Social Media Algorithms ‘Recommending Antisemitic Content’
A concerning new report finds teens are stumbling across disturbing antisemitic content within hours of joining TikTok and Rumble. The Telegraph has the story.
Algorithms are directing teenagers to thousands of videos about Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories about Jewish greed and influence, and false claims about 9/11 and Hamas’s October 7th attacks against Israel. …
The report by two counter-extremism bodies called the Antisemitism Policy Trust (APT) and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found that 15 year-old-users were quickly directed to antisemitic content.
Researchers created 10 profiles on TikTok representing a selection of diverse 15 year-olds with a variety of interests to gauge the extent of antisemitic content directed at teenagers.
They found that a 15 year-old boy interested in male lifestyle influencers needed to be on TikTok for only an hour before he was shown antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Another 15 year-old boy with an interest in Left-wing politics was served content glorifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and material featuring Abu Obeida, Hamas’s former spokesman, within 90 minutes.
The Amplifying Antisemitism report found that Holocaust denial content generated high levels of engagement. Videos disputing the death toll of six million Jews receive tens of thousands of likes and shares.
After 90 minutes of manual browsing and 14 days of computer-bot-generated engagements, more than 5,500 antisemitic videos were recommended on TikTok. More than 4,400 similar videos on Rumble’s Editor’s picks were recommended over a six-month period.
The research indicated that such content continued to reach users even when platforms were moderated for harmful material. …
The content being directed at 15 year-old boys included conspiracy theories that Jewish people or Israel were behind the 9/11 terror attacks. These are frequently illustrated with AI-generated images of dancing Israelis and laughing Jewish people celebrating the attacks in New York.
Other videos diminish the scale of the Holocaust and the experiences of Jewish people under the Nazis, with sickening images of Star of David-shaped cookies being lifted out of an oven and other disturbing material. …
Ofcom’s annual report found that TikTok is the single most-used source for news among 12–15-year-olds.
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