TikTok has started censoring searches for popular peptides

is a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.

Trying to pull up information for certain peptides on TikTok is now returning a “no results found” page when searching for terms like semaglutide, BPC-157, retratutide, and others. That hasn’t entirely erased visibility on TikTok for peptides, which are combinations of amino acids that include substances like insulin and GLP-1. The problem is peptides also include unregulated, unapproved substances that proponents like RFK Jr. say can assist with everything from weight loss to wound healing, despite a lack of clinical data supporting such claims.

As a result, on social media platforms like TikTok, an army of influencer proponents are happy to suggest affiliated compounding pharmacies and other sources of unknown quality for drugs that people probably aren’t telling their doctors about. Bryan Johnson-connected influencer Jeff Tang alerted people about the apparent changes by TikTok in a tweet last night, before posting a video pointing blame at Eli Lilly.

For now, searching for “peptides” on TikTok still pulls up plenty of short videos, and there’s no sign that actual videos have been removed either. TikTok’s US owner didn’t respond immediately when asked for comment by The Verge.

While the two ingredients of the so-called “Wolverine” peptide stack, BPC-157 and TB-500, aren’t searchable on TikTok, slight variations of either name still pull up published videos, and TikTok’s own search suggestions offered functional variations before I was even done typing any of the more popular peptides in circulation.

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