- Young voters are exposed to numerous fake AI-generated videos and misinformation on TikTok.
- Both political parties engage in a meme war on TikTok, trying to compete for more young voters with various means.
A large number of fake AI-generated news featuring leaders of political leaders were widely spread on TikTok, the newly emerged social media battleground in this election, among young voters.
Fake news on TikTok
Misleading and divisive content is being shared by everyone from students and political activists to comedians and anonymous bot-like accounts, according to BBC. Some o these videos have hundreds of thousands of views. For example, an unevidenced video claimed that a major scandal prompted Rishi Sunak to call an early election and the baseless claim that Sir Keir Starmer was responsible for the failure to prosecute serial paedophile Jimmy Savile. Other AI-generated videos share misleading claims about his national service pledge for 18-year-olds, suggesting young people would be sent to current war zones in Ukraine and Gaza. Some of these are described as satire or parody in captions, but the comments suggest some users may not have the ability to tell whether these claims are true.
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Why do they create fake news?
One of the creators the fake new prevalent on TikTok is 16-year-old from the south of England who made a satirical edit of that first Rishi Sunak TikTok about national service. “I didn’t specifically create this account for the election and the reason I made the TikTok initially was just for a joke – I didn’t expect to get over 400k bloody views,” she said, adding that she is not affiliated with any party and has not received any money for creating the TikTok. “Social media really is the only platform for young people to have a voice nowadays in my opinion.”
