Russian's invasion of Ukraine has already fueled some nascent misinformation tactics,including the spread of realistic video game footage and the use of TIKTOK to create fake war zone live stream.
The content highlights how misinformation on the Internet tends to constantly evolve,with some older forms of misleading content relevant (many users continue to share older videos misleading as coming from the ongoing conflict).
And while TIKTOK has in recent years vowed to crack down on misinformation,it's relatively recent entry into mainstream as a major social media,along with some of its unique features,have made it ripe for misleading content.
 
"The platform is flooded with raw footage,which is good and bad .Fir some people,they genuinely feel like they're getting a more authentic experience that's not through the filter of a news agency",said Abbie Richards,a TIKTOK researcher at the non profit Accelerationism Researcher consortium,which studies online terror movements."At the same,there's just no verification"
 
The war had already taken center stage on TIKTOK in recent weeks,where legitimate videos from Ukrainians showed Russian forces advancing toward the border over a week before Russia attacked.
And in recent days,viral information has also spread on the platform.Among the more unique forms of misinformation are livestreams that have attempted to mimic some of the scenes in Ukraine,with users pointing cameras at nondescript scenes or looping video and playing sirens in the background.
In one livestream on that Thursday,a tiktok user aimed the camera at the residential street outside a window and dubbed the sound of air-raid sirens over the footage.Days earlier,the same tikok user showed a different angle of the same street,and the car license plates matched those in UK.
 
Thanks to TIKTOK'S donation system,which is widely used during livestream as way for user's to tip creators,those streams can provide immediate financial incentives,though it was under how much money any particular stream brought in.
A tiktok spokesperson said that it is taking action against users who are pretending to livestream from Ukraine in order to solicit donations.
"We continue to closely monitor the situation,with increased resources to respond to emerging trends and remove violative content,including harmful misinformation and promotion of violence"a TIKTOK spokesperson said.
some TikTok users have already caught on.In the comment sections of livestreams containing misinformation,TIKTOK users are leaving comments like "Don't donate"and"please report,it's a scam".
 
One tiktok user posted videos urging their 65,000 followers to watch their ongoing Ukraine livestream,in the livestream,the user thanked viewers who were sending donations while an air-raid siren blared in the background.scrolling back on that sam users account,videos showed them handling moldovan currency,leading to comments calling the livestream a "scam".
Only a few hundred viewers were watching the Moldovan user's livestream,but another livestream with over 130,000 viewers appeared to be playing grainy footage from inside a crowded Ukraine subway station on a loop.
 
Other fake videos on tiktok are not livestream,but rather regular short-form videos that are taking advantage of the apps audio features,which allows users to dub their content with sounds in the platforms user-generated audio library.
The sounds of screaming,gun flights and arid-raid sirens were uploaded to TIKTOK as an original sound bite by one user and was then used on more than 240 videos purporting to be from ukriane.
 
Footage from the flight simulator"Digital combat simulator world"was shared by Ukraine's official ministry of defense on twitter,and received over 600,000 views.The footage was previously uploaded as part of a highlight compilation on youtube.users on Facebook,Twitter abd Tiktok have repeatedly shared of the video game"Armas"as war footage from Ukraine version.
 
"I think that then infrastructure_the literal design of the platform_is part of the problem.It is amplifying fear and misinformation",Richards said."TIKTOK'S infrastructure is structurally incompatible with the still other videos are far more common forms of misinformation.On Thursday,shortly after Russia began it's attack on ukraine,a TIKTOK user posted a video of a soldier parachuting out of an airplane.The videos was first posted in 2016 by an Instagram account with the same user.

WAR IN UKRAINE SPARKS NEW WAVE OF MISINFORMATION.

Useful links

Company

Information

Content Writers

Freelancers

Freelance Jobs

Online Jobs

Designers

Developers

Translations