Daily Times

Paris: The war in Ukraine has rapidly positioned TikTok as the number one source of misinformation thanks to its gigantic number of users and minimal filtering of content, experts say.

Every day, Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist with the BBC’s disinformation team, ploughs through a hallucinatory mix of fake and misleading information about the war being spewed out on the video-sharing site.

“TikTok is really not having a good war,” he told AFP.

“I haven’t seen another platform with so much false content,” he added.

“We’ve seen it all: videos from past conflicts being recycled, genuine footage presented in a misleading way, things that are so obviously false but still get tens of millions of views.”

He said the most disturbing were fake live streams in which users pretended to be on the ground in Ukraine, but were actually using footage from other conflicts or even video games — and then asking for money to support their “reporting”.

“Millions tune in and watch. They even add fake gunshots and explosions,” said Sardarizadeh.

Anastasiya Zhyrmont of Access Now, an advocacy group, said it was no excuse to say that the war came as a surprise.

“This conflict has been escalating since 2014 and these problems of Kremlin propaganda and misinformation have been raised with TikTok long before the invasion,” she told AFP.

“They’ve promised to double their efforts and partner with content checkers, but I’m not sure they are taking this obligation seriously,” she added.