Finnish Tiktok users consume dozens of times more content labeled positive for Palestine than for Israel, according to Tiktok’s analytics.
In mid-November, #freepalestina was even the most popular hashtag on Finnish Tiktok. The most used #standwithisrael in connection with Israel, on the other hand, did not fit into the top 100 hashtags.
In the picture below, you can see how much more Palestine-related videos are watched on Tiktok in Finland than Israel-related videos. You can also see that the views of both have been decreasing in recent weeks.
For every video marked as pro-Israel, the Finnish Tiktok audience watches 30–50 videos marked with freepalestina.
– After all, it is quite special that this has so incredibly strongly piled up on the other side in this conflict, says Mikko Alasaarela.
The CEO of Equel Social, Alasaarela, has focused on the operation of the algorithms of various social media channels in his work.
Many young Finns use Tiktok every day
Tiktok is especially popular with young people and young adults. It is used by about one and a half million Finns.
In a study commissioned by the DNA company the majority of 16- to 24-year-olds said they use the app daily.
A US study has found that young people are more likely to be pro-Palestine than older generations. Published in November according to the study a majority of Americans aged 18-34 disapprove of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
There is no similar study from Finland.
Alasaarela estimates that even in Finland young people are more sensitive to taking a stand for Palestine than for Israel.
– Difference in Tiktok [Palestiina- ia Israel-videoiden katselujen määrässä] is, however, enormously large. I find it unlikely that it would go to such a level by itself, says Alasaarela.
In this video you can see how Tiktok works:
Tiktok is a Chinese app owned by the Bytedance company. It is known that the Chinese government is actively influencing the version of Tiktok in China.
So would this be a case of China wanting western youth to side with the Palestinians in the ongoing conflict?
Alasaarela points out that Tiktok’s content is not only regulated by an algorithm, but its content is also curated by human forces. It enables detailed editing of the contents.
– China could want to [Gazan sodan avulla] sows confrontation in Europe, says Alasaarela.
Researcher: The label Palestine has been used for a long time
Dissertation researcher Esko Nieminen disagrees with Alasaarela on China’s influence in this particular conflict. In his opinion, the content related to the Gaza war shared on Tiktok reflects well the attitudes of young Finns.
Nieminen studies political influence through Tiktok at the University of Tampere.
He points out that “free Palestine” is a much older subject tag than anything related to Israel. It has been widely used in social media even before the most recent war in Gaza.
– When young people in Western countries became interested in the war, the subject tag took a completely new flight, Nieminen describes.
In Nieminen’s opinion, the different social media strategies of the State of Israel and Palestine also become visible in Tiktok.
– Israel has a habit of using a lot of paid advertising, and that doesn’t work on Tiktok.
Tiktok prohibits political advertising on its platform. Its own analytics show that pro-Israel ads have also been removed from Tiktok in Finland.
Congressman accuses Tiktok of brainwashing young people
The disproportion of Gaza content spreading on Tiktok has also attracted attention, especially in the United States.
There Republican congressman Mike Gallagher accused Tiktok of “brainwashing the youth” against US allies. He called for banning the entire Tiktok based on the huge difference in the number of subject tags related to Palestine and Israel.
In the US, #istandwithisrael videos had been viewed 2 million times and #freeaplestine videos 43 million times in the third week of December.
Gallagher and other Tiktok critics believe that Tiktok uses its algorithm to widen the gap between the visibility of pro-Palestine and pro-Israel videos.
Nieminen disagrees with this as well.
– It seems that, especially in the United States, politicians have detached themselves from what young people think about Israel and Palestine. There, especially the older generations have traditionally been very pro-Israel, researcher Esko Nieminen says.
China’s potential influence is extremely difficult to prove
Tiktok denied all the allegations on his blog in mid-November. It pointed out that just measuring topic tags does not tell everything about the content of the published videos and their views.
It also stated that because #freepalestine is so old and well-known, it also dominates content on social media giant Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.
Interest in pro-Palestine content on social media is also indicated by the enormous popularity of Palestinian social media stars. The number of followers of some of the young accounts from inside Gaza rose from thousands to millions in just a few weeks.
Alasaarela states that it is extremely difficult to prove China’s possible influence on Tiktok’s Gaza algorithm. Tiktok itself says very little about its algorithms, and it is difficult to study them from the outside.
However, Alasaarela points out that, for example, the dangerous challenges still spreading in Tiktok raise doubts about the motives of Tiktok’s owners.
– For some reason, Tiktok has not blocked these in Western countries. In the Chinese Tiktok version, such campaigns do not spread, says Alasaarela.
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