TikTok and different social media platforms are additionally beneath stress from U.S. lawmakers and Ukrainian officers to curb Russian misinformation in regards to the battle, particularly from state-backed media retailers reminiscent of Russia Today and Sputnik. In response, YouTube has mentioned it might block Russia Today and Sputnik within the European Union, whereas Twitter and Meta, the mother or father of Facebook, have mentioned they might label content material from the retailers as state sponsored.
TikTok has additionally banned Sputnik and Russia Today within the E.U., and on Friday mentioned it might begin labeling the retailers as state-sponsored within the international locations the place they’re nonetheless out there. The app additionally mentioned on Thursday that it had devoted extra assets to monitoring for deceptive content material in regards to the battle.
“We continue to respond to the war in Ukraine with increased safety and security resources to detect emerging threats and remove harmful misinformation,” mentioned Hilary McQuaide, a TikTok spokeswoman.
For years, TikTok largely escaped sustained scrutiny about its content material. Unlike Facebook, which has been round since 2004, and YouTube, which was based in 2005, TikTok solely turned extensively used previously 5 years. Owned by China’s ByteDance, the app was designed to make one- to three-minute movies straightforward to create and share. It developed a status as a vacation spot for addictive, foolish and enjoyable movies, particularly for younger customers.
The app has navigated some controversies previously. It has confronted questions over dangerous fads that appeared to originate on its platform, in addition to whether or not it permits underage customers and adequately protects their privateness.
But the battle in Ukraine has supersized the problems dealing with TikTok, which has over one billion customers globally.
The quantity of battle content material on the app far outweighs what’s discovered on another social networks, in response to a assessment by The Times. Videos with the hashtag #Ukrainewar have amassed practically 500 million views on TikTok, with some of the preferred movies gaining shut to at least one million likes. In distinction, the #Ukrainewar hashtag on Instagram had 125,000 posts and the preferred movies had been seen tens of 1000’s of instances.