Popular video sharing app TikTok is allegedly hosting a worrying amount of extremist content.
That's one of the main findings from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who've been examining the platform in detail.
From a targeted sample of 1030 videos, 30 per cent of the clips featured content promoting white supremacy.
Several featured footage from the Christchurch terror attack livestream.
1 NEWS spoke with Ciaran O’Connor, the author of the report, said the content was “easily discoverable” on the app, voicing concerns about who was being exposed to it.
“It‘s troubling in many different ways because it points to a larger problem of how this stuff is getting through onto the platform,“ he said.
“I think we can agree that this stuff should not be on any major social media platform, any social media platform at all.“
TikTok has surged in popularity in recent years, with millions of global users. It’s currently ranked seventh on the Apple App Store‘s free apps chart.
However, it’s not one of the online service providers listed as supporting the Christchurch Call, a collective aiming to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
“When you see the presence of content that may meet those filters on other platforms, but it’s posted on TikTok, it points to a possible failing,” said O’Connor.
He hopes this research will help change things.
“What we’d like to see is clarity and what steps they’re taking to ensure violent and graphic content isn’t being posted or being promoted on their platform.“
O’Connor also says the users uploading this content were using popular songs, filters and video effects, to make the content more eye catching on the platform.
“Users intent on using the platform to promote hatred and support extremism are knowledgeable and are able to use simple but effective measures to work around TikTok’s efforts to take down the content.“
One video features a clip of popular singer Billie Eilish.
The artist says “everyone is gonna die and no one is gonna remember you, so f*ck it,” before cutting to vision of the Christchurch terrorist attack livestream.
TikTok has responded to the report, saying it prohibits violent extremism on its platform and will remove any content that violates its policies.
“We value ISD’s research and collaboration and have removed all violative content in this report. Our teams have also used this research to inform further investigation, which helped us proactively remove a number of additional accounts.”
However, according to researchers, not all content has been removed. 1 NEWS was also able to find footage of the Christchurch terror attack on the app very easily.
SHARE ME