First, TikTok’s users are almost all young children and teenagers who are generally more naïve and gullible when it comes to malicious content. Our findings reveal the disturbing presence of Far-right extremism in videos, commentary, symbols and pictures included in TikTok’s postings. TikTok is the fastest-growing application today, attracting a huge audience of 1.5 billion active users, mostly children and teenagers. Other postings are dedicated to Dylann Roof, an American white supremacist responsible for the Charleston church shooting of 2015, killing nine people, gaining over 240 likes across 16 videos. Recently, the growing presence of extremist’s groups on social media platforms became more prominent and massive. These encompassed the far-right ideologies of fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, chauvinism, nativism, and xenophobia.
Watch short videos with music Hate Me on TikTok. Mensch ohne Humor ----> Wünsche dir eine schönen Tag noch 7th July 2020 Dr. Gabriel Weimann. Moreover, the seemingly innocent video-sharing platform is hiding a much more sinister side: it allows for a steady stream of drugs, predatory messages and animal cruelty. According to TikTok’s listing in the iOS App Store, it is a “personalized video feed based on what you watch, like, and share.” When users open the app, the videos are on auto-play, making it hard for users not to start watching them. TikTok claims it is “raw, real, and without boundaries.” Yet, the lack of boundaries and the growing popularity of this platform, make it an ideal hotbed for violent and extremist content. Second, TikTok is newer than other platforms, and is thus severely lagging behind its rivals who have had more time to grapple with how to protect their users from disturbing and harmful content. Yet, while most of the scholarly attention focused on leading platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, the extremist immigration to other platforms like TikTok went unnoticed. 7th July 2020 In Insights. First, unlike all other social media TikTok’ s users are almost all young children, who are more naïve and gullible when it comes to malicious contents. Hate on TikTok. TikTok is the fastest-growing application today, attracting a huge audience of 1.5 billion active users, mostly children and teenagers. We also found homophobic and racist postings including a young boy preaching to his followers that “white people need to start owning some black people, so take your black friends and sell them.” Another trend was posting videos encouraging viewers to fight and take up arms, featuring far-right symbols such as the swastika and the “sonnenrad.” The sonnenrad, or black sun, is an ancient symbol which was used by the SA and SS in Nazi Germany, and has since been hijacked by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
One video from the Atomwaffen Division calls for a “race war now.”These findings come amid growing calls for tighter social media regulation. While similar concerns were with regard to other social platforms, TikTok has unique features to make it more troublesome. This study is a first attempt to find the Far-right’s use of TikTok: it is a descriptive analysis based on a systematic content analysis of TikTok videos, posted in early 2020. 45 Fans. Its lax security and control have allowed it to become a magnet for pedophiles, profanity, crime, violence and extremism.Far-right extremists and killers are also glorified on TikTok. TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing platform owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company. TikTok has been the subject of troubling reports about its content, which is reportedly filled with nude images of children, child predators, devious algorithms, lack of privacy, and teens bullying and harassing one another. Recently, the growing presence of extremist’s groups on social media platforms became more prominent and massive. Yet, TikTok should have learned from these other platforms’ experiences and apply TikTok’s own Terms of Service that does not allow postings that are deliberately designed to provoke or antagonize people, or are intended to harass, harm, hurt, scare, distress, embarrass or upset people or include threats of physical violence.27 Craig Chapple, “TikTok Crosses 2 Billion Downloads After Best Quarter For Any App Ever.”No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).5 Institute for Economics & Peace, “Global Terrorism Index 2019: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism.”