I Spent a Day Down TikTok’s Disinformation Rabbit Hole
The urge to block the social media app is spreading. But there are better ways to protect democracy in an election year.
Can’t live with or without it?
Photographer: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
In an election-stuffed year, should we be worried about the kind of role social media apps like TikTok play in the democratic process? It only took me a few minutes to find out.
As an experiment in the run-up to last week’s European elections, I created a TikTok account, clicked on a video on French President Emmanuel Macron’s official feed and then let the app’s suggested content from other users take over. The algorithm took me down what can only be described as a very Putin friendly rabbit hole: The first video said in bold letters that Macron had “declared war on Russia” by offering to train military instructors in Ukraine, while several others attacked him for not inviting Russia to D-Day ceremonies. One falsely claimed that an infamous civilian massacre in Nazi-occupied France in 1944 had been perpetrated almost entirely by Ukrainians. (I was also fed a rant about Jews controlling France by a convicted antisemite.)