Toni Airaksinen: Gaza Gore and why you should Delete TikTok Today
If your kid has TikTok, today is probably one of the best days to get them off the app. Perhaps you should get off TikTok too for a few days, too.
Here’s why.
Starting a few months ago, TikTok has been a social media playground for SJP and pro-Palestine activists, many of whom use gore and shocking images to raise awareness of what they call Israeli war crimes in a hope to stop the assault on Hamas-led territory.
I’m not here to take sides or debate whether the gore is propaganda or not. What I’m worried about, is the kids with TikTok.
For the last three days, the algorithm on TikTok leads us to videos of children with their heads cut off (allegedly by Israeli bombs). For a few days that was a common sight.
Since Sunday evening… it’s become filled with so much gore (corpses, piling bodies, babies with their arms legs or heads cut off… close ups of people with their abdomens or faces sliced open or off…) in videos allegedly exported from Gaza.
It’s unavoidable.
Even after blocking the words Israel, Gaza, and Hamas, and Palestine, I’m STILL seeing seeing the same 30–40 videos over and over again on TikTok since two mornings ago. These aren’t from just from Palestinian accounts anymore.
I don’t follow politics on TikTok. More than 70% of the accounts I follow are of adults who have the same medical issues that I do, or accounts of young adults who are successfully recovered from anorexia and living a good life.
But alas, these are also the accounts sharing gore, pledging to help make sure the world has “All Eyes On Rafah” — as you may have heard.
This is same horrific style of gore I grew up with on in the Wild West days of dial-up internet — I don’t think it was healthy for me to be exposed to that at all. But it’s being beamed in all directions on TikTok, from health accounts to Spotify’s Top 500 artists.
The only difference is that the gore is in HD 60 FPS now, caught on video, with people screaming and crying in the backgrounds.
My housemate had to take away my phone because I keep accidentally opening the app while scrolling. There’s some gore on Instagram too, but not nearly as much. I woke up today see someone with their face half cutoff in what I can only surmise is a medical tent… and I can’t imagine how a child would feel seeing that.
I don’t USUALLY like to speculate about TikTok’s political motives.
But I suspect TikTok could easily ban these uploads or censor them (same videos over and over again)… but this time, I actually suspect the Chinese algorithm is pushing extreme content for political aims or to sow political discord.
Otherwise, there is no reason to be hosting so much gore on what is essentially, one of the top apps for young kids and teens. Not to mention all the little kids who watch TikTok when given their parent’s phone.
In any case, TikTok is no bueno today… maybe for a while… until they get that under control.