TikTok's Search Engine Dishes Out Misinformation 20% Of The Time: Watchdog

When a TikTok user searches the social media app for information on top news stories, ranging from COVID-19 vaccines to school shootings, nearly 20% of the videos presented as search results contain misinformation, according to a research report, Emma Tucker reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: TikTok, whose users are predominantly teenagers and young adults, "repeatedly delivered videos containing false claims in the first 20 results, often within the first five."

Researchers at NewsGuard, a journalism and technology tool that tracks online information, searched TikTok and Google this month for information on major news topics such as the 2020 presidential election, the Russia-Ukraine war, and abortion to compare the misinformation delivered by their search engines.

TikTok, whose users are predominantly teenagers and young adults, "repeatedly delivered videos containing false claims in the first 20 results, often within the first five," the report states.

"Google, by comparison, provided higher-quality and less-polarizing results, with far less misinformation." A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the report when contacted by CNN.

The researchers searched terms such as "mRNA vaccine" and "2022 election," as well as controversial news topics like "Uvalde tx conspiracy." They analyzed 540 TikTok results and found that 105 videos, or 19.4%, contained false or misleading claims, the report says.

According to the report, a search on TikTok for information about politics, including the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection, often included misinformation as well as references to QAnon conspiracy theories.

For example, a search for the question "Was the 2020 election stolen?" yielded six videos that contained false claims in the first 20 results, NewsGuard found. NewsGuard researchers also found that TikTok's search engine "is consistently feeding millions of young users health misinformation, including some claims that could be dangerous to users' health."

TikTok removed more than 102 million videos in early 2022 for violating its guidelines, according to its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report. But less than 1% of those videos were removed for violating the company's "integrity and authenticity" guidelines, which include misinformation, according to NewsGuard's review.

NewsGuard's report was released amid bipartisan concerns in Washington about the possibility that US user data could find its way to the Chinese government and be used to undermine US interests due to a national security law in that country that compels companies located there to cooperate with data requests.

In 2012, a huge trove of US payroll data was snatched by Iran, which shared the same data with China. In no time, China was able to identify the informants in an intelligence network built by the US within its territory, with high-level operators arrested and executed. It forced the US to establish another network and strengthen its signal intelligence operations in China.

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