TikTok helped promote Germany’s far-right extremist political party to young voters ahead of last month’s EU elections, even when they were searching the app for other political parties or politicians, according to a new report shared exclusively with WIRED.
The report was written by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, a European think tank specializing in information technology.
The researchers say that their findings prove no active collaboration between TikTok and far-right parties like the AfD but that the platform’s structure gives bad actors an opportunity to flourish.
“TikTok’s built-in features such as the ‘Others Searched For’ suggestions provides a poorly moderated space where the far-right, especially the AfD, is able to take advantage,” Miazia Schüler, a researcher with AI Forensics, tells WIRED.
“During elections, TikTok is not giving equal visibility to all the parties, and it’s basically incentivized to create suggestions that are not based on the content inside the app,” says Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics, adding that further research the group has conducted in France, Poland, Italy, and other EU countries found that “similarly problematic content was being shown across countries.”
TikTok says that it had put in place country-specific tools to combat the spread of misinformation during the EU elections.
The original article contains 401 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
TikTok helped promote Germany’s far-right extremist political party to young voters ahead of last month’s EU elections, even when they were searching the app for other political parties or politicians, according to a new report shared exclusively with WIRED.
The report was written by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, a European think tank specializing in information technology.
The researchers say that their findings prove no active collaboration between TikTok and far-right parties like the AfD but that the platform’s structure gives bad actors an opportunity to flourish.
“TikTok’s built-in features such as the ‘Others Searched For’ suggestions provides a poorly moderated space where the far-right, especially the AfD, is able to take advantage,” Miazia Schüler, a researcher with AI Forensics, tells WIRED.
“During elections, TikTok is not giving equal visibility to all the parties, and it’s basically incentivized to create suggestions that are not based on the content inside the app,” says Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics, adding that further research the group has conducted in France, Poland, Italy, and other EU countries found that “similarly problematic content was being shown across countries.”
TikTok says that it had put in place country-specific tools to combat the spread of misinformation during the EU elections.
The original article contains 401 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!