TikTok is failing to block misogynistic videos of controversial influencer Andrew Tate that can be viewed by children as young as 13, experts warn.
Tate has been charged in Romania with rape, while he and his brother Tristan were both charged with inciting others to violence.
But despite an outcry over their content after the Tates’ arrests last December, TikTok’s own figures show that videos linked to the Tate hashtag have been viewed 75 million times in the UK in the past four months alone.
While TikTok says Andrew Tate himself has been banned and many of these videos are unrelated or linked to the brothers’ court appearances, The Independent found his content available to users of the social media platform, both under the “Tate” hashtag and elsewhere.
Separately, a “pick-up artist” video uncovered by The Independent shows Andrew Tate bragging about how to “slam” two women at the same time before getting them drunk and working on camera together.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate said that while Tate, a former kickboxing world champion turned “success coach”, has been banned by TikTok, he continues to have “quite a strong infrastructure of getting fans to upload his content dispensing advice”. This means his videos are still widely available to users.
Callum Hood, the organisation’s head of research, said: “We know teens as young as 13 are being served content featuring Tate from experiments we carried out to see what videos TikTok’s algorithm recommends to its youngest users.”
However, he warned that TikTok had been fined by UK regulators for failing to implement age controls, raising questions about how many children under the age of 13 could have seen Tate’s material.
The former kickboxing world champion turned ‘success coach’ has been banned by TikTok— (AP)
Mr Hood argued social media platforms continue to play a big role in bringing Tate’s content to a bigger audience as he explained the influencer is “still getting a leg up from platforms”.
He said: “That is before you get to the issue of alternative platforms offering a reservoir of the Tate brothers’ content that has been deleted elsewhere, allowing it to remain accessible.”
TikTok said that, as well as banning Tate, it had added prompts telling users who searched for him or related terms to “be hate aware”.
Mr Hood noted TikTok has “accepted the principle that accounts posting videos of Tate that promote his misogynistic views or artificially boost his content will be acted on” but warned it was clear this was not happening in reality. He called for TikTok to be much more proactive in implementing its policies.
TikTok videos posted with the Tate hashtag have been viewed one billion times by Britons in the past year— (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
He added: “We know from investigations that saw inside Tate's business that he was instructing fans to repost his content in return for financial incentives.
“We have done research showing that Tate content is still recommended by mainstream platforms like TikTok within the first hour of creating a new account that the platform understands to belong to a young man, despite those platforms saying Tate is de-platformed.”
Data shows TikTok videos posted with the Tate hashtag have been viewed one billion times by Britons in the past year and 13 billion times around the world. Figures also reveal over three quarters of people viewing videos posted under the Tate hashtag are aged between 18 to 24 in the UK.
Almost eight in 10 people around the world watching videos posted under this hashtag are aged between 18 to 24. This is despite the fact many online giants have banned Tate’s account because of his hate speech.
Joe Mulhall, of anti-fascism charity Hope Not Hate, said even though Mr Tate’s accounts have been removed from TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, “proxy accounts still churn out his videos”. He warned that the influencer’s “appearances on podcasts and other creators’ channels are also still available online”.
Tate had his Twitter account restored in November last year alongside that of former US president Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West in the wake of Elon Musk gaining control of the social media site. Tate has seven million Twitter followers.
Last month, exclusive data from YouGov, shared with The Independent, showed around a quarter of young men agree with Tate’s views on how women should be treated.
A spokesperson for TikTok said: “Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok. We have dedicated significant resources to finding and removing content of this nature that violates our policies and [have] taken a number of steps to help our community make informed choices, reminding them of the dangers of hateful language.”
A representative for the Tates declined to comment.
