Congressmen, right-wing activists, and affluent tech investors are stepping up their calls for TikTok to be banned in the United States. They claim that the app’s most widely shared content about the Israel-Hamas conflict has a pro-Palestinian bias, which is undermining young Americans’ support for Israel.
Because of its Chinese ownership and worries about government control over the app, TikTok has been under fire for years. Both Republicans and Democrats claim that this relationship puts the personal information of American users at risk.
These days, detractors claim that TikTok is abusing its power to promote content that supports Palestine and goes against American foreign policy objectives. The allegations regarding TikTok’s encouragement of pro-Palestinian content are anecdotal and have been making waves on the social media site X, in interviews with the media, and on Fox News and other conservative media sites.
According to TikTok, the accusations of bias are unfounded.
In the end, how you interpret TikTok’s data will determine how well-received pro-Palestinian content is on the platform. Global historical trends indicate that the trending hashtag #standwithpalestine is receiving more attention than #standwithisrael. When examining hashtag data exclusively from the United States during the past 30 days, pro-Israel content has been outperforming some popular pro-Palestinian content by the same amount, if not more.
Following a string of posts on X last week by tech venture capitalist and former Tinder executive Jeff Morris Jr., the calls for a ban were resurrected. Morris discussed a “TikTok War” in which college and high school students are being taught the “wrong information” about Israel and Hamas in his widely shared thread. The discourse surrounding the Israel-Hamas war has become increasingly divisive and polarizing on social media, particularly TikTok.
Morris’ thread received over 9 million views on Tuesday, based on metrics made public by X.
“My entire feed became aggressively anti-Israel when I engaged with one TikTok post supporting opposing views,” Morris wrote. His experience is consistent with reports regarding the operation of TikTok’s algorithmic function, which has generated controversy: Interacting with a subject tells the app that the user should see more of that kind of content.
Morris also shared a screenshot of hashtag suggestions that appeared when he used the TikTok search bar to type in the phrases “Stand with Israel” and “Stand with Palestine.” As of Tuesday night, the hashtag “standwithpalestine” had 3.4 billion views globally, compared to 313.6 million views globally for the hashtag “standwithisrael” — a more than 10-to-1 ratio.
Morris wrote, “Israel is losing the TikTok war by a long shot.”
A request for comment from Morris was not answered.
The view counts from the last three years, when TikTok started to provide data, were included in the hashtag figures Morris was referring to. This period included a significant spike in activity during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May 2021.
The allegations of favoritism are called into question by a more limited search on TikTok’s hashtag metrics discovery tool, which limits the data to the last 30 days. The search suggests that pro-Israel hashtags in the U.S. may be getting just as much attention as or even more on the app.
The metrics tool indicates that in the last 30 days, 9,000 videos with over 27 million views in the United States have included the hashtag #standwithpalestine. In the United States, #standwithisrael was used in 5,000 videos that received over 43 million views in the same time frame. During the course of the last 30 days, the hashtags #supportpalestine and #supportisrael have received about 1,000 posts totaling 6 million views each in the United States, placing them in a tie.
It’s unclear whether a given hashtag is representative of the platform as a whole or what factors have led to the differences in opinions expressed about it.
The generational divide is one possibility. According to a number of polls, older people are more pro-Israeli, while younger people are more evenly split between supporting Israel and the Palestinians. Nearly 60% of users of #standwithpalestine are between the ages of 18 and 24, whereas 42% of users of #standwithisrael are 35 and older, per TikTok’s hashtag data. According to a Pew survey conducted last year, 16% of American teenagers claimed to use TikTok regularly, while 67% of teens in the country said they have used the app at least once.
Among those who reshared Morris’ thread on X was Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo. He claimed that TikTok was a “Chinese spy engine” and a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.” He has long been a critic of the app and has sponsored legislation to outlaw it.
The claims were refuted by TikTok in a statement.
All content on TikTok is subject to our Community Guidelines, and we vehemently disagree with any unfounded assertions to the contrary. The business stated in an email that it is “committed to consistently enforcing our policies to protect our community.”
Although there have been reports over the past year indicating that TikTok has trouble filtering out some extremist content, the company maintains that hateful ideologies, such as antisemitism and Islamophobia, have no place on its platform and that its guidelines forbid content from “violent political organizations” like Hamas. In a statement, TikTok said that it deletes any content that supports Hamas.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who has long criticized TikTok for its connections to China, reaffirmed her call for a ban in a statement on Monday.
According to Blackburn, “it would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content.” Many governments have classified Hamas, the group in charge of Gaza, as a terrorist organization, including the United States.
She made reference to the Chinese Communist Party and said, “The CCP benefits by destabilizing the Middle East and pushing the United States to put more manpower back into the region.” “This app that spies on and steals from American users needs to be banned in the United States.”
In a different statement, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., expressed his opinion that TikTok should be prohibited because it has disseminated foreign propaganda.
I’ve been cautioning people for a while now that Communist China can use TikTok’s algorithm to influence and manipulate Americans. The Uyghur genocide, Taiwan’s status, and now Hamas terrorism have all been minimized on TikTok, according to Senator Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
A TikTok executive testified before British lawmakers in 2020, stating that while the company had previously suppressed content pertaining to “the Uyghur situation,” which refers to a Muslim minority in China, it no longer censored political topics.
It’s unclear from their remarks what content the senators were referring to as supporting Hamas. According to a Sema article referenced by Blackburn’s office, certain TikTok videos “downplay Hamas’ attack on Israel.” An inquiry for further information was followed up with, but Rubio’s office did not reply.
The opposing view of TikTok is that it has eliminated certain pro-Palestinian content too arbitrarily. The majority-Muslim nation of Malaysia’s government threatened to take legal action against TikTok and Meta last week for allegedly obstructing such posts. Both businesses refuted the accusations.
The renewed push by critics for a TikTok ban in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is more about silencing pro-Palestinian voices than it is about national security.
Mitchell stated over the phone that “TikTok has plenty of issues due to their relationship with the Chinese government, but allowing speech about Palestinian human rights is not one of those problems.”
“Some political voices support free speech and detest cancel culture, but when they hear something they disagree with, they want it cancelled, especially when it concerns Palestinian human rights,” the speaker stated.
The antisemitic organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has “seen deeply troubling videos that have gone viral,” according to a statement released by Yael Eisenstat, director of the ADL’s Center for Tech and Society.
Many videos have been released that purport to show that the Hamas massacre at the Supernova music festival in Israel was staged or embellished. More than 1.8 million people viewed one post, according to Eisenstat. “Civil society still has limited access to data, but we anticipate this will soon change. The good news is that TikTok has responded quickly and receptively to our concerns when we report content that violates their policies. We are still closely collaborating with their leadership team to resolve these issues.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, almost all social media platforms have struggled to suppress misinformation and Hamas content; however, up until recently, TikTok escaped significant criticism and was seen by experts in the field of hate speech and disinformation as being adaptable to new problems.
But following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, which claimed over 1,400 lives and resulted in over 200 being taken hostage, and the Israeli counteroffensive that has claimed over 8,000 lives, the conversation surrounding the war on all social media platforms has turned extremely divisive and contentious, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which is under Hamas control.
Despite a protracted political debate about its future, TikTok remains one of the most widely used social media platforms in the United States. The 2020 executive order attempt by President Donald Trump to outlaw it was unsuccessful in court. In an attempt to allay government worries, the Biden administration has attempted to negotiate a deal with TikTok rather than considering a ban for national security reasons.
However, more venture capitalists from the tech sector have joined the chorus of people who support outlawing TikTok due to its potential for spreading misinformation.
The billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman originally demanded a list of Harvard college students whose student organizations had signed anti-Israel statements. However, he has since backed off from his original call for a list of names and has instead called for the banning of TikTok, claiming that the platform was the reason why the “TikTok generation” believed that Hamas’ attack was justified.
In a statement on Sunday night, Sam Lessin, a general partner at Slow Ventures and a former vice president of product at Facebook, demanded an instant ban from TikTok. Lessin posted his statement on The Information’s website. His wife, Jessica Lessin, is the creator and CEO of the tech news publication.
He wrote, “We made a big mistake not banning TikTok when Trump first brought up the issue in 2020.” “We are coming home to roost and allowing terrorist propaganda to spread inside the US and driving real physical danger and violence to US citizens — not just words — because we didn’t ban (or force US ownership and control) of Tiktok in the US.”
When asked for instances of “terrorist propaganda” he had seen on TikTok or instances of it inciting violence against Americans, Lessin remained silent.
