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TikTok in the dock after 10-yo girl dies from asphyxiation during ‘blackout challenge’ in Italy

Italy has ordered that the social media platform Tiktok block the accounts of any user in the country whose age could not be verified after a 10-year-old girl recorded her death while taking part in a ‘blackout challenge ‘using the Chinese-owned video app.

In a statement, the country’s data privacy watchdog said that although TikTok had committed to ban registration for children aged under 13, it was nonetheless easy to circumvent this rule.

The 10-year-old girl was found unconscious and declared dead in a Palermo hospital, after taking part in a ‘blackout challenge,’ androidcentral.com reported. The girl reportedly tied a belt around her neck to self-asphyxiate in the dangerous challenge on the popular social media platform, the platform reported further.

As a result, it ordered TikTok to block unverified user accounts until at least Feb. 15 by which date the network would have to meet the regulator’s demands.

Distraught parents

The girl’s parents reportedly said that they had no idea she was trying to take part in “the blackout game,” and that they only knew she used TikTok for dances and to look at videos.

“TikTok was her world. And YouTube. That’s how she spent her time,” the girl’s father Angelo Sicomero was quoted as saying in Saturday’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The girl’s death sparked an outcry in Italy for more stricter regulation of social media platforms.

The President of Italy’s Commission for childhood and adolescence, Licia Ronzulli, described the ban as “right and timely” on Twitter.

“The safety of minors must be protected at all costs and we cannot, as happened in Palermo, allow a social network to be an accomplice in a suicide.”

Italian regulators said they had informed Irish data protection because TikTok has announced that it would run its European operations out of Dublin. 

The public prosecutor’s office in Palermo said it has opened an investigation into TikTok for “incitement to suicide.”

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The watchdog said it had raised concerns with TikTok in December over what it called a series of violations, including allegations the firm had failed to protect minors.

The social network has also been accused of “weak policies” which allowed users under the age of 13 to circumvent age-restricted rules.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Friday it had not managed to identify any content on its site that could have encouraged the girl to participate in any such challenge, but was helping the authorities in the probe over possible “incitement to suicide.”

“The safety of the TikTok community is our absolute priority, for this motive we do not allow any content that encourages, promotes or glorifies behaviour that could be dangerous,” a company spokesman said.

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