TikTok spreads masses of fake news about the Ukraine war
The social network TikTok is spreading fake news about the war in Ukraine. As “The Guardian” quotes from a study by NewsGuard’s fact checkers, users of the app are quickly misled with false facts and manipulated video recordings.
The fake news about the conflict is mixed with correct information about the course of the war and thus provides a completely incorrect description of the current war situation.
Neither references nor warnings
To see what content users are presented with, the testers let TikTok’s algorithm search for Ukraine news for around 45 minutes. After just 40 minutes, the team had a clear picture:
“Towards the end of our 45-minute experiment, the testers’ news feeds were consistently filled with both true and false content about the Ukraine war – with no distinction of right or wrong or indication of the reliability of the sources used.”
One of the hoaxes the testers encountered was the claim that the United States had bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine. Another claimed that Putin was digitally manipulated into a press conference in early March and did not even hold it himself.
“At a time when misinformation about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict abounds, none of the videos we found had any attribution, an indication of the accuracy of the data presented, or any other information,” NewsGuard said of the findings.
In other cases, clips from video games were presented as real battle scenes, while dozens of allegedly Russian users complained that what was shown did not correspond to reality under real video footage of the war.
TikTok responds to the allegations
A company spokesman for TikTok warned against evaluating the results of the testers as meaningful. These were only created in a brief moment and at most provide a snapshot that only allows limited conclusions.
“We are responding to the war in Ukraine with more diligence and resources, while also working to remove harmful information from our platform […]. We are also working with independent fact-checkers,” the company’s statement continued .
However, the brief test by NewsGuard shows that TikTok’s efforts are far from enough. Because “many of the things that the TikTok algorithm put in front of us have already been identified by analysts as Kremlin propaganda” and exposed as undoubted misinformation.
