Ukraine war: China's TikTok “more dangerous” in terms of spreading Russian disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, Ukrainian expert says
Ukraine war: China's TikTok “more dangerous” in terms of spreading Russian disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, Ukrainian expert says
“We’ve already figured Telegram out — we understand its structure and how it operates,” a Ukrainian official said. “TikTok, however, has become a significant concern for us.”
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3758180
Chinese social media giant TikTok is “more dangerous” to Ukraine in terms of spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, according to Alina Aleksieeva, the deputy head of Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation (CPD).
[...]
“We often perceive Telegram as the primary culprit, given its abundance of anonymous Russian channels and the impersonation of Ukrainian ones,” said Svitlana Slipchenko, deputy executive director of the data analytics platform Vox Ukraine.
“But the problem extends beyond Telegram — fake news is widespread on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads,” she added. “The danger is focusing too narrowly on one platform while Russian propaganda continues to thrive across the entire digital landscape.”
Earlier this year, the CPD published a list of over 80 TikTok accounts used for Russian disinformation. The list includes official accounts of Russian state media, such as TASS, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.
[...]
Ukraine has previously considered banning TikTok. The app’s future in the U.S. is uncertain due to concerns that ByteDance may have ties to the Chinese government. U.S. authorities have also accused the app of spreading harmful content and misinformation and posing privacy risks.
[...]
Ukraine has been paying close attention to foreign social media apps due to the risks they pose to its users amid the ongoing war. Earlier in September, Ukraine banned Telegram on official devices used by state and security officials, military personnel, and employees of critical infrastructure facilities.
[...]
Well yeah, Telegram is basically intended for one on one or group discussion, there's pretty much no content filtering. TikTok is about curating a content stream. There are a lot more opportunities to mess with what content you see on TikTok vs Telegram.
So a social media app like TikTok, Facebook, etc will have a lot more say in what gets presented compared to a communication platform like Telegram.
Comparing Telegram to TikTok is nonsensical.
Wow who would’ve thought that the chinese app would spread propaganda about its ally’s enemy1?1??1
There is quite literally zero evidence that Tiktok "spreads propaganda" relating to the Russia-Ukraine war of its own volition. There are literally millions of pro-Russia users around the world - i.e India where a huge percent of users come from and where the population is split on which side of the war is to blame - who are responsible.
In Germany, it was found that it's very very very easy to fall down an AfD propaganda hole when browsing TikTok -- and the way that was fixed was by other parties, non-party actors etc. starting to give a fuck about the platform.
I'm not saying there's no Chinese shennanigans going on on TikTok, there probably are at least low-key and they're keeping it around as an asset they can use more intensively, push come to shove. But that doesn't mean that everything bad on TikTok is a Chinese plot, it could be, you know, just our own societies dropping the ball. Shocking, I know, how would that ever happen. Algorithm-wise TikTok didn't prefer AfD content the AfD just figured out how to use it effectively.
Addition:
TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe -- ( July 2024, updated September 2024)
According to TikTok's newly public advertising library, ads from China’s largest state media outlets touting everything from China Covid lockdowns to tourism in the troubled Xinjiang region have been broadcast to millions of the platform's European users.
TikTok Ads Paid for by Chinese Media Target European Users -- (August 2023)
Chinese media sponsored over a thousand ads on TikTok targeting European audiences. Additionally, accounts that carefully obscure their connections to China may pose further risks in coordinated information manipulation campaigns.
This are just two examples, there is much more across the web.
The articles simply describe Chinese media firms buying ads on Tiktok. You can literally search through the ad library and find media firms from basically every country that can afford it.
Omg they're buying ads for.....tourism? ?
The headline is dishonest propaganda. You gotta read down in the article to find the hidden reality.
Phony headline: China's TikTok “more dangerous” in terms of spreading Russian disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, Ukrainian expert says...
Reasonable person in the article: “But the problem extends beyond Telegram — fake news is widespread on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads,” she added. “The danger is focusing too narrowly on one platform while Russian propaganda continues to thrive across the entire digital landscape.”
... So a short form video platform is more dangerous than a dubitably secure group chat app?
That's comparing apricots to ocelots
Can we stop blaming platforms for what their users post on them?
It's not TikTok, Telegram, Twitter, Mastodon, Lemmy spreading misinformation (or correct information for that matter), it is their users. People used to understand this, somehow they don't anymore.
The platforms are responsible because they curate and serve the content. Their algorithms can be and are exploited, but the fact that they're algorithms doesn't absolve them of responsibility.
Nobody told them they have to serve and intake millions of hours of content every day. If a human editor put that stuff out we'd hold the business accountable for that person's actions.
Algorithms and AI aren't excuses.
Russia-founded
Western brainrot at all time high this morning I see
But it was.
Telegram was launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Previously, the pair founded the Russian social network VK, which they left in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government.[23] Pavel sold his remaining stake in VK and left Russia after resisting government pressure.
Telegram is now based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The company is registered as an LLC in the U.S. and as a company in the British Virgin Islands.
Re-read your own quote:
Previously, the pair founded the Russian social network VK, which they left in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government.
VK was founded by private entrepreneur Durov in Russia, no relation to government at all, and was later taken over by the government in 2013.
Telegram which is entirely unrelated to VK has no connection to Russia at all, and was never based in it, it's inception was a direct response to the Russian government's authoritarianism.
Neither of these are "Russia-founded", while forgivable to say this for VK as it is very much government run, Telegram has no relation to Russia and it's raison d'etre is explicitly anti-Russian gov't.