According to NewsGuard, which tracks online disinformation around the world, the false claims covered topics such as the Russian operation in Ukraine, COVID-19 vaccines, and the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The report also found that searching with information that is not misleading can lead to results full of misinformation. For example, when the search for “climate change” was searched, “Tik Tok” provided results related to climate science denial.
The report also claims that the results were more polarizing than they were from Google, where 12 of the 20 results in mid-2022 contained highly partisan statements.
intense competition
Social media expert, Muhammad Al-Harthy, says that “among the business models of social media, it is the accumulated amount of data and information that it possesses, where there is competition between the search channels owned by each mediator for the ease, speed and accuracy of access to the information targeted by the user. Google leads among technology companies in this feature because of its speed in providing information and inferences about it, while “Tik Tok” is one of the weakest social media in providing this service.
Al-Harthy added, in his speech to “Sky News Arabia”, that “the reason behind the weak searches on “Tik Tok” is not to place this feature at the top of its interests, unlike “Facebook”, which fights misinformation due to the severe criticism it is exposed to in this regard. The thing is, while it is busy launching new features and attracting more users to accumulate profits, in addition to the fact that cracking down on fake information may reduce interaction and trading on the platform, which is the last thing you are looking for.”
But what does “Tik Tok” say? A TikTok spokesperson told Newsguard that “the app does not allow and pull harmful misinformation off the platform.”
TikTok had removed nearly 350,000 videos related to the 2020 US presidential election by the end of that year.
Social media expert Mohammed Al-Harthy explained that, “the company uses artificial intelligence to check videos, and either pull the flagged clips automatically or send them to human moderators.”
Al-Harthy continues, to “Sky News Arabia”, that “the problem is that this effort does not fully succeed in eliminating false information, and does not curb all violators, especially those who avoid using keywords that are likely to alert artificial intelligence that this content is misleading.” .
The report comes at a bad time for Tik Tok. The platform’s chief operating officer, Vanessa Pappas, will testify along with CEOs of rival companies at a Senate hearing exploring the effects of social networking on national security.
Even if the network is not confronted with these results during the hearing, it may necessarily increase pressure on “Tik Tok” to clamp down on falsehoods in the future.
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