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The Right Coast
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How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors – WSJ

By Thomas A. Smith

The account was one of dozens of automated accounts, or bots, created by The Wall Street Journal to understand what TikTok shows young users. These bots, registered as users aged 13 to 15, were turned loose to browse TikTok s For You feed, the highly personalized, never-ending feed curated by the algorithm.

An analysis of the videos served to these accounts found that through its powerful algorithms, TikTok can quickly drive minors among the biggest users of the app into endless spools of content about sex and drugs.

TikTok served one account registered as a 13-year-old at least 569 videos about drug use, references to cocaine and meth addiction, and promotional videos for online sales of drug products and paraphernalia. Hundreds of similar videos appeared in the feeds of the Journal s other minor accounts.

via www.wsj.com