TikTok advertises massively for the Russian mercenary group Wagner deployed in Ukraine. According to a report released Thursday by fact-checking service Newsguard, China’s short-video platform has hundreds of videos in praise of the paramilitary organization. These videos, which are often accompanied by music and also show acts of violence, have been viewed more than a billion times, according to Newsguard.
According to the report from the Newsguard platform, which specializes in online disinformation, 160 video clips show acts of brutal violence or glorifying allusions to acts of violence committed by the Wagner group.
Among them are 14 videos showing the brutal execution with a sledgehammer of a suspected Russian mercenary who had switched sides in the war in Ukraine and supported Ukraine.
Newsguard identified another 500 TikTok videos that do not show acts of violence, but advocate violence against Ukrainians. They also featured calls to kill Ukrainians for being “Nazis” – a narrative used by Russian wartime propaganda to belittle all people in Ukraine.
In addition, Newsguard found five TikTok accounts that redirect users to websites where the Wagner team regularly publishes recruitment calls.
According to the report, Tiktok videos contain the names of Telegram channels or pages of the Russian social media platform VKontakte, where Wagner Group recruiters operate.
That’s unclear, but suggests that content moderation on Tiktok doesn’t serve its purpose.
According to Newsguard, the 500 videos used as propaganda and recruiting tools for Putin’s private army violate TikTok guidelines.
According to Newsguard, the video platform removed 10 videos in the course of the investigation. However, a video of the execution was viewed at least 900,000 times before it was removed by TikTok.
At the time of the report, there were at least four more videos on the platform, according to Newsguard. In other videos, the execution is blatantly trivialized, for example in the mercenary’s pre-death shot, accompanied by upbeat music, alongside images of a sledgehammer.
The Newsguard report says:
NewsGuard identified 10 hashtags directly related to the Wagner group that were used in hundreds of videos.
According to the report, Tiktok videos related to the Wagner Group could also be received with great interest in English. Videos with the English hashtags #wagnergroup and #pmcwagnergroup had already been viewed more than 60 million times as of November 29.
TikTok did not question NewsGuard’s research findings, the report said.
The company referred to its community guidelines, which clearly state that “we will not tolerate people using our platform to threaten or incite violence or to spread attacks or abuse based on people’s nationality or other characteristics worthy of protection.”
In fact, the Community Guidelines state under the headings “Hateful Ideology” and “Violent Extremism” that such content may not be uploaded, published, streamed or shared.
The platform will “take action against content that violates these guidelines,” promises Tiktok.
According to the independent fact-checking service, TikTok’s algorithm drives users off the platform to the violent videos about the Wagner Group.
When a Newsguard analyst searched for the term “Wagner,” TikTok’s search bar suggested search terms like “Wagner execution” and “Wagner sledgehammer.”
The video app Tiktok, which is especially popular among young users, is operated by ByteDance, a Chinese internet conglomerate that is partly owned by the Chinese government. The app has over a billion users worldwide.
Actually, the app can only be used from the age of 13, but the Chinese company does not have real access control. The parents are obligated.
Inappropriate content in the child’s Tiktok feed can be filtered out by activating “restricted mode”.
“Guided Mode” allows guardians to limit the visibility of liked videos or the child’s full profile. You can also set whether young people are allowed to use the search function for hashtags, other users, keywords and sounds.
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(dsc)
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
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