IN FOCUS: How fake news on Israel-Hamas stokes outrage, hatred and ‘potential for violence’ on Southeast Asian TikTok

WHAT AUTHORITIES, TIKTOK SAY

The European Commission has asked Meta – which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram – and TikTok about how they curb misinformation about the war. It is also investigating X for allegedly disseminating bogus information.

In response to CNA’s queries, Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information said it has “emphasised to social media services the need to step up content moderation efforts during this period, taking into consideration local sensitivities”. It did not elaborate.

The ministry acknowledged that social media users in Singapore could be at “heightened risk of being exposed to harmful online content and misinformation”; while urging the public to be vigilant, fact check and not circulate information if unsure about its credibility.  

CNA also reached out to the infocomm authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia for their comments.

In its most recent update on its website on Friday, TikTok said that since the war broke out, it has removed more than 925,000 videos in the conflict region for violating its policies around violence, hate speech, misinformation and terrorism, including content promoting Hamas.

Globally, TikTok has removed 50,000 videos with “dangerous misinformation” during the same period, as well as more than 24 million fake accounts and more than half a million bot comments on content under hashtags related to the war.

The platform, owned by Chinese tech firm Bytedance, previously said it had added more moderators who speak Arabic and Hebrew to review content related to the conflict. It also works with external fact checking organisations like Agence France-Presse.

Apart from content moderation, recent media articles and academic studies have reported that TikTok’s algorithm does not favour news, and that misleading videos on the platform can “circulate quickly thanks to their shock value”.

In response, a TikTok spokesperson told CNA the notion that the platform would benefit from shock value content is “baseless”. 

“We remove content that violates our policies against harmful misinformation and have policies against shocking content, which we would either remove or make ineligible for recommendation into the For You feed,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that TikTok further reviews content as it gains popularity on the app, in order to prevent the recommendation of videos that violate its rules.

Another article in October said users were paying TikTok as little as US$7 to promote and spread misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war.

A TikTok spokesperson said the platform does not support keyword targeting or topic-based advertising and that it blocks search terms violating its policies. “Israel” and “Palestine” have also been added to a list of search terms that are ineligible for advertising.

“NOT NEUTRAL PLATFORMS”?

During CNA’s week-long observation of Israel-Hamas content on TikTok, some fake videos that the journalist came across were eventually taken down.

But others remained online, continuing to rake in views, comments and shares; and exemplifying the whack-a-mole nature of content moderation.

Mr Harris from Malaysia called for social media apps to face more regulatory scrutiny, and to be more transparent about how they moderate content.

“The argument that they are merely neutral platforms is manifestly untrue, and those forwarding this argument today – after everything that has happened – are disingenuous,” he told CNA.