TikTok: Protect Users. Shut Down the GLP-1 Gray Market.
TikTok Global CEO Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Adam Presser, Chief Security Officer of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Will Farrell, Chief Security Officer of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Blake Chandlee, and all TikTok leadership
We all know that GLP-1 drugs are in high demand, because we hear about them and get ads for them constantly. Some of this demand is driven by medical necessity, and some is driven by the harmful pressures to meet impossible beauty standards. Unfortunately, these drugs are difficult to access due to barriers like high cost. This gap is where the gray market comes in, in which underground vendors sell unregulated or even unapproved drugs without any legal or medical oversight. The entire ecosystem is very dangerous, especially for women who are at higher risk of being victims.
A recent report found that this GLP-1 gray market is not only thriving on TikTok, but that TikTok is actually making it easy for users to find the illicit content — despite clear violations of TikTok’s own Community Guidelines
The consequences of these unregulated sources are serious: as of July 2025, FDA has received 1,150 adverse event reports related to GLP-1s, including hospitalizations and deaths, while poison control calls specific to GLP-1 usage increased nearly 1,500% between 2019 and 2025, according to data from America's Poison Control Centers. In many of these cases, people reported dosing errors, sometimes taking 10 times the recommended dose. Behind these numbers are real people and their lives. And the consequences aren’t just physical; they can be mental and financial.
Rather than implement basic measures to prevent this unregulated, dangerous market that puts desperate users’ physical, emotional, and financial lives at risk, TikTok is effectively choosing to promote and (at the very least, indirectly) profit off of it. People’s lives are on the line, and we will not sit idly by. Sign the joint petition to demand that TikTok take action to protect users NOW.
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TikTok Global CEO Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Adam Presser, Chief Security Officer of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Will Farrell, Chief Security Officer of TikTok USDS Joint Venture Blake Chandlee, and all TikTok leadership
From:
[Your Name]
A recent report from UltraViolet found that TikTok has a very serious problem with a widespread GLP-1 gray market thriving unchecked. That means that unauthorized vendors are promoting and selling off-market, unregulated GLP-1 drugs at scale via TikTok. And the report found that this content isn’t just widespread and easy to find on TikTok — the platform is actually helping users find it, with women disproportionately targeted.
The risks of this gray market are extremely real and extremely serious. People who fall into the GLP-1 gray market face health complications, financial scams, and more.
The change in TikTok ownership that occurred in January 2026 provided a natural opportunity to address these longstanding problems and protect users. Unfortunately, UltraViolet’s report findings document that TikTok did not take that opportunity, and the challenges that existed before TikTok’s change in ownership persist after the transfer. This inaction is especially ironic given that many of the accounts illegally selling these drugs are based in China, and the main catalyst of TikTok’s sale was to mitigate national security and public health concerns posed to Americans by a Chinese company’s ownership.
Based on the report’s findings, we demand that TikTok implement the following immediate changes to mitigate the GLP-1 gray market on TikTok and increase user protections against corresponding harms:
- Enforce existing policies, which would include suspending and removing accounts promoting illicit GLP-1 sales.
- Disable search suggestions and discover pages that surface violations of TikTok's policies (eg, "Gray Market Peptide Pricing" or hashtags like "graymarketpeptides").
- Roll back sections of the TikTok Community Guidelines update from September 2025 to retain the explicit prohibitions on black and gray markets and redirection to off-site locations and/or direct messaging.
- Provide full transparency on enforcement actions taken in response to user reports in the United States, comparable to what is done in the EU for the Digital Services Act.
- Expand the Creator Code of Conduct to include specific and clear details about the prohibitions in their terms that relate to the marketing of illicit drugs.
The people buying illicit gray market drugs are rational actors trying to navigate medical, financial, and cultural systems that have failed them — and TikTok's failure to enforce your Community Guidelines allows these gray market vendors to thrive. As it stands, rather than implement basic measures to prevent this unregulated, possibly illegal market that puts desperate users’ physical, emotional, and financial lives at risk, TikTok is effectively choosing to promote and indirectly profit from it.
The time for TikTok to take action is now.