A mum-of-two has described her panic after an account claiming to be a psychic medium commented on her TikTok live stream that her two-year-old daughter has a year to live.
Jess Northwood, of Great Cornard, runs clothing shop Jessikas Boutique and regularly attends markets, including North Weald in Essex, to sell her goods.
She has also turned to TikTok to sell items through the platform's shopping feature, as well as hosting live streams to promote her clothing.
It was on a live stream on Tuesday evening that an account claiming to be a physic medium left comments saying her two-year-old daughter, Myla, has one year to live, leaving the businesswoman disgusted.
"I haven't been live in a while as, being a mum of two aged two and eight months, trying to juggle everything is hard," she said.
"I built up the courage to go live last night after some time off and within 10 minutes of being on with potentially hundreds of people watching a fake troll commented saying 'your daughter Myla has one year to live, she has it in her blood, please get checked' and saying she was a medium.
"I went blank and thought I was going to cry. As she said she was a medium I really panicked and I am quite an anxious person. I then came off TikTok and tried to get all my friends and family to report it."
Ms Northwood said she feels TikTok needs to better support sellers as the shopping feature on the app gets more and more popular.
"Without backing the sellers and making the sellers feel comfortable to go on there and sell and not get abused, they're not going to have any custom," she said.
"It is really hard to go and report these accounts. This isn't the first time something bad has happened on there."
She also said fake accounts leaving untrue reviews can lead to shops getting violation points, and called for this to be policed more.
"We're trying to make a living," she said. "We'd been away for three weeks and I needed to get back into the spirit of things and make an income and that shut me off for the whole evening."
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