TikTok, on a blog post as reported by Reuters, has called the accusations of the application pushing for pro-Palestine content false. The application proves the claims are false by reporting its efforts, data insights, and engagement numbers regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict.
(Photo : Solen Feyissa from Unsplash)
Reuters reports that the Bytedance-owned company fired back at critics and commentators by stating that "there has been unsound analysis of TikTok hashtag data around the conflict causing some commentators to falsely insinuate TikTok is pushing pro-Palestine content over pro-Israel content to U.S. users."
TikTok compared two prominent hashtags to prove the claims are false, showing that since October 7 in the United States, the hashtag #standwithisrael has received 1.5x the number of views as #standwithpalestine, 46.3M views against 29.4M views.
Read Also: Big Tech Under EU Scrutiny: Meta and TikTok's Actions During Israel-Hamas War Questioned
TikTok's Other Efforts
Aside from the engagement numbers, TikTok also stated that the company has been consistently removing content that violates its community guidelines and policies, "including content promoting Hamas," with more than 925,000 videos in the conflict removed.
TikTok has also claimed to have removed about 24 million fake accounts and over 500,000 bot comments on posts about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
TikTok then emphasized on the post that the application's 'For You' feed and TikTok, generally, is based on people's interest and that the application's post recommendation source code and systems are open to third-party access for verifications.
The blog post comes after TikTok recently drew a flock over alleged claims that the company is actively pushing for pro-Palestine content.
Renewed Calls for the Tiktok Ban
Some congress members, conservative activists, and wealthy tech investors renewed calls to ban TikTok in the U.S. after these alleged claims, as recently reported by NBC.
NBC reports that the renewed ban comes after Jeff Morris Jr., a digital venture financier and former Tinder executive, published a series of essays on X last week.
Morris described a "TikTok War" in which high school and college students are receiving "wrong information" about Hamas and Israel in his viral thread.
The Tinder executive claimed that "When I engaged with one post on TikTok supporting opposing views, my entire feed became aggressively anti-Israel."
Morris further claimed the Israel content had a "distribution issue," with the report stating that the hashtag "standwithpalestine" had 3.4 billion views worldwide as of this Tuesday. In comparison "standwithisrael" had 313.6 million views worldwide.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., seemingly supported this claim by sharing the Tinder executive's post calling the application a "Chinese spy engine and purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies."
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also weighed in on the claims against TikTok, stating that "it would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content."
As the United States claims that TikTok is promoting pro-Palestine content over pro-Israel content, the application has also recently come under fire by the Malaysian government, stating that it will take action against TikTok and Meta after accusations of the social media companies limiting information supporting Palestinians.
TikTok responded by saying that the claims are "unfounded."
Related Article: Malaysia Against TikTok, Meta, on Possible Blocking of Pro-Palestinian Content
