TikTok’s fake news problem

Something troubling is happening on TikTok. The video sharing app is sometimes dismissed as a place where young people go to while away the hours watching banal videos. But TikTok is more than just a quirky hobby for younger generations: it’s where many come to get their news. What’s more, during Covid it’s become a window into a world that is effectively shut. This makes the spread of fake news and misinformation on the app something that should alarm us all.

This week, a TikTok video claiming that the United States was responsible for reducing Syria to rubble spread like wildfire around the app. The post – which received nearly two million ‘likes’ – shows a beautiful picture of Syria in 2010, captioned ‘Syria before America destroy it [sic]’, and a picture of rubble in 2020, ‘after America destroyed it’.