The platform itself, TikTok, officially announces that it stands against terrorism and grieves over the misery of the Israel-Gaza war. Regarding the Israeli-Hamas conflict, TikTok has worked to remove content that promotes violence, terrorism, hate speech, misinformation, and other violations of its community guidelines. Since October 7, 2023, TikTok has removed over 14,000 livestreams and more than 775,000 recordings in the concerned area.
Millions of fake accounts and automated comments that exploited the violence have also been removed. In terms of support for Israel, TikTok does not specifically state that it agrees with or supports Israel as a nation or political organization. Instead, the platform aims to regulate content to prevent hate speech and misinformation on both ends. TikTok has cooperated with external experts and organizations representing Muslim and Jewish communities to combat Islamophobia and antisemitism more effectively on its platform.
Public opinion regarding TikTok’s stance on the conflict is complex and often contradictory. Although TikTok denies the accusations of an anti-Israel bias and points to its efforts to maintain neutrality and community security, some politicians and other opponents claim that the app allows or even encourages anti-Israel or, on a greater scale, antisemitic materials. Arthur Dantchik, a pro-Israel Jewish millionaire who holds a share in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has donated money to Jewish and Israeli causes. It has been in tussles over the investors of the platform. It is not clear whether they have influenced the regulations of TikTok concerning Israeli content.
How does TikTok handle content related to Israel and Palestine?
Thousands of live streams and millions of videos violating their community guidelines, especially those supporting or promoting hate speech, violence, terrorism, misinformation, or any form of hate speech on such issues as Islamophobia, antisemitism, etc., have been removed since the outbreak of the situation in Israel and Hamas in October 2023, TikTok having to ban them. The good news is that TikTok banned about 925,000 people in the conflict area (and 730,000 worldwide) over the course of October 7 to October 31, 2023, for violating its policies because of this conflict.
TikTok uses the latest technological capabilities, such as hashing, computer vision, and natural language processing, to filter and remove duplicates and extremist content. To have the best approach to fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia, the platform provides the moderators with constant training, including implicit bias training and collaboration with other organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.
TikTok opens to third parties in the United States to provide source code because it wants to make sure that its systems work as designed and to protect against manipulation. It has been suggested that despite the increase in the amount of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok compared to pro-Israeli content, instances of the algorithm changing a post to be visible occur, with the possibility that at some times, pro-Israeli content could appear in feeds more than the posting rate. This means that TikTok takes an active role in the manner in which the contents are presented in order to maintain the right balance to prevent the promotion of hateful or extreme posts.
Handling sensitive phrases and controversies
TikTok has been criticized for banning words, such as “Free Palestine.” This case has, however, raised concerns related to censorship and how it would be hard to police very sensitive content.
So as to be prompt to the controversy, TikTok has established the command center and increased its moderating systems, including enlisting moderators who speak Arabic and Hebrew. To fight implicit or indirect hate speech and to find cases when such wording as “Zionist” can be used as an equivalent to Jewish or Israeli identity in hateful cases, the platform has modified its hate speech policy.
Are pro-Palestinian posts more prevalent than pro-Israeli ones on TikTok?
As an example, as of mid-October 2023, the hashtag #standwithPalestine has more than 210,000 postings globally, and the hashtag #standwithIsrael has 17,000 postings. In America, the same period has recorded 8,000 and 3,000 jobs, respectively.
There is also much more pro-Palestinian information, which tends to reach a much greater percentage of views compared to pro-Israeli information. Based on TikTok statistics, #StandwithPalestine has been watched billions of times all over the globe, with the top view coming to 276 million in a week compared to 68 million in the case of #StandwithIsrael. The hashtag analysis that includes a multi-month study has shown that pro-Palestinian data was created as opposed to pro-Israeli material approximately 20 times faster.
This is also apparent on other social media platforms, although TikTok is well-known to have a disproportionately high number of pro-Palestinian posts, which has attracted criticism and inquiry by certain policymakers and analysts. There is a broad sharing of pro-Palestinian stories, including direct-from-the-battle-zone reports and cinematographically strong TikToks, due to the populace of young users and the emotionally affecting visual nature of TikTok content.
Why do pro-Palestinian posts have higher overall views on TikTok?
There has been a longer history of pro-Palestinian hashtags on TikTok compared with pro-Israeli hashtags. As much as #standwithIsrael is a relatively new hashtag, the bulk of the posts are post-October 2023, whereas #freePalestine goes back to September 2022. With its prolonged accessibility, pro-Palestinian content can accumulate additional posts and views gradually.
TikTok is overrepresented among the younger generation because that is who is more likely to sympathize with or take the position of praising Palestine and the situation in Israel/Palestine and anti-Zionist movements. Studies reveal that the audience of #standwithIsrael consists of 66 percent under the age of 35, whereas 87 percent of the #standwithPalestine posting viewership lies under the age.
This engagement is the cause of increased viewing of pro-Palestinian content. The TikTok recommendation algorithm can advertise content without taking sides using user interactions such as views, likes, and shares. It also means that the more the person uses the system, the more pro-Palestinian content the program will display. This is a reinforcing loop that increases views due to its ability to alter personalized content according to use.
The pro-Palestinian publication of this material hits a chord on TikTok, as this is a social movement that has been going on within Israel itself and globally throughout several decades and is well-supported in the majority of locations on Earth. Due to the momentum that this movement has gained, more content is being created and disseminated, bringing in even more views.
In certain places (the US), the pro-Israel ones receive more views in a certain video on average in some places. It indicates that the pro-Israeli posts are rather interesting at the per-video level, although there were fewer of them.
Reason: Why does TikTok favor Israel?
During the war between Israel and Hamas, TikTok focused on the principle of enforcing its community rules to be safe, discourage hate speech, and prevent the spread of material terrorism on its application. The company is not clear in its support of Israel as a political unit. The business has, since October 2023, suspended thousands of livestreams and has deleted millions of recordings that encourage violence, terrorism, hate speech/misinformation, and other violations, especially in Israel and Palestine. To effectively prevent antisemitism and Islamophobia, TikTok has also invested considerably to increase automated detection, expand moderation teams, and involve the involvement of external specialists with representation of the Muslim and Jewish communities.
