Is Tiktok paying the price for surge in pro-Palestinian content?

Perhaps one of the most engaging social media platforms where "pro-Palestine" content is shared is Instagram. This is the platform which saw the rise of the 25-year-old Motaz Azaizi Gazan. 

His follower count rose to 1 million by mid-October last year from merely 25,000 before 7 October. Currently, he has 18.4 million followers on the platform.  

He is not alone. If not on a similar scale, other Palestinians on the ground and in the diaspora have gained hundreds of thousands of followers, or millions on Instagram since Hamas' attack against Israelis on 7 October 2023.

But what exactly is "pro-Palestine" content? For many of these professional and citizen journalists and video creators, it simply meant filming what's happening on the ground and uploading it online, for the most part. Then there is other content which speaks of historical facts, connects dots and forms a narrative, which shows what the Palestinians have endured for decades at the hands of Israel. 

Fear not, content creators and journalists – nearly all – faced an incredible amount of shadow banning on the app. Many accounts were terminated, and account holders scurried to make backup accounts. For months, this continues to be the case. 

For instance, Jameela Jamil (who plays Tahani Al-Jamil on The Good Place) posted on her Instagram on Wednesday, "A few months ago my engagement was 300k-400k views on stories. I am down to 20k people even seeing my story… people are telling me I am muted when they haven't muted me [on video clips] …harder to search for me." 

By any means, that is a huge, huge drop. 

She goes on to say this "looks like punishment for speaking about what is happening in ME." Jamil currently has 3.7 million followers on the platform. 

Instagram is not new to these allegations from users. But despite these limitations and restrictions, "pro-Palestine" content continued to flow and spread. Instagram became a place for information about Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, which is either never to be found on mainstream media or to be found nearly days late.

But there is another social media platform which seemingly has a large volume of "pro-Palestine" content and non-American owned: that's TikTok. 

Numbers don't lie

On 31 October last year, Axios reported, "On TikTok, views of pro-Palestine posts far surpass views of pro-Israel posts." 

To put things into perspective, the report found that, from 23-30 October, 87k posts on the app was #standwithPalestine which garnered 285 million views. In contrast, over the same period, 9k posts on the app was #standwithIsrael which garnered 64 million views. 

A week earlier, over 16-23 October, 123k posts on the app with #standwithPalestine garnered only 11 million views. In contrast, only 8k posts on the app with #standwithIsrael garnered more views at 12 million. 

This is to say, the Axios report indicates a major shift in people's opinions and perspectives on Israel-Palestine in October 2023 on TikTok. 

TikTok has over 1 billion users worldwide. According to Statista, as of January 2024, nearly 40% of users belong to the 18-24 age group.  

On 1 November 2023, NBC reported how "Critics renew calls for a TikTok ban, claiming the platform has an anti-Israel bias."

A Forbes November 2023 report said Meta and TikTok have received over 8,000 requests from Israel to remove content related to the Hamas conflict that they allege violates the companies' policies.

While the majority of the takedown requests (9,500 total content takedowns across major social media platforms) were to Meta, 26% were directed at TikTok. The agency says 94% of the content across major social sites that it flagged has been taken down. Telegram (accounting for less than 5% of the request), it said, did not comply.  

The government agency also told Forbes that its takedown requests to all the social media giants have increased by 10-fold since the Hamas attacks.

Here's a catch. Israel's government tends to conflate pro-Palestine with pro-Hamas.

But fear not, TikTok also restricts "pro-Palestine" content in general – perhaps not as strictly as Meta-owned Instagram. 

For instance, Tadhg Hickey (Irish comedian and actor) was banned on TikTok this week for his pro-Palestine content — primarily skits to show the oppressiveness of Israel. He has a 216k followers on IG. 

And TikTok is not only just doing this. For instance, two years ago, TikTok banned, without warning, Middle East Eye's social media producer Maya Nora Saiid's account. She had a 2 million following at the time on the platform. 

This happened after her post (where she asks Siri the time for Israel and then asks for the time in Palestine — to which Siri says "I am sorry I do not understand what you are saying") went viral on social media. So best to assume, that TikTok is not exactly a free-flowing ecosystem for pro-Palestine content. 

Fast forward to last week. On 13 March, the US House voted overwhelmingly, 352 to 65 in favour of a bill to ban TikTok in the United States — which has 170 million users and according to TikTok CEO, it's a platform which supports around 7 million small American businesses. 

First, perhaps a moment to reflect on when was the last time the US House voted this overwhelmingly for any bill. An 84% majority vote seems unique. 

Second, this vote did not precipitate out of thin air. It was a long time coming given how the US Congress was clawed and hooked into national security concerns related to a Singaporean social media app which has Chinese investors — an app which also has a far and wide reach. 

I will skip the geopolitical significance of this phenomenon. But it could also be important to note only in March last year, the Washington Post published this "Is banning TikTok bad politics? Some US officials think so" citing Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. "The politician in me thinks you're gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever," she said in a Bloomberg interview in assessing a TikTok ban impact.    
 
So there must have been a change in the wind.

And finally, the US House vote to ban TikTok is set to head to the Senate before reaching President Joe Biden's desk – who is currently on TikTok for his reelection campaign and said he would sign the bill if it passed Congress, according to a CNBC report.  

Moreover, this vote received applause from the Jewish community and Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Israel and TikTok 

Times of Israel reported how major Jewish groups back a bipartisan bill that could see TikTok banned. The Jewish Federation of North America posted this on X: "TikTok Time's Up" with a caption which reads, "We want Congress to tell TikTok that their time is up. We're done with the lies the platform spreads about the Jewish people and Israel. Take action now!" 

Perhaps more interesting is Republican Mike Gallagher's (who wrote the bill to ban TikTok) top contributor. It's Palantir Technologies in 2023-2024. 

Gallagher received $44,000 from this company, according to OpenSecrets.org (a nonprofit organisation based in Washington, DC that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying). 

Palantir CEO and co-founder Alex Karp flew the board to Israel in January, reported Times of Israel, to show solidarity. He decried the lack of US public support during the war with the Hamas terror group.
In January this year, Bloomberg reported that Palantir Technologies Inc, the data analysis firm that provides militaries with artificial intelligence models, agreed to a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry to supply technology to help the country's war effort.

Another interesting tidbit is, according to a Democracy Now report, Palestinian rights activists say Israel's war on Gaza has galvanised anti-TikTok sentiment in conservative and centrist lawmakers. 

The report goes on to say, "In a leaked post-October 7 audio recording, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, can be heard saying, 'We have a TikTok problem,' referencing declining public support for Israel among younger people. 

"The progressive group RootsAction also noted that AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is the top donor to Congress member Mike Gallagher, who authored the TikTok ban bill." 

There has been a backlash against the US House vote. A ban on TikTok may further isolate the Biden administration from its young voters. After all, President Biden recently said he cannot understand why non-Palestinians are so vested in the Palestinian plight, according to another Democracy Now report.