One of the biggest complaints that people often tend to have about things like social media is that it can become a place where misinformation can spread rather rapidly. In fact, social media has been the root cause of a lot of misinformation surrounding vaccines and the coronavirus in general, but that’s not the only kind of false info that can be shared on such platforms with recent events indicating just how pervasive the spread of misinformation on social media actually is.
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a veritable storm of false news on various social media platforms, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that TikTok might be the worst place for such information right now. According to the fact-checking platform Poynter, many bad actors on TikTok are trying to manipulate videos by overlaying different audio clips on them which are unrelated to the video but nonetheless make it seem like the footage is an authentic depiction of what is actually occurring in that part of the world.
A good example of this can be seen with a recent video that was shared on TikTok that shows Russian soldiers parachuting into Ukraine. While the video itself has not been altered to any extent at all, it’s still not accurate since it was taken several years ago. Misinformation about the current war in Ukraine is something that can have a negative impact because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up preventing people from discovering what is truly going on over there.
There have also been videos that purportedly depict Ukrainian soldiers weeping as they say farewell to their family members, and this video once again is from about five years ago or so. That means that users need to start being really careful about the videos that they look into on TikTok because it can be difficult to parse the real ones from the fake ones. A lack of context can make even real videos not as true as they might seem.
Read next: Russian government bans news channels and social media apps, residents turn to VPN to bypass censorship
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a veritable storm of false news on various social media platforms, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that TikTok might be the worst place for such information right now. According to the fact-checking platform Poynter, many bad actors on TikTok are trying to manipulate videos by overlaying different audio clips on them which are unrelated to the video but nonetheless make it seem like the footage is an authentic depiction of what is actually occurring in that part of the world.
A good example of this can be seen with a recent video that was shared on TikTok that shows Russian soldiers parachuting into Ukraine. While the video itself has not been altered to any extent at all, it’s still not accurate since it was taken several years ago. Misinformation about the current war in Ukraine is something that can have a negative impact because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up preventing people from discovering what is truly going on over there.
There have also been videos that purportedly depict Ukrainian soldiers weeping as they say farewell to their family members, and this video once again is from about five years ago or so. That means that users need to start being really careful about the videos that they look into on TikTok because it can be difficult to parse the real ones from the fake ones. A lack of context can make even real videos not as true as they might seem.
Read next: Russian government bans news channels and social media apps, residents turn to VPN to bypass censorship