TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media company whose role in spreading anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda has come under scrutiny, refused an ad promoting awareness of the plight of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, deeming the ad “too political.”
Fox News reported:
A few weeks after thousands of Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel on October 7, murdering 1,200 people and brutally kidnapping some 240 individuals, including more than 30 children, the devastated families of those held hostage in the Gaza Strip launched a global campaign demanding their release.
With assistance from marketing and advertising professionals, the newly created Hostages and Missing Persons Forum in Israel turned to powerful social media platforms used by billions of people worldwide and asked to place paid advertisements to raise awareness of their plight.
Mostly short video clips depicting the lives of ordinary civilians and children held captive by a U.S.-designated terror organization, multiple ads were placed on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, but the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, TikTok, refused to accept any of them, deeming them “too political.”
TikTok denied the claims. However a recent study showed that TikTok viewers were likely to be influenced to hold more anti-Israel or antisemitic views.
TikTok has also been blamed for the poor knowledge of history demonstrated by many young pro-Palestinian activists, who appear to have learned about the conflict from viral TikTok videos.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.