A former RCMP officer in BC is calling for changes to TikTok’s policies after finding shocking instances of harassment on the app specifically targeting women with a Punjabi/Indian background.
Sandy Chatha told Daily Hive that they’re a fairly new user to TikTok and they were disturbed by some of the content on the platform.
Chatha has been working for the past month to help women who have been affected by videos using vulgar language, depicting men degrading women, and showing life events where people were crying and saying they were going to commit suicide.
“There is criminal activity, organized crime, and people harming themselves or others that are going unnoticed.”
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Chatha’s petition describes in detail some of the harmful content that she’s flagged on the app. She has seen no action taken by the platform to remove the content or the users.
“Since most of my videos are information related to law enforcement careers and life coaching, I had a follower reach out to me on December 20th and explain how women with an Indian/Punjabi background were being targeted, blackmailed, harassed, and bullied.”
Chatha wanted to help get harmful videos removed, especially because there was an incident where a BC woman reportedly attempted suicide after experiencing harassment.
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“I started to reach out to my RCMP and law enforcement colleagues and reached out to the RCMP officer that attended the attempted suicide call.”
“From conversations with my colleagues, it was recommended that I start a petition to effect change.”
“As with any social media platform, [TikTok] is ‘user beware’ or ‘use at your own risk’ but most other platforms will take reports of inappropriate content or fake accounts seriously and have them removed.”
“TikTok is not doing that. Their reporting or review methods do not seem to work for content posted in languages other than English.”
Chatha says she wants to see TikTok implement better review methods for harmful content, banning abusive users, and more strict ID verification for account setups.
TikTok did not directly respond to Daily Hive regarding the petition. The platform has a variety of safety, privacy, and community controls available for users.
Daily Hive has reached out to BC RCMP and will update this story.