TikTok Filled With Fake Content Regarding Russia-Ukraine War, New Users Targeted!

TikTok, has always been a concern during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (photo: Solen Feyissa / Pixabay)

JAKARTA - During the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, not a few social media also became a concern. One of them is TikTok. The short video application is claimed to have been filled with lies about the war between the two countries.

That content appears shortly after a new user signs up for the app. The report comes from an investigation carried out by a company that monitors the trustworthiness of news outlets across the web or anti-misinformation, NewsGuard.

NewsGuard ran tests to assess how the video-sharing app treated information about conflicts. In the trial, researchers simply signed up as a new account, and scrolled through the For You Page.

He also watched videos about war, but strangely the researcher with his new TikTok account was instead redirected to fake content or misleading users within 40 minutes.

"Towards the end of the 45-minute experiment, the analyst feed was almost exclusively filled with accurate and false content related to the war in Ukraine, with no distinction between disinformation and reliable sources," the NewsGuard research team said.

“At a time when false narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict are proliferating online, none of the videos fed to our analysts by the TikTok algorithm contain information about source beliefs, warnings, fact checks, or additional empowering information. Users with reliable information."

Launching The Guardian, Tuesday, March 22, the false claim shown to researchers is a myth where the United States (US) has a bioweapon laboratory in Ukraine. The video also claims that the fake footage is real, and the real footage is fake.

In addition, there is also a video that says Ghost of Kyiv shot down a Russian jet taken from a video game, while the original video from the war was declared fake by pro-Russian accounts.

"Some of the myths in TikTok algorithm videos that were fed to analysts have previously been identified as Kremlin propaganda," the NewsGuard researchers said.

By watching every video about the war that appears on their page, the researchers will train the algorithm to show new account content about the conflict, but not provide any specific signals that support misleading material.

TikTok's search function also blends similar content, providing videos containing false or misleading claims in the top 20 results for searches for Ukraine, Russia, War, Kyiv and Donbas.

In response, a TikTok spokesperson said NewsGuard's tests can only offer limited conclusions about how the app works in the real world, as it fails to emulate standard display behavior.

"We continue to respond to the war in Ukraine with increased safety and security resources as we work to remove harmful misinformation and help protect a safe experience on TikTok," said TikTok.

"We are also partnering with independent fact-checking organizations to support our efforts to help TikTok remain a safe and authentic place."

The video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance has seen a huge increase in war-related content. Several videos tagged with the Ukrainian hashtag received more than 30 billion views by the end of last week.