There’s no need to debate about it: a bunch of the Gen Z population actually use Tiktok more than Google search when searching for information over the internet. While that may sound like a positive thing for TikTok, the alarming fact with this is that one out of 5 videos in TikTok–or 20%–contain misinformation.
This alarming fact was reported by NewsGuard, as this is what they found after investigating various news topics on TikTok. One of the bothersome things NewsGuard found is that TikTok prompted users with biased search terms. One example of this is when users would search for “COVID vaccine”, TikTok would offer biased suggestions like “COVID vaccine truths” or “COVID vaccine HIV”. If that’s not enough, the rampant misinformation spreading through TikTok is also due to a number of home remedy videos that are not proven and are even dangerous to the public.
NewsGuard has asked TikTok several questions on how their algorithm handles specific topics, and TikTok did not respond to crucial questions like “Is TikTok’s search engine algorithm tailored to prevent it from feeding users misinformation?”, “Who decides how TikTok’s search engine algorithm feeds users results?”, and “Can you comment on why TikTok has not removed these videos (on false claims and unsafe DIY herbal abortion techniques), or attached safety warnings to them?”
With TikTok being heralded as the new search engine for Gen Z people by various major publications like The New York Times, TikTok still has a long way to go in terms of preventing the spread of misinformation in its platform. That’s despite TikTok removing 102 million videos for the first quarter of 2022 alone for violating its community guidelines and having added measures like AI-driven reviews of videos uploaded to its platform.
