Many Internet users were indignant this weekend at an infamous video circulating via the TikTok application.
On Twitter, users warned their fellows, urging them not to watch the scene, macabre and traumatic.
“
A video of a 14 year old girl being beheaded is spinning all over the networks so if you see the beginning of a tikTok of a kid wearing white shorts and especially black top DON'T LOOK !!!
One of them warned, for example.
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What exactly did this scene show? Let's start by advising you not to watch it, the images are shocking. The video, deleted since Sunday but still visible on several sites, is divided into two parts. In the first, a person with long dark hair, dressed in white shorts and a black top, dances, looking at the camera, against a musical background. It appears to be an Asian-type young woman. A username - mayengg03 - appears at the top left of the video. This first part takes up the classic codes observable in countless videos shared on TikTok.
Then, a few seconds later, the scene changes radically: we then see a person curled up in the corner of a tiled room, wearing a black t-shirt, with a white pattern, and shorts or dots. 'purple underpants, has his throat slit.
Two individuals, gloved hands, are at the maneuver.
Unbearable, the scene lasts several tens of seconds.
The unresponsive victim appears either unconscious or already dead.
We also hear the two individuals speak in Spanish, no doubt to the victimized person: we distinguish in particular the words "
puta madre
" and "
puto
", with the obvious translation.
While the victim also has black hair, she does not appear to be the same person as the young woman dancing in the first part of the video.
TikTok apologizes to members of its community
Contacted by
Le Figaro
, TikTok tells us that this second part of the video, "
with inconceivable content
", comes from another site: it was "
integrated into a video and then transferred to TikTok
", specifies a spokesperson.
"
The original video was quickly deleted,
" adds the group, whose systems "
proactively detect and block any further attempts to download the clip - preventing malicious behavior - before it can even be seen
."
TikTok also thanks its users for their vigilance and their reports and apologizes "
to the members of our community, including our teams of moderators, who were able to view this content.
".
Thanks to a reverse image search from the violent scene, our colleagues from Liberation noticed that the second part of the video seems to date from a few years ago, at the beginning of 2019. It would be linked to the assassination of a young man south of Mexico City, Mexico, in Morelos.
The language heard on the video seems to confirm this origin.
Moderation faulted
TikTok clearly prohibits “
violent and visually explicit
”
content in its terms and conditions,
including content that is “
gratuitously offensive, sadistic or macabre
” or that encourages violence. The network ensures that these rules are applied proactively, "
before any content is even reported to us, using both technology and human moderation
." For example, in the second half of 2020, "
nearly 90 million videos were deleted globally for violation
" of TikTok rules, says the network in its transparency report, of which 83.3% before they be seen once. Of those millions of videos, 8.1% were deleted because of violent and visually explicit content.
The fact remains that these rules were clearly transgressed, in the present case, and that the control allowed a particularly violent example to pass. Without the many reports of users, some of whom say they are "
traumatized
", the video could have continued to circulate. Reactions diverge, ranging from shock to nonchalance: "
I'm still traumatized,
" writes one user on Twitter, when others say "
it's a little yucky
", "
it's a little shocking but it's okay
" or "
In real life there is worse
". An astonishing phlegm in front of the violence of the images.