[ad_1]
A TikTok feature that allows users to add another person’s audio to their videos is being used to promote deceptive and harmful content about Covid-19 vaccines, a think tank said in a new report.
The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed 124 videos that used speech from four original TikTok videos, including two that were deleted by the company for breaking its Covid disinformation rules, for pushing disinformation and stoking fears about side effects of vaccines. The 124 videos had over 20 million views.
“There is some content that is still able to travel,” said Ciaran O’Connor, analyst at the think tank against extremism. He compared the spread of disinformation through TikTok’s “Sounds” feature to the WhatsApp audio messages that proliferated during the pandemic.
Viral trends where users create their own videos by riffing the same music or voice clip are a central part of TikTok. The popular social video platform, which has seen explosive growth during the pandemic, has said it examines the audio of videos breaking the rules and can prevent them from being used as sounds by other users. He said these cases were caused by errors in moderation of human content. He also indicated that sounds can be reported on the app.
Vaccine development
Audio of a video from a user implying that the rapid development of the Covid vaccine made it dangerous and that misleading comparisons to other diseases were used in more than 4,500 videos, ISD found.
TikTok said it previously restricted the distribution of videos using this sound, rather than removing it altogether, as it was only seen as potentially misleading. Despite this, the top 25 videos on the TikTok page for this sound were viewed a total of 16.7 million times.
ISD found that many videos used sound to signal support for the statement. TikTok said it removed some of the videos using sound and made sound harder to find in research after reviewing the report’s findings. He removed the other three sounds identified in the report.
“We strive to promote an authentic TikTok experience by limiting the dissemination of deceptive content, including audio, and promoting authoritative information about Covid-19 and vaccines in our app,” said a spokesperson for TikTok.
ISD found that the app added labels to authoritative Covid information on only two of the 124 videos. The company said this was because tags were only added on videos with specific hashtags.
TikTok last week announced changes to its content moderation systems for some content, moving to fully automated review systems for categories such as nudity and violent or graphic material. – Reuters
Source link
