Antisemitic content on rapidly growing social media platform TikTok increased by 912% in the first half of 2021, a new University of Haifa and IDC Herzliya Institute of Counter-Terrorism (ICT) report revealed Monday.
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In 2020, TikTok official Jeff Collins said the platform's mission "is to inspire and bring joy. … There's no place for hate on TikTok, and we are investing a lot in people and tech to really get this right."
The study was conducted jointly by Gabriel Weinmann, a professor at the University of Haifa, and Natalie Masri, a research assistant at IDC Herzliya's Institute for Counter-Terrorism. They uncovered a seismic spike in antisemitic tropes, images, and rhetoric compared with a similar 2020 study.
"TikTok's catering to young, impressionable and naive audiences, combined with bad-faith actors who are posting hateful content online, is something that should be taken very seriously," said Weinmann.
In addition, the study also revealed a 41% rise in antisemitic postings and a more than 1,375% climb in usernames with antisemitic titles, such as "@holocuastwasgood" and "@eviljews."
"TikTok claims on its homepage that it is 'raw, real and without boundaries,'" the study concluded. "But the lack of boundaries, combined with the growing success of this platform, makes it an ideal virtual home for hate speech and extremist content."
It is the second recent report to examine Jew-hatred on TikTok.
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The Anti-Defamation League posted its own observations last month, saying "a recent review of the platform found that anti-Semitism continues to percolate across the app, including content from known anti-Semitic figures, as well as posts perpetuating age-old anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories."
However, the ADL did state that its review of TikTok was "not intended to quantify the amount or prevalence of anti-Semitism on the platform, but rather to offer an impressionistic sense of the type of anti-Semitic content that can be found with only a few taps. It should be noted that when alerted to the content ADL COE [Center on Extremism] found, TikTok took down the specific content."
