‘1000-Lb. Sisters’ Fans Wonder Why TikTok Targeted Tammy Slaton

Since the very beginning of the series, 1000-Lb. Sisters star Tammy Slaton has always shown an interest in becoming a social media influencer. Whether she was doing product review videos on her Youtube channel or lip-syncing the words to music clips on TikTok, Tammy has put a lot of effort into building her social media audience. Recently, however – fans were left with both questions and concerns when Tammy’s TikTok profile suddenly went dark. What happened? Read on to get the details about this odd situation.

Queen Tammy Builds Her Following

Tammy Slaton has been in an in-patient rehabilitation center since late last year. In fact, her admission into the program and the horrific health problems that circled that event were chronicled in the Season 3 finale of 1000-Lb. Sisters. 

With the show currently on hiatus and Season 4 not quite on the horizon yet, Fans have relied on Tammy’s social media to check in on her. This would-be influencer has a lot less on her schedule these days and seemed to rely on social media to keep her connected and sane. Tammy Slaton began regularly posting videos to Tiktok. She enjoyed making fun short clips and using the platform to interact and update fans.

Photo Credit: TLC

Tammy Slaton Goes Dark

Back in early March, Tammy Slaton’s account suddenly fell off the grid. Tammy’s fans had grown accustomed to having new content on the regular. Now,  suddenly, they were unable to find her profile at all. It had disappeared completely.

Many feared cyber-bullying had finally gotten to the supersized starlet. They wondered if Tammy had finally had enough and decided to permanently deactivate her account. The reality personality shared a video on the 21st. Fans reported shortly after that Tammy’s profile picture and all of her content disappeared.

The missing content worried and confused fans. Surely, Tammy had not posted any questionable content, right?

It’s been several weeks since the content disappeared. Thankfully, the celeb’s account did eventually return to normal. In a statement made to Metroa representative for TikTok defended the social platform, citing that the reality star’s account being removed was a mistake. According to the site, Tammy’s profile was “wrongly removed.” They hold that the removal of her content was initially caused by it being flagged over “safety issues.”

Was she giving away too much personal information in the videos? At this time, the ‘safety issues have not been clarified by the social outlet. Unfortunately, not everyone believes the temporary deletion was a mistake.

Photo Credit: TLC

Does TikTok Hate Fat People?

TikTok has millions of users around the world. The platform pride’s itself on it having a varied and diverse user base. It claims to promote interpersonal connections and help people find communities of like-minded individuals. Sadly, there are some slightly more malicious undertones to the site and its algorithm than people would expect.  In fact, TikTok has openly admitted that it suppresses and removes ‘fat’ and ‘disabled’ and ‘disfigured’ content creators’ work because they claim it is ‘disturbing’ to others.

So was the removal from an accident as they claim? Or was it the result of the algorithm’s built-in bias?

Tammy Slaton TLC
Photo Credit: TLc

Well, according to the tech-forward publication Slate, TikTok recently admitted that they asked moderators to ‘flag’ users that they thought ‘others might want to bully.’ They referred to these content creators as ‘vulnerable’ users and programmed the site’s algorithm to suppress the users’ profile and content, preventing it from showing up in people’s feeds.  Reportedly, the language they used in their instructions included “Down syndrome,” and “Disabled people or people with some facial problems such as birthmark, slight squint and etc.”

Slate also reports that a list of these ‘suppressed’ users utilized hashtags that identified them as various disadvantaged groups, i.e #fatwoman, #disabled or had rainbow flags and other LGBTQ identifiers.

Now, other creators in the community worry removal of body divergent content will further fuel the circulation of hate on social media.

Do you think that TikTok actually made a mistake when they removed Tammy Slaton’s account? Tell us in the comments.

Nikki Desrosiers

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *