The largest independent study of hate on TikTok has found anti-Asian and pro-Nazi videos are racking up millions of views, often using pop songs to evade the platform’s auto-moderators. A report by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London-based counter-extremism think tank, said the leading social platform was “popular with those intent on using online spaces to produce, post and promote hate and extremism”. The “Hatescape” report, the result of three months of research, found some of its leading racist or terroristic content was driven by or pertained to Australians. One video that garnered over 2 million views involved a Caucasian man eating a bat in an offensive reference to stereotypes about Chinese people. Other videos featuring Australians involve one man dressed up in blackface or as a police officer while “reenacting” the murder of George Floyd, whose death sparked last year’s global Black Lives Matter protests. “This kind of stuff is repeated across the board,” the study’s author Ciaran O’Connor said. “The comments below then kind of confirm what themes it is hitting on and how it’s generating hateful attitudes.” While it’s hardly surprising fringe groups have used social media platforms to post hateful material, experts say TikTok has birthed creative ways to distribute the content and avoid auto-takedowns.
via abc.net: Nazis and incels are using Gotye and MGMT to evade TikTok’s auto-moderators, report finds
siehe auch: It’s not just Facebook and Twitter. TikTok is ‘hatescape’ for racism and white supremacy, study says. Of the 1,030 TikTok videos researchers analyzed, nearly a third amplified white supremacy. Tiktok videos spewed hate about Asians, LGBTQ, migrants and refugees, women, Muslims and Jews. Researchers warned exposure to extremism is dangerous because of TikTok’s reach with kids and teens. Extremists use TikTok features like video effects, video grid layout and music to promote hate. Despite pledges to crack down on hatred, TikTok is still trafficking in short-form videos that promote white supremacy and anti-Black racism, according to a new study from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The counterextremism think tank says its study is the largest to examine hate on TikTok and raises new questions about how effectively the platform polices it. Of the 1,030 videos researchers analyzed over three months in 2020, 312 – nearly a third – amplified white supremacy. The clips included support for genocide conspiracy theories that claim white people’s existence is under threat and music from white power bands. Three of the 10 most popular videos, viewed a combined 3.5 million times, were clips originally produced by Paul Miller, an extremist known as “Gypsy Crusader” who spreads racist and antisemitic rhetoric on social media.