A CNA experiment on TikTok uncovers a stream of misleading content on the Middle East conflict – one that if left unchecked, could have “dangerous” repercussions for people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
New: You can now listen to articles.SINGAPORE: Mr Mohamed Aliff Tusliman is on a mission to find unfiltered, unbiased and “more real-life content” on the ongoingThe 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.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ surprise attack in early October, over 40,000 fake profiles took part in the conversation on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X, according to scans by Israel-based social media threat intelligence company Cyabra. While the proportion was smaller in Singapore , this was after a spike of five percentage points from last year, the biggest increase among most-used platforms in the country.
Mr Harris Zainul, deputy director of research at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies , said the shift towards TikTok for news speaks to a larger change in media consumption habits. But in the week that followed, the journalist started seeing clips on her For You feed that clearly contained misinformation. They often featured legitimate footage from past military conflicts or tragedies – but paired with misleading captions.
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.
“Most people here don’t really care about whether the videos they share are 100 per cent accurate," said Mr Maula, who teaches at a university.Most Indonesian TikTok users guilty of sharing fake news on the war are regular, pro-Palestinian Muslims, said Ms Ika Ningtyas, fact-checking coordinator at Indonesian news outlet Tempo.
The agency has seen misinformation appealing to religious affiliations among diasporas and the wider international community. “While we have not observed any significant differences in the information environment in Southeast Asia, such differences pose a potential flashpoint in Singapore and across any society where diverse religious denominations co-exist.”
That year marked the first war of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which displaced around 700,000 Palestinians and led to the founding of the Jewish state. And those who support the Israelis are likely to share videos that manipulate the history of the Middle East conflict and supposedly show Hamas’ atrocities against Israeli hostages, said the freelance writer.
These could include state actors and other organisations with vested interests in the Israel-Hamas conflict, its spokesperson said. potential for violence if online content – false or otherwise – mixes with offline rumours to lead to mob attacks”. Meta – which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram – and TikTok about how they curb misinformation about the war. It is also investigating X for allegedly disseminating bogus information.
The platform, owned by Chinese tech firm Bytedance, previously said it had added more moderators who speak Arabic and Hebrew to review content related to the conflict. It also works with external fact checking organisations like Agence France-Presse. The spokesperson added that TikTok further reviews content as it gains popularity on the app, in order to prevent the recommendation of videos that violate its rules.
Mr Harris from Malaysia called for social media apps to face more regulatory scrutiny, and to be more transparent about how they moderate content. 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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