Tik Tok, an iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos has removed dozens of ISIS propaganda accounts from its platform.
Reports say the Islamic State propagandists are trying to leverage on the social media app TikTok as a recruiting tool.
According to The Wall Street Journal, social media monitoring agency Storyful recently identified around two dozen ISIS-related accounts, all of which have since been removed. The accounts posted videos aimed at recruiting followers and bolstering support for the terrorist group — featuring Islamic State anthems and footage of corpses and ISIS fighters.
It has not been verified yet the amount of presence the terrorist group has on TikTok. Terrorist propaganda has been a big issue for social media platforms. Companies like Facebook and Google share a database of known terrorist imagery that can be automatically removed when it’s detected online. They’ve also faced (and won) several lawsuits for allowing it even temporarily on their platforms.
Facebook revealed in September that it had removed more than 26 million pieces of global propaganda over the past two years.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about how much terrorist content TikTok finds and takes down.
According to Verge, the accounts that Storyful identified also appear to be relatively small. The Journal identifies one video as earning 68 likes and some accounts as having around 1,000 followers; Storyful didn’t immediately confirm whether that’s typical of the accounts’ popularity, or whether these are the first accounts they’ve found on TikTok.
TikTok videos circulate largely thanks to TikTok’s recommendation algorithm. And in this case, it’s not clear that the algorithm is promoting ISIS content, just that this content exists on the hugely popular platform.
However, according to The Wall Street Journal, TikTok has a young user base and is known for lighthearted, joke-y content — sometimes to the point of alleged political censorship. So there’s an added incongruity when it’s used by terrorists.
