SINGAPORE — Mr Mohamed Aliff Tusliman is on a mission to find unfiltered, unbiased and “more real-life content” on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian war.
The dominant social media app provides information “recorded live or posted by individuals who are actually on the ground”, said Mr Aliff.
The clip’s caption, in Hebrew, said Palestinian militant group Hamas was to blame, and contained the hashtag #freeisrael. “For me, a general rule of thumb is to never 100 per cent believe anything on social media regardless of the platform, especially with all the artificial intelligence tools ,” said Mr Aliff.
Their intentions might start off benign, but experts warned it could lead to real-world consequences such as the rousing of emotionally charged sentiments and flashpoints among religiously diverse groups. An annual report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that nearly a quarter of Malaysians turn to TikTok for news, up nine percentage points from the previous year; while 22 per cent of Indonesians do so, in an increase of six percentage points.
Meanwhile, the proportions of people in the three countries using services like Facebook and Twitter – before it changed its name to X – for news have been declining. For this article, a CNA journalist in Singapore created a TikTok account and used it just to watch and “like” content related to the Israel-Hamas war. Search terms like “Palestine”, “Israel” and “Israel-Hamas war updates” were used, and initially yielded videos from established media outlets like CNN and Sky News.
Elsewhere, a TikTok profile named War News posted a video – still up online – purportedly showing Gaza being bombed by Israel at night. Multiple commenters have since corroborated the footage to be of the US attacking Iraq 20 years ago. “From our observations, misinformation and disinformation on the conflict largely originates from outside Singapore,” the spokesperson said. “In Singapore, we have observed that members of the public are often only reposting content related to the conflict, rather than creating it.”
The video he posted included a screenshot of an X post claiming a top Israeli general had been captured by Hamas. But this was debunked by news agency Associated Press, which reported that the general had been spotted in both a photo and video of top Israeli military officials in discussion.Malaysia-based TikTok accounts have also shared inaccurate information on the Israel-Hamas war.
“They share the content to express their feelings and to defend Palestine without verifying them properly,” she told CNA. This includes a claim that a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza was bombed by Israeli forces, which Black Dot said might have been an effort to garner support from that particular Christian community.
Dr Shashi Jayakumar, executive director of the Singapore-based SJKGeostrategic Advisory, observed that social media content on the war has roused sentiments among the Malay-Muslim population in Singapore. A Malaysian TikTok user who regularly posts videos of himself commenting on the Israel-Hamas war said it was a situation where proponents of either side were seeking to push their narratives.
Mr Thaqib spoke of the “dangerous” implications of letting misinformation on TikTok spread unabated, including the potential escalation of similarly inaccurate or emotionally charged arguments.Warring parties in modern conflicts worldwide have long used the internet to try and win over hearts and minds, often mixing truth with falsehoods.
These could include state actors and other organisations with vested interests in the Israel-Hamas conflict, its spokesperson said. Ms Lau said Indonesian researchers studying both older platforms like YouTube and newer ones like TikTok are warning of"the potential for violence if online content – false or otherwise – mixes with offline rumours to lead to mob attacks”.
In response to CNA’s queries, Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information said it has “emphasised to social media services the need to step up content moderation efforts during this period, taking into consideration local sensitivities”. It did not elaborate. Apart from content moderation, recent media articles and academic studies have reported that TikTok’s algorithm does not favour news, and that misleading videos on the platform can “circulate quickly thanks to their shock value”.
Another article in October said users were paying TikTok as little as US$7 to promote and spread misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war. “The argument that they are merely neutral platforms is manifestly untrue, and those forwarding this argument today - after everything that has happened - are disingenuous,” he told CNA.
And it means that a heavy-handed approach - through regulation or screening - may not be the best, as it could lead to the public viewing either the state or media organisation as no longer impartial. A diverse suite of countermeasures, including fact-checking, legal levers and prebunking – being educated beforehand – could be employed to clean the information environment and arm people with accurate information, said Dr Gulizar.TikTok users have commented on how it can be difficult to ascertain the truth of what they see on the platform, especially when it is populated by self-proclaimed experts and talking heads analysing or opining about the conflict.
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