TikTok is riddled with misleading information, including about Covid-19, climate change and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a new research report says. Researchers at NewsGuard searched for content about prominent news topics on the social media platform and found that almost one in five videos automatically suggested by TikTok contained misinformation.
Searches for information about "mRNA vaccine", for instance, yielded five videos out of the first 10 results that contained misinformation, including baseless claims that the Covid-19 vaccine causes "permanent damage in children's critical organs". Researchers looking for information about abortion, the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, climate change or Russia's invasion of Ukraine on TikTok found similarly misleading videos scattered among more accurate clips.
The amount of misinformation - and the ease with which it can be found - is especially troubling given TikTok's popularity with young people, according to Steven Brill, founder of NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation. TikTok is the second most popular domain in the world, according to online performance and security company Cloudflare, exceeded only by Google.
