TikTok Is Confronting Holocaust Misinformation, But Antisemitism Continues To Thrive
TikTok is confronting Holocaust misinformation, but antisemitism continues to thrive
In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, TikTok launched a portal on its Discover page this morning on its Discover page. In addition to informing users about the historical tragedy, it also serves to raise awareness about the ongoing threat of antisemitism. A similar portal was also hosted on the platform the previous year.
A clickable banner commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be visible when users open the TikTok mobile app and navigate to the Discover page on the app's home screen. A page with three educational TikToks created by Jewish creators, including a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who makes them with the assistance of her great-grandson, is displayed to the user after they click on the link. Also new is a banner that appears when users search for terms such as "Holocaust" or "Holocaust survivor" on TikTok, which advises the user to "consult trusted sources to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation" and directs them to a Holocaust website that is available in multiple languages. In the coming months, TikTok will add a similar notice as a permanent banner to videos about the Holocaust that are uploaded to the platform. It was in collaboration with UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress, which has been a partner organization with TikTok since 2020, that they were able to make these changes.
This initiative takes a strong stance against Holocaust denial, which is a false conspiracy theory that asserts that the Holocaust did not take place in the first place. Some Jewish TikTokers, on the other hand, believe that antisemitism on the platform is a more complex issue that cannot be resolved with a few pop-ups displaying Holocaust-related content.
In November, Liv Schreiber, a stylist with 74,000 followers on Instagram, collaborated on an advertisement for Jewish dating app The Lox Club, which was featured on the website. Her video, posted a week later, documented the daily barrage of antisemitic comments she had received in response to the video, which she documented in another video.
As Schreiber stated in her video, "I'm baffled as to why anti-Semitism continues to be tolerated." "I'm perplexed as to why it hasn't been taken down yet... TikTok, you have found yourself in an unavoidable situation."
Last April, a trend involving users singing "If I Were a Rich Man" from the Jewish musical "Fiddler on the Roof" while wearing a filter that lengthened their facial features, such as their nose, went viral, increasing the volume of antisemitism conversations on TikTok. For Jewish TikTok users, this trend resurrected a historical stereotype in which antisemitic caricatures depicted Jews with exaggerated noses alongside other harmful antisemitic imagery triggered a strong emotional response.
In May 2021, to commemorate Jewish Heritage Month, TikTok launched a hashtag called #MyJewishHeritage to try to shine a positive light on the app's Jewish creators as the trend spread. TikTok featured several posts about Judaism on its Discover page, but the creators of the content that was highlighted did not receive any notification of the promotion. As a result, several Jewish content creators have received a deluge of antisemitic comments on their works.
TikTok has stated that it has compensated the creators who have been featured on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day portal for this year.
"The problem with TikTok antisemitism is that you get harassed from every angle," Ezra, a political TikToker with over 37,000 followers, told TechCrunch. "The problem with TikTok antisemitism is that you get harassed from every angle." "Right-wing accounts, troll accounts, inadvertently antisemitic accounts that don't know any better, and left-wing accounts that can't tell the difference between Jews and Israel are all on the rise on social media. As a result, combating antisemitism necessitates a multifaceted approach."
Despite the fact that TikTok has publicly condemned antisemitism on its platform, public displays of solidarity, such as the launch of the new portal, may come across as hollow to users who have experienced harassment while using the platform. TikTok's involvement in the effort is also unclear, as when TechCrunch first visited the Holocaust Remembrance Day portal — several hours after it was launched at 3 a.m. ET — the link to report an antisemitic incident to the Anti-Defamation League was no longer functional. After a few hours, it appeared that the problem had been resolved. If you have any questions about why the app launched without a functioning link, please contact TikTok directly.
After discovering that the International Holocaust Remembrance Day portal focused solely on the Holocaust's impact on Jewish people, Stephanie Gurewitz (@shachar.mg), a graduate student who frequently posts on TikTok about antisemitism, was surprised to learn that the Holocaust's impact on non-Jews was not included. Yom HaShoah, a separate day of remembrance, commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust who perished during World War II. In addition to disabled and homosexual people, as well as Roma people, the Nazis persecuted a number of other groups.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Gurewitz stated that "this is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, not the Jewish people's memorial day." "Today's commemoration is for all Holocaust victims, but there is no mention of Roma people. There are some items that aren't present, which is a concern."
They also stated that they were receiving anti-Semitic comments on their videos today.
"People come to TikTok with preconceived notions, and I don't believe that banners will be enough to change that," they stated. "I believe that banners will not be enough to change that."
On a platform with one billion monthly active users, content moderation is a difficult task to accomplish. Although users frequently circumvent detection mechanisms in ways that are obvious to any casual user, users may write "s3xuality" to avoid being incorrectly flagged as violating guidelines even when discussing something as personal as sexuality in order to avoid being flagged as violating guidelines (adult content is a violation; talking about homosexuality, for example, is not). These same tactics are frequently employed by malicious users in order to send antisemitic messages that are not detected by TikTok, which is a popular social media platform.
"I sincerely believe that TikTok and other social media platforms should do everything in their power to bring attention to important causes. The [Holocaust Remembrance] portal brings back memories of all of the internal discussions that took place about it, and for that I am grateful "According to Schreiber, speaking to TechCrunch.
