TikTok’s “For You” Algorithm Exposed Young Users to Pro-Eating Disorder Content

July 1, 2019

Young users on TikTok were allegedly exposed to content violating community guidelines, specifically pro-eating disorder material, via their personalized 'For You' pages. This underscores the need for safe and secure AI practices in curating video recommendations.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.628, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.623, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.622, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: tiktok
Alleged developer: tiktok
Alleged harmed parties: tiktok-young-users, tiktok-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/279

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.