PARIS —
The war in Ukraine has rapidly positioned
TikTok as the number one source of
misinformation thanks to its gigantic number of users and minimal filtering of
content, experts say.
اضافة اعلان
Every day,
Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist with the BBC’s disinformation team, plows through a
hallucinatory mix of fake and misleading information about the war being spewed
out on the video-sharing site.
“TikTok is really
not having a good war,” he told AFP.
“I haven’t seen
another platform with so much false content,” he added.
“We’ve seen it
all: videos from past conflicts being recycled, genuine footage presented in a
misleading way, things that are so obviously false but still get tens of
millions of views.”
He said the most
disturbing were fake live streams in which users pretended to be on the ground
in
Ukraine, but were actually using footage from other conflicts or even video
games — and then asking for money to support their “reporting”.
“Millions tune in
and watch. They even add fake gunshots and explosions,” said Sardarizadeh.
Anastasiya
Zhyrmont of
Access Now, an advocacy group, said it was no excuse to say that
the war came as a surprise.
“This conflict has
been escalating since 2014 and these problems of Kremlin propaganda and
misinformation have been raised with TikTok long before the invasion,” she told
AFP.
“They’ve promised
to double their efforts and partner with content checkers, but I’m not sure
they are taking this obligation seriously,” she added.
‘No context’
Zhyrmont said the problem may lie with the lack of Ukrainian language
content moderators, making it trickier for TikTok to spot false information.
TikTok told AFP
that it has
Russian and Ukrainian speakers, but did not say how many, and said
it had added resources specifically focused on the war, but did not provide
details.
But some say the
very nature of TikTok makes it problematic when the subject matter becomes more
serious than funny skits and dance routines.
“The way you
consume information on TikTok — scrolling from one video to another really
quickly — means there is no context on any given piece of content,” said
Chine Labbe of NewsGuard, which tracks online misinformation.
NewsGuard ran an
experiment to see how long it would take for new users to start receiving false
information if they lingered on videos about the war. The answer was 40
minutes.
“NewsGuard’s
findings add to the body of evidence that TikTok’s lack of effective
content-labeling and moderation, coupled with its skill at pushing users to
content that keeps them on the app, have made the platform fertile ground for
the spread of disinformation,” it concluded in its report.
TikTok recognizes
the problem.
In a blog post on
March 4, it said it was using “a combination of technology and people to
protect our platform” and partnering with independent fact-checkers to provide
more context.
‘Really troubling’
In the meantime, the
particular concern with TikTok is the age of its users: a third in the US, for
example, are 19 or younger.
“It’s hard enough for adults to decipher the real
from the propaganda in Ukraine. For a young user to be fed all this false
information is really troubling,” said Labbe.
All those interviewed emphasized that misinformation
is rampant across all social media, but that TikTok had done even less than
Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to combat it.
TikTok’s relative infancy also means its own users
have not yet joined the fight as they have on other platforms.
“There are
communities on Twitter and
Instagram who are involved in disinformation,” said
Sardarizadeh.
“Some are starting to do fact-checking and educate people on
TikTok, but we’re talking about a dozen or two dozen, compared with hundreds on
Twitter.”
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