TikTok is the preferred platform of the trendy video. Its audience is not only limited now to youth, teenagers, and children. Whoever navigates the application currently may notice the radical transformation of the content, or rather, can realize the real purpose behind establishing this program. The Coronavirus, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the recent US presidential elections… are all present. The footage of dancing, challenges, and food is available as a cover to serve the application’s purpose, because the meaning is much greater.
The dancing program liked by millions of people became a platform to repress the freedom of expression recently. This was highlighted lately in a study developed by NDR Radio, WDR Radio, and Tagesschau, which concluded that TikTok was using filters to block comments that contained specific words like “homosexuals”, “LGBTQ community”, or “gays”. The content was deleted without noticing this censorship by users.
A race between the entertainment content and propaganda on TikTok
According to a report published by The New York Times, entitled: “TikTok Is Shaping Politics. But How?”, it appeared that the application has become a venue for ideological formation and political activism. Despite its parent company’s reluctance to be involved with politics, as the service does not allow political ads, it has attracted interest from campaigns. The report considered that TikTok amplified footage from Black Lives Matter protests around the world.
The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, insisted on selling TikTok itself to an American company or blocking it in the United States. It is important to note that the number of users of the application in the country is more than 130 million users up to April 2020, and it is the top state using the application. In August 2020, Trump signed an executive order in this regard. Oracle and Walmart companies were the most potential candidates. However, Joe Biden won the elections later and the sale was postponed.
The vague algorithm used by TikTok is a concern for tech experts, since the videos have a huge number of reactions without any justification. The application was a support platform of Russia’s version of the war against Ukraine, unlike the American applications. Media Matters tracked a coordinated campaign led by 186 Russian influencers on TikTok, who usually published tips on beauty and fake videos to support Russia’s version.
The Verge website said that people on TikTok are also changing their way of using the application, since it becomes as source of news and not for entertainment only. The percentage of people who received news from TikTok has tripled since 2020, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, to reach 10 percent out of all adults in the United States, and 26 percent for adults less than 30 years old.
Pew Research Center found that TikTok became similar to news applications unlike other platforms. For instance, 54 percent of adults on Facebook application said that they were receiving news there in 2020; while this rate decreased now to 44 percent. Meanwhile, YouTube remained unchanged in recent years, with one third of users receiving news from this platform.
One out of five videos on TikTok contains misinformation
Almost one out of five video footage on TikTok contains misinformation. Researchers from NewsGuard found that searching for information may lead to results including misinformation. For instance, when a user searches for “climate change”, the application provides results related to denying the climate sciences.
“To the report which says that one out of five reports contains misinformation, we can add the percentage of reports that contain uncertain information or information which is not final, political analyses and comments, predictions, or astrology,” said the consultant and trainer in the field of news validation and management of media institutions, Ibrahim Daoud.
“The fear in platforms, such as TikTok among others, is that the high number of users gives a kind of virtual reliability, and it is a fictitious and unreal reliability,” he said. In fact, such reliability does not provide or give a sign for users on the validity or reliability of the content. According to Ibrahim, even worse, the audience who is addressed on TikTok, including teenagers and children, does not often have the knowledge or is not aware of searching or validating what is offered to it. Therefore, “these platforms become just a transporter of materials without validation or making sure of their authenticity,” he said.
The Ukraine-Russia war became a fertile ground for fake news, especially on TikTok. One of the accounts was able to reach 30 million views by mid-March. All the live streaming footage of this account, except three of it, included short footage taken from a YouTube video of an old Ukrainian military training, dating back to 2017.
Users resort to video footage triggering an old conflict or military trainings, and add a fake audio of a huge explosion or intense shooting. A live streaming starts, and as a great audience starts to gather, it claims to provide donations to its channel. The live streaming operations have developed in a way that even the fake audio recording of gunshots is more common, and to the extent that it appears in more than 13 thousand video footage.
In terms of political propaganda and fake news, Ibrahim said: “Some people may consider that political propaganda is the most dangerous issue that may be faced by a platform’s audience, such as TikTok, but, in fact, the news of health, society, law, or environment may be much more dangerous.”
Believing news on the treatment of a certain disease, a specific behavior, or incitement to violence, hatred and racism, “are all issues that overflow into this site or platform” and threaten the future of humanity, because the youth generation is exposed to such issues and adopt them, he said.
The fake health content on TikTok… and a significant initiative launched to fight it
Although TikTok has taken measures to put warning signs on the footage with misinformation, a study found that 58 percent of fake footage on vaccines lacked such signs. During the early stages of the Coronavirus, fake news prevailed on social media, to the extent that such news was described as a “cyber pandemic” before being a health pandemic.
Fighting fake health news is a hard task in general, due to the huge size of inaccurate publications. At the beginning of the 21st century, groundless concerns were born regarding a connection between the vaccine of measles, mumps, the German measles and autism, which reduced the vaccination rate of children (around 10 percent), and also led to a high increase in the measles cases. This reflects the size of the impact of these rumors on their recipient.
The pharmacist and medicine student living in Australia, Mustapha Zaher, decided to post a video footage on TikTok to fight rumors and fake news related to health. Zaher is part of a group of doctors, specialists of healthcare, and academics, who work on disclosing fake health news on the application. The posted footage displays the original videos that promote the health lies, along with their replies and correction of related mistakes.
In a previous statement, Zaher said to the New York Times: “What bothers me the most is that those people who post these rumors use misinformation with a part of truth to spread their lies.” The mission of Zaher to reply to fake claims started in the early stages of the Coronavirus. In his statement to The New York Times, he warned that “misinformation affects medical decisions and health.”
Meanwhile, after getting the approval of the Russian president Vladimir Putin of a law that criminalizes the publication of fake news on Russia-Ukraine war and implies a prison sanction up to 15 years, TikTok announced suspending some of its services in Russia, because of the said law. Moreover, live streaming and sharing new content from Russia were suspended. In addition, the Russian viewers will not be able to watch the post shares in other countries.
The TikTok browser is liked by adults more than children, especially in countries overwhelmed by crisis and conflicts. The population of these countries consider this application as an entertainment shelter, but most of them do not know how to distinguish between what is real and fake. Such fake news is enough to form a fake awareness, especially among youth, create political propaganda, harm the person through fake health information, for instance… and enough to threaten the social stability and public interests.