Researchers say TikTok enables the spread of neo-Nazi propaganda.
According to an independent human rights organization, TikTok hosts and promotes neo-Nazi accounts that deny the Holocaust, glorify Hitler, support white supremacists and more. They also use generative AI, encrypted words and audio, and manipulated or obfuscated images to bypass filters.
“TikTok hosts hundreds of accounts that openly support Nazism and use the video app to spread their ideology and propaganda,” says the report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. says“These include videos containing Holocaust denial, glorification of Hitler, Nazi-era Germany and National Socialism as an answer to contemporary problems, support for white supremacist mass murderers, and livestreamed footage or reenactments of those massacres.
ISD says they found a network of “hundreds” of accounts after initially seeing only one neo-Nazi. And very like YouTube has been proven to be utilized by racists to amplify their messages, TikTok’s algorithm works to provide people more of what they appear to love. It’s a self-reinforcing loop that results in an increasing number of of the identical sort of content, and in relation to hate speech or misinformation, the algorithm on TikTok’s “For You Page” works the identical way.
“After viewing the pages of 10 accounts on the network and a total of 10 videos, a new dummy account scrolled through just three videos on TikTok’s For You Page (FYP) before receiving a recommendation for Nazi propaganda,” the ISD report said. “For a longer-standing dummy account that has engaged with more such content, most of the videos on TikTok’s FYP promote Nazism or hate speech.”
When TikTok is informed, it doesn’t remove the videos, or a minimum of not immediately, says ISD, despite TikTok’s Community Guidelines around hateful ideologies, promotion of violence, Holocaust denial and more.
In particular, TikTok’s community guidelines state: “We do not tolerate hate speech, hateful conduct, or the promotion of hateful ideologies.”
One day after the report, the accounts were still lively. 50 of the reported accounts had greater than 6.2 million total views. Two weeks later, 15 of the accounts were suspended, and inside a month, 23 of the 50 were deleted. However, the others were still lively, and the suspended accounts had reached over two million views.
The researchers assume that TikTok will eventually remove most offensive content, but only when it reaches a big variety of views.
Tactics utilized by neo-Nazi accounts include generative AI to create fear-inducing images of cultural or racist invasions, the usage of well-known songs or images commonly utilized by Nazi or neo-Nazi influencers, and coded language using emojis, acronyms or numbers to bypass content filters.
(I’m not sharing these images or codes here. You can use the link above to view them on the ISD reporting page if you happen to like.)
Some of the content comes directly from the Thirties and Nineteen Forties in Nazi Germany:
“While most of the FYP’s early content consisted of standard viral TikTok videos, mostly humorous in nature, it took less than 25 videos for an AI-translated speech by Hitler to appear, superimposed over a white nationalist group’s recruitment poster,” the ISD says.
I even have reached out to TikTok for comment on this report and can update this post once the corporate responds.
