“Blackout Challenge”
A Tiktok challenge cost a ten-year-old her life – now her mother is suing the company
The Tiktok Challenge is a danger to children, the victim’s family argues (icon image)
© Jeremie Fulleringer/ / Picture Alliance
Videos repeatedly appear on Tiktok in which children and young people are deliberately allowed to faint. Now the mother of a victim accuses the company of actively fueling the dangerous “Blackout” challenge.
It’s a seemingly harmless game. With the help of friends or alone, children bring themselves into a state of emergency. And film yourself doing it. But the “Blackout” challenge is life-threatening: by stopping breathing, the participants faint themselves. And play with their lives. The mother of a victim now wants to hold Tiktok accountable.
Nylah Anderson was ten years old when she wanted to join the dangerous trend last year. Although her mother rushed to the hospital with her lifeless body, she could not be saved: she died in the hospital on December 12, five days after her admission.
Tiktok in the pillory
And that’s Tiktok’s fault, the lawyers for Nylah’s mother, Tawainna Anderson, are now arguing. In her view, Nylah could only have come up with the idea for the challenge because she would have seen the videos on the platform. And that was only possible because the platform’s high-precision algorithm rated them as relevant to the young girl. The algorithm “decided that the deadly black-out challenge was a perfect fit and of great interest to ten-year-old Nylah Anderson,” the lawyers in the lawsuit explain the group’s responsibility.
The company Tiktok rejects this allegation. The company told Gizmodo that the “disturbing ‘challenge’ existed long before Tiktok. “People find out about her in a different way and she’s never been a Tiktok trend.” The company attaches great importance to the protection of its users and would actively search for and remove harmful content.
No new test of courage
In fact, similar dares have existed for decades. Long before the advent of social networks, young people in different countries experimented with the dangerous game of fainting. However, social networks are also fueling such trends. At least one school in Hamburg followed suit star-Knowledge of similar experiments in recent months after young students watched related Tiktok videos. In addition, Nylah is not the first death. A ten-year-old girl died in Italy last year, and a twelve-year-old boy in Colorado. In both cases, the victims had become aware of the challenge through Tiktok.
Source:press conference, gizmodo