Is TikTok pushing young voters towards the far-right?

YouTube is not the only platform struggling against right-wing manipulation efforts. A new report from an E.U. think tank concerns the far-right German political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which appears to be disproportionately promoted by TikTok‘s search algorithm.

The report was authored by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface. According to the findings, approximately one-quarter of young German TikTok users who search for a specific political party receive suggestions related to other parties. In most of those cases, AfD was the party benefiting from the misdirection.

The search suggestions noted in the report include apparent falsehoods that sling mud at AfD’s rival parties and candidates. For example, some TikTok users who searched for Robert Habeck — leader of the left-wing Green Party — were served the suggested phrase “Habeck’s wife leaves,” even though that claim is not linked to any substantive evidence.

TikTok did not dispute the report’s findings, but a representative for the platform explained that some accounts related to AfD have been made ineligible in search results due to content violations. “We protect the integrity of our platform by proactively enforcing firm policies against election misinformation and hate speech, and connecting people to reliable information at our Election Centers, which received over 7.5 million visits before the EU election,” a TikTok spokesperson told WIRED.

AfD, which uses TikTok to spread misinformation, is following a playbook that has produced banner results for right-wing groups on YouTube. A 2019 report from The New York Times detailed YouTube’s inadvertent radicalization of young people through manipulated algorithmic results. More recent studies have argued that the connection between the YouTube algorithm and far-right indoctrination is overstated, but the latest research shows that right-wing viewpoints are more likely to show up in YouTube recs.

The radicalization efforts happening in Germany show that TikTok is not immune from this specific internet-age political issue. The platform’s value as a search engine may help it compete with Google, but it also provides more opportunities for right-wing chicanery.