Accordingly, in a search query sample on corresponding topics, almost 20 percent were videos with false information. This means that searches for topics like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, school shootings, or COVID vaccines continue to find false and misleading claims. TikTok itself denies the problem.
A lot of things just slip through
According to TikTok’s “ Community Guidelines Enforcement Report ,” over 102 million videos were removed in the first quarter of 2022. It is said that less than one percent was deleted due to harmful fake news. NewsGuard's experiment with six false or misleading videos sent out on September 9th resulted in them becoming inaccessible by September 12th.
According to TikTok, newly uploaded videos are automatically checked by artificial intelligence. If they detect a problem, the video is either removed or forwarded to an employee. TikTok itself has close ties to China. However, the offer is prohibited there.
NewsGuard analyzed 540 TikTok results based on reviewing the top 20 results from 27 searches on news topics. False or misleading claims were found in 105 videos, or 19.4 percent.
These search queries included neutral phrases such as “2022 election” and “mRNA vaccine,” as well as searches that could be used to learn more about controversial topics such as “January 6 FBI” and “Uvalde tx conspiracy.” Many of these charged phrases were suggested in the search bar on Tiktok when neutral phrases were entered by NewsGuard.
Strange search suggestions
For example, if a user enters “climate change,” TikTok suggests searches for “climate change debunked” and “climate change doesn’t exist.” A similar pattern emerged for COVID-19 vaccines and searches for “Jan 6.”
A comparison also showed that Google suggested search terms that were clearer. When asked for “covid vaccine,” Google suggested “walk-in covid vaccine,” “which covid vaccine is best,” and “types of covid vaccines.” However, none of these formulations were mentioned by TikTok.
You might also be interested in : “ TikTok: Biggest hack probably never happened ”
Source : press release
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )