Pro-Palestinian posts outpacing pro-Israel posts on TikTok
- Younger people are four times more likely to support Palestinians: Poll
- TikTok maintains there is no company algorithm at play
- The Israel-Hamas war has been raging for nearly three weeks
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(NewsNation) — The trend of younger Americans towards being more sympathetic to Palestinians in Israel’s war against Hamas is playing out on TikTok, where there are nearly four times the number of views on posts using the hashtag “IStandwithPalestine” than those using “IStandwithIsrael” during the final week of October.
According to an exclusive NewsNation DecisionDesk HQ poll, sympathies for the Palestinian cause are highest among voters ages 18 to 34 at just under 25%.
According to TikTok, about 87,000 posts with nearly 285 million views included the hashtag “IStandwithPalestine,” a far cry from the 9,000 posts dealing with Israel, which were closer to about 64 million views.
TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said that data over a longer period of time seems to favor Israel. He also dismissed the notion that an algorithm is at play.
“The content on TikTok is generated by our community, and recommended based on content-neutral signals from users, and is not influenced by any government.
Sarakshi Rai, the director of audience development at The Hill, told NewsNation the social media age lends just about everything to speculation.
“There’s just so much disinformation out there right now that we’ve really seen a lot of fake news flying around, you know,” she said. “Fact-checking teams are working 24 hours just to disseminate the information and figure out what is real and what isn’t.”
