False and misleading posts about the Ukraine conflict continue to go viral on major social media platforms, as Russia's invasion of the country extends beyond 500 days.
Some of the most widely shared examples can be found on Twitter, posted by subscribers with a blue tick, who pay for their content to be promoted to other users.
A manipulated video showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a conference call with Elon Musk is circulating online. The footage has been digitally altered to include white powder, which some social media users have said is cocaine on his desk.
RUSSIA’S INVASION OF Ukraine is not the first social media war—but it is the first to play out on TikTok. The 2011 Arab Spring was fomented and furthered on Twitter and Facebook. Clips of Syrian children choking from chemical weapons filled social media timelines in 2018. And the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, with all the chaos that wrought, was live-tweeted into our homes last year. Images of unspeakable horrors supplanting the banality of status updates and selfies is nothing new. But the current conflict is a very different kind of social media war, fueled by TikTok’s transformative effect on the old norms of tech.
TikTok is feeding false and misleading content about the war in Ukraine to users within 40 minutes of their signing up to the app, regardless of whether they run any searches on the platform, an investigation by NewsGuard has found.
A new TikTok account can be shown falsehoods about the Ukraine war within minutes of signing up to the app, according to an investigation by anti-misinformation outlet NewsGuard.
TikTok was ‘just a dancing app’. Then the Ukraine war started
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered a wave of falsehoods on social media and the airwaves. In a new Radio 4 podcast series, War on Truth, our specialist reporter follows the stories of people caught up by misinformation - and gives some tips about how to avoid it.
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