BuzzFeed News managed to find over 20 Foopah Challenge videos within an hour of being on the platform, only to show more on the For You page because of that engagement. (BuzzFeed News will not link to or embed any videos other than Andrews’, as we cannot guarantee that all users participating in the challenge are of legal age.) Even today, upon opening the app, BuzzFeed News found videos of the Foopah challenge in four of the first five videos it watched.
It’s viral gold, combining sex and the feeling of conquering a giant tech platform with easily replicable conceit. Andrews faced the challenge when his TikTok manager informed him of its existence. She quickly produced a handful of videos, which have brought traffic to her Onlyfans. “I’ve been getting more traffic the last few days just by making these new TikToks compared to the usual trends,” he said.
TikTok moderates content by first running videos through an automated system that uses computer vision to see if they may contain any infringing content. its guidelinesthat “they do not allow nudity, pornography or explicit sexual content on our platform.” Anything deemed suspicious is vetted by a human moderator, but moderators are expected to watch a thousand videos in a single shift, meaning they can’t scrutinize the content of a video in detail.
And besides, Andrews said, there’s no way to know for sure whether the people in the videos are actually blinking. “Try it,” he said. Some participating in the Foopah trend clearly use the elbow or thumb instead of a breast or nipple that appears around the door. (Andrews agreed to strip. “Yes, they’re real,” she said when asked if her videos showed her showing her breasts.)
“This is yet another example of a content moderation system taking on a younger, more entrepreneurial audience base,” said Liam McLoughlin, a professor at the University of Liverpool who studies content moderation. “These moderators are often given a few seconds to decide if the content breaks the rules, and based on the Foopah examples I’ve seen, it took me minutes to detect it. So even if the filter flags the content, the human moderators may not be able to keep up.”
The spread of the Foopah challenge shows the power of TikTok’s For You page and the algorithms it employs. “Show videos that TikTok does not penalize from the word go can really go somewhere,” said Carolina Are, an innovation fellow who studies the intersection between online abuse and censorship at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. victim of overly objectionable content moderation on TikTok.)
TikTok has blocked access to several of the hashtags used to spread the videos, but content using one hashtag, #foopahh_, has been viewed more than 7 million times in total, including 2 million views in the last week. Two-thirds of users who interact with the hashtag are between 18 and 24 years old, according to TikTok’s own data.
About half of the more than 20 videos BuzzFeed News initially found were removed within 48 hours, and many of the accounts behind them were terminated. But more videos had appeared to replace them. A TikTok spokesperson told BuzzFeed News: “Nudity and sexually explicit content is not permitted on TikTok. We take appropriate action against any content of this nature, including banning offending hashtags and removing videos. We continue to invest at scale in our Trust and Safety operations.”
It investigates how social media platforms take an overly draconian approach to bodies and how content moderation guidelines are often weaponized by those who dislike women or seek to gain power over them. “One of the reasons this might be happening, and one of the reasons this strange format has become a trend, is that the moderation of bodies on social media is notoriously puritanical,” he said.
That’s something Andrews, who has seen many of her TikTok accounts banned before, agrees with. “They ban you without any explanation,” he said. “No rhyme or reason. No reason. It’s stupid.”
In addition to her concerns about the spread of explicit content to people who may not choose to consume it, McLoughlin worries about the long-term ramifications of this trend. “Other content creators, who do not break the rules, could find themselves subject to even harsher systems that target them directly,” he said. “I imagine that, for example, those who talk about breastfeeding will be the target of attacks.”
It’s something that worries sex workers on TikTok. Steph Oshiri, Canadian adult content creator, tweeted that the Foopah challenge was a “bad look for us” and would negatively impact the ability of adult content creators to post safe-for-work content on TikTok in the future. “In the next two weeks I expect to see many accounts banned or an update to the guidelines,” Oshiri added.
Others they were worried about the potential legal ramifications of creators exposing themselves to minors on the app, given TikTok’s comparatively young user base.
Are, who said her “stance is ‘I want boobs everywhere,’” believes the controversy surrounding the challenge is further evidence of the double standard applied to women on social media. “Because we’re talking about bodies, and particularly women’s bodies,” Are said, “everyone says, ‘Oh, well, bodies are harmful, won’t anyone think about children?’”
