TikTok hosts hundreds of pro-Nazi accounts that use the app to promote their ideologies, a new study found.
ADVERTISEMENTTikTok hosts hundreds of pro-Nazi accounts that use the app to promote their ideologies, a new study has found.
Researchers from the global think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) uncovered a network of 200 Nazi accounts that produced several videos promoting Nazism or used Nazi symbols in their profiles.
The content they found on these accounts is gathering “tens of millions of views” on the platform with narratives about Holocaust denial, the glorification of Hitler, and “Nazism as a solution to contemporary issues”.
“Self-identified Nazis discuss TikTok as an amenable platform to spread their ideology which can be used to reach ‘much more people’, even if accounts are brand new or have a low following,” a summary of the report reads.
TikTok says ‘no violation’
Nazi groups are using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in many of their videos to “create dehumanising caricatures of non-white racial and ethnic groups,” the ISD report said. Other videos use AI-generated translations of Adolf Hitler’s speeches in a way to modernise their propaganda.
Certain songs, paired with Nazi images and coded languages in the app, help other content pass undetected by the platform’s moderators, the study continued.
TikTok’s community guidelines state that any content using “stereotypes, insinuation or indirect statements that may implicitly demean a protected group,” will not be shown in a “For You” feed.
Several forms of misinformation, including conspiracy theories, repurposed media and “potential high harm” misinformation that is being fact checked will also be restricted from the feeds. There is no explicit mention of Nazi content in the community guidelines.
Researchers reported 50 of these accounts to TikTok as violating elements of the platform’s guidelines around hateful ideologies. All reports returned back to the researchers found “no violation” by the accounts.
Other research has already identified that TikTok’s algorithm pushes misogynistic or otherwise hateful content to “dummy users” within a few minutes of using the app in its “For You Page.”
Researchers for the ISD study used a dummy account to watch 10 videos and went to the pages of 10 pro-Nazi accounts before similar content was suggested by the app.
A coordinated effort
Nazi videos end up being prominent on TikTok because there’s cross-platform coordination with activists on Telegram to reach wider audiences with their short-form video content, researchers say.
“[Pro-Nazi activists] are coordinating an effort to ‘juice’ videos through mass engagement; sharing downloadable videos, images, and sounds to share on platforms like TikTok,” the report continues.
One example of this coordination is an “activist” Telegram account that promoted a neo-Nazi documentary that moves some TikTok users into more explicit propaganda. The channel asks its followers to promote the film and “blanket TikTok with reaction videos” so the film goes viral.
Euronews Next reached out to TikTok but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.
