Posted on 07/12/21
| News Source: i24
The material demonstrated explicit depictions of antisemitism according to IHRA working definition of term
Antisemitic content on rapidly growing social media platform TikTok increased 912 percent during 2021, a new University of Haifa and IDC Herzliya Institute of Counter-Terrorism (ICT) report has revealed.
The study, which Dr Gabriel Weinmann, a professor of communication at University of Haifa led, in conjunction with Natalie Masri at ICT, uncovered a seismic spike in antisemitic tropes, images and rhetoric, when compared with a similar 2020 study.
"TikTok's catering to young, impressionable and naive audiences, combined with bad-faith actors who are posting hateful content online, is something that should be taken very seriously," said Weinmann.
In addition, the study also revealed a 41-percent rise in antisemitic postings and a more than 1,375-percent climb in usernames with antisemitic titles, such as @holocuastwasgood and @eviljews.
Tiktok has grown exponentially over the last few years and it is estimated that more than 40 percent of its 1.2 billion users are between the ages of 16 and 24. It is an open platform, which combines a poisonous mixture of popularity and exposure that makes it enticing to many extremist, racist and radical groups, including neo-Nazis and antisemites.
Typical videos, which are only a few seconds long each, depict young users making Nazi salutes, another with text that read, "I have a solution; a Final Solution," in reference to the planned mechanized slaughter of European Jewry.
Jews were also depicted with long, hooked noses and many posts dismissed the gravity of the Holocaust.