TikTok ‘spreading vaccine lies to kids’

Young children are being fed anti-vaxxer misinformation by TikTok shortly after signing up, an investigation has found.

Children as young as nine are being fed anti-vaxxer misinformation by TikTok within minutes of signing up, an investigation has found.

Children as young as nine are being fed anti-vaxxer misinformation by TikTok within minutes of signing up, an investigation has found.

Anti-misinformation and news rating site NewsGuard found that, despite TikTok’s assurances to the contrary, the site remains a nestbed for circulating false anti-vaxxer claims to its young audience.

The battle to get Facebook, TikTok and other social media to deal with false information about COVID-19 and vaccinations has been going for months, with the social media networks claiming they are deleting it as they encounter it. However, the problem is worse than ever.

Researchers believe their efforts are useless unless positive messaging that counters these claims are as deeply embedded in the platform as the algorithms that serve up the misinformation, and that this messaging needs to be countered at the local level.

In Australia, in recent months, TikTok has made efforts to counter anti-vaxxer materials with initiatives such as streaming the NSW Government’s 11am Covid media conferences and promoting vaccination material of its own.

But there are doubts this messaging is getting to the people who need it and that streaming of government media conferences preaches to the converted.

This issue is even more pressing now with governments wanting community vaccination rates to extend beyond 80 per cent to 90 per cent and beyond to improve their ability to control outbreaks.

NewsGuard found that despite some initiatives by TikTok, users including children are overwhelmed by false COVID-19 and anti-vaxxer material served up by algorithms within minutes of joining.

“The short-form video-sharing app, which is especially popular with children under 18, served up false and misleading COVID-19 claims within minutes to nine children recruited by NewsGuard and carefully supervised by their parents or other adult relatives,” the investigation report says.

“The barrage of toxic content — including videos asserting that the vaccines are deadly and that COVID-19 is a genocide conspiracy — came even though some of the children did not follow a single account or search for specific kinds of information.

“In August and September 2021, NewsGuard asked the nine children, aged nine to 17, to create new TikTok accounts, with the goal of measuring how long it would take the platform to feed them COVID-19 misinformation,” the report says.

“The group was composed of four girls and five boys — four English speakers, three Italian speakers, one German speaker, and one French speaker. They were instructed to stay on the platform for 45 minutes and to record the session. In all cases, NewsGuard received permission for the children to participate from a parent.

“Although TikTok says it prohibits children younger than 13 from using the platform, children as young as nine were easily able to sign on with no coaching from an adult.”

NewsGuard says its analysis of screen recordings taken by the participants shows that in their first 35 minutes on TikTok, all but one (88.89 per cent) were shown misinformation related to COVID-19, and two-thirds (66.67 per cent) were shown misinformation specific to COVID-19 vaccines.”

It says four participants were instructed to have “minimal engagement” with the app’s features, meaning not to follow other accounts, search for specific topics, or click on hashtags.

However, they were quickly shown false COVID-19 information even though they didn’t actively search for content.

The other five in the “high engagement” group were served 22 videos containing COVID-19 misinformation, while the “low engagement” group were shown 10.

The contents’ claims included that COVID-19 vaccines kill people, the vaccines are “fake”, hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19 and 80 to 90 per cent of COVID-19 patients in Israeli hospitals are fully vaccinated. It was claimed COVID-19 is “the name of the international plan for the control and reduction of populations”.

Deputy chair for the Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation at University of NSW Holly Seale said society was aware of only a fraction of the misinformation circulating on TikTok and other social media, with much of it distributed silently through other platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Telegram.

Associate Professor Seale says she had been letterboxed by Covid misinformation supporters who provided a list of Telegram application groups that they say she should join.

She says it is not sufficient to increase government health messaging on social media as many of those susceptible to misinformation did not trust governments.

Recruiting “social influencers” to the cause of proffering accurate health information about COVID-19 and vaccination was one approach, as was tackling it within the community.

“An over-reliance on the systems is not going to be sufficient in terms of trying to reduce exposure to misinformation; it’s like any public health approach, it needs to be layered, it needs to be focused not only on the system but also on the end user.

“If we focus all of our efforts on the social media systems to be regulated, people will find clever ways, clever loopholes, or they‘ll go offline the social media sites.

“Working with local providers, local stakeholders, and getting them to debunk, they may be more trusted than say government, but it‘s also about teaching people the skills to look out for this misinformation.”

In response TikTok said community wellbeing was a priority. “The safety and wellbeing of our community is our priority, and we work diligently to take action on content and accounts that spread misinformation while also promoting authoritative content about COVID-19 and educating users about media literacy,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

READ THE NEWSGUARD TIKTOK REPORT