According to a NewsGuard investigation, the Chinese virus application lacks vigilance and contributes to conveying false information about the conflict in Ukraine.
If there is a social network that benefits from the war in Ukraine, it is TikTok. Since the start of the Russian invasion, videos have been pouring in by the hundreds of thousands on the Chinese platform. Russian planes in the sky, Ukrainian influencer in a bunker, update on the fights, official speeches… At the end of last week, #Ukraine already had more than 30 billion cumulative views on the application. Enough for many Anglo-Saxon media to talk about the “first TikTok war” Of the history.
We could see something positive in this, saying that the social network, which claims more than a billion active users, many of whom are minors, is pushing teenagers to take an interest in the war in Ukraine. But according to the NewsGuard site, which aims to fight against false information on the internet, this increase in popularity of TikTok since the start of the conflict also leads to the sharing of many fake news.
To prove it, six “analysts” of NewsGuard, spread over five countries (Switzerland, Italy, Germany, United States and United Kingdom) have created a new account on the platform. They then took an interest in the videos that the application offered them in the “for you” thread, only watching in full those that spoke of the war in Ukraine. After 40 minutes of scrolling using this method, the conclusion is clear, they write in their final report: “All analysts have been offered false or misleading content about the war in Ukraine.”
Neo-Nazis, video games and faked war
NewsGuard clarifies that this false information was both pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine. In bulk, they came across videos claiming that the images of the war were faked because no journalist had the right to show what was happening there, that Ukraine was run by neo-Nazis, or that the United States maintained chemical weapons laboratories in the country.
There are also diverted videos, like this extract showing Volodymyr Zelensky at the front, shot in 2021. Or this video of the Ukrainian army shooting down Russian planes… actually from a war video game. Some are sometimes viewed millions of times.
Obviously, not all the videos offered by the social network are fake. But what NewsGuard worries about is that there is no “no distinction between disinformation and reliable sources”and not a single warning telling users to beware of information about the conflict.
In addition, the site also looked at the first results put forward by TikTok under certain keywords such as “Ukraine”, “Donbass”, “Kyiv” or even “war”. There too, from the very first videos, some conveying false information appear. NewsGuard also points out that it came across videos it had previously identified as coming from official and unofficial accounts used by the Kremlin to share false information and defend its interests.
As the Guardian reports, TikTok has denied having “increased security-related resources” and ensures “work to remove harmful misinformation to make the experience safer” on the platform. The social network nevertheless remains vague on how its algorithm works to highlight this or that video rather than another, simply explaining that it takes into account the time spent watching a video, the hearts and comments left, and the people followed or blocked by a user.