San Francisco— British filmmaker Emmeline Hartley has slammed Chinese short-form video app TikTok for allowing abusive comments in a video.
The comment section of the video about sexual consent was filled with allegations from men accusing women of assault.
According to a report by BBC, the two-minute video was uploaded from an account with about 1,700 followers, that has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.
The filmmaker said that “she believes TikTok’s algorithms are driving more hate towards the film.”
Meanwhile, TikTok said, “misogyny was prohibited on the platform”.
“Our community guidelines specifically call it out as a hateful ideology and we are crystal clear that we do not want that content on our platform,” a spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report.
The company said it had removed more than 100 comments from Hartley’s video, which was a small proportion of the number that had been left.
On the other hand, Hartley said she could not get in touch directly with someone from the platform to get help.
“We don’t have the capacity or the manpower to respond to all the comments. I thought, what have I done? I’ve made a film that’s helping rape culture,” Hartley was quoted as saying.
According to her, she has seen other TikTok videos filled with abusive comments where the creator is appealing for likes and positivity to “pull them back from the wrong side of TikTok”.
She made the original video, “Keep Breathing”, in 2018 with funding from various local organisations in Derby and backing from the British Film Institute. (IANS)
