TikTok search results ‘rife with misinformation’

TikTok is serving up misinformation to users searching for news about politics, climate change, Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and more, according to a report released Wednesday.

Toxicity and false claims are a “significant threat” at TikTok, which is becoming a go-to online venue for young people to search for information, according to a study by NewsGuard, a media watchdog.

NewsGuard describes itself as a “journalism and technology tool” that rates the credibility of websites and online information.

“Even when TikTok’s search results yielded little to no misinformation, the results were often more polarising than Google’s,” NewsGuard said of its findings.

NewsGuard in September analysed the top 20 results from 27 TikTok searches on news topics, finding that 19.5 per cent of the videos suggested contained false or misleading claims.

Researchers said they compared TikTok and Google results from searches for information about school shootings, abortion, Covid-19, US elections, Russia’s war in Ukraine and other news.