “If an account reaches the maximum penalty threshold, either for the same product functionality (Commentary, LIVE for example), or category of our Community Rules (“Bullying and Harassment” for example), it will be permanently banned from the platform”, explains TikTok. These thresholds may vary according to the dangerousness of the offence. Thus, the number of penalties authorized will be greater for sharing spam than for the publication of racist content or incitement to hatred. “We will continue to enforce permanent first-penalty account deletions for serious offenses including promoting or threatening violence, sexual exploitation of minors, or sharing real-world violence or torture.“, specifies Julie de Bailliencourt. The penalties will expire from the file of an account after 90 days. You”, with the possibility of appealing. It remains to be seen the actual application of these new community rules and their effectiveness in the long term.