After controversy, Tiktok removes filter that made users fatter

THE Tiktok removed a controversial filter that allowed users to change photos to look fatter.

Each video with AI filter in the application follows the same pattern. It starts with an unnamed photo of the user – usually thin – before the “Chubby Filter” (something like “chubby filter”) go down the screen, changing the physique, while the song “Anxiety”, by rapper and American singer Dockii Toca.

As more and more of these videos appeared, a negative reaction was built by users concerned with an implicit message of body shame. People began to comment on viral content. “This trend has evil girl code,” wrote a user on the network, receiving more than 5,000 likes in the message.

Tiktoker Sadie Bass (@sadiebass16) said in a video: “Imagine that you are just trying to exist in this app and see thousands of people using an AI filter to have a body that looks like your body, ashamed it and all comments being like ‘Uh, Imagine’. Many people can imagine.”

Luna, who has a health and well-being app for adolescents, also criticized the filter for promoting “body shame and unhealthy beauty standards”.

THE CNN contacted Tiktok to comment. The company told the BBC that it removed the filter from its app and that it was reviewing the videos that presented the filter, making them ineligible for recommendation and blocking them from adolescent accounts. Tiktok added that the filter was carried by a company called Capcut, which is a separate entity, but has the same controlling company, Bytedance.

A search on the morning of Monday (24) by “Chubby Filter” did not bring results in the mobile app. However, a search for the desktop version still showed some content.

In the net, there are hundreds of filters, and many harmless – such as adding rabbit or dog muted ears to the face. Others of beauty have been widely criticized as harmful to users’ self -esteem. One of these filters softens the wrinkles, allegedly returning netizens to their adolescence, but potentially reinforcing stereotypes of stage beauty. The chubby filter, critics say, reinforces the widely perceived connection between beauty and thinness.

A tiktoker that puts it under the name of Saffsstuff criticized the filter in a video that received more than 100,000 views: “I don’t find it funny, I don’t think it’s light. I think it’s part of this biggest problem with chic diet and heroine really becoming an appropriate trend on social networks at the moment.”

A 2019 study linked the use of social media filters to greater acceptance of cosmetic surgery, while researchers at Harvard Business Review found in 2021 that people with high confidence in their appearance can really get more disturbed when seeing “improvements” on their face than those who had insecurities.

Tiktok announced last November that children under 18 would no longer have access to beauty filters after a commissioned report investigated the impact of these effects on young people.

Tiktok is the social network most used by children and adolescents from 9 to 17 years

This content was originally published in after controversy, Tiktok removes filter that left fatter users on CNN Brazil.

Source: CNN Brasil

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