Australian tech entrepreneur Anthony Goldbloom has taken on TikTok for amplifying pro-Palestine posts to hundreds of millions of users and fuelling antisemitism.
Mr Goldbloom analysed social media platforms on the amount of content they are displaying in relation to support for Israel and Palestine since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas militants on southern Israel and the bombing retaliation by Israel’s military.
Mr Goldbloom, who is Jewish, said he was “shocked” that American-based users of TikTok were seeing 54 times more pro-Palestine posts than pro-Israel content this month, up from 36 times more in early November.
For Australian-based users of TikTok, the ratio was about 60:1 in favour of Palestine, he said.
Furthermore, a survey by Generation Lab of Americans aged under 30 suggests that spending at least 30 minutes a day on TikTok increases the chances of a respondent holding antisemitic or anti-Israel views by 17 per cent, compared with 6 per cent for Instagram and 2 per cent for X (formerly known as Twitter).
A chart he posted on X received more than 100 million impressions.
Mr Goldbloom’s X posts exposing the dichotomy have received support from tech billionaire Elon Musk, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, US Republican senator Ted Cruz and Democrat Josh Gottheimer. The figures were cited by Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary debate this week, as she called for a ban on the China-based short video app.
Mr Goldbloom said TikTok’s algorithm “rewards sensational content”.
“If TikTok was a mirror reflecting back what people believe, it shouldn’t be a 54:1 ratio and I think the company ought to feel pressure because there is a lot of harm being created,” Mr Goldbloom told AFR Weekend.
Anthony Goldbloom has received support from Elon Musk and former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. Jesse Marlow
Sacha Baron Cohen,the English actor, has accused TikTok of “creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis”.
After the October 7 attacks, Mr Goldbloom began researching Israel and Palestine-related content on social media platforms.
He was motivated after a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 51 per cent of respondents aged 18–24 believed “the Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians”.
There has also been a significant spike in attacks on Jewish people on US college campuses, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group focusing on civil rights and combating antisemitism.
San Francisco-based Mr Goldbloom, a former Treasury and Reserve Bank of Australia economist, founded data science platform Kaggle and sold it to Google in 2017.
He is now chief executive of start-up Sumble, a data platform business.
Initially, Mr Goldbloom privately emailed his concerns to TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew, who he had enjoyed a social drink with at a tech event in June, alongside their wives.
Mr Chew responded sympathetically, saying TikTok rejected antisemitism and was taking steps to address it.
But Mr Goldbloom was underwhelmed by the response.
He arranged a follow-up letter to TikTok from senior tech executives and investors, including Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn, Facebook’s former chief revenue officer David Fischer and Australia’s Paul Bassat, co-founder of Seek.
TikTok then arranged a group meeting of tech industry leaders with its CEO and other senior executives, including its head of trust and safety. TikTok also met other Jewish groups and individuals.
TikTok said in a blog post that “blunt” comparisons on hashtags were misleading.
“It’s critical to understand that hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok.
“Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South-East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags.
“Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views.”
But Mr Goldbloom said TikTok’s responses distorted the reality.
Mr Musk’s show of support for Mr Goldbloom came after the owner of X had earlier copped blowback for seemingly agreeing with a tweet by a user who falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people.
X has suffered advertising boycotts from big companies such as Apple, Disney and Walmart.
Mr Musk suggested it hypocritical to boycott X, but not TikTok.
“So then why is Disney boycotting 𝕏, yet spending millions on other platforms?” Mr Musk tweeted in response to Mr Goldbloom’s tweet.
Mr Goldbloom’s analysis has been picked up by The New York Times, Bloomberg, Time magazine and CNN, among other media outlets.
Mr Goldbloom said: “I think this is an important issue and I’m pleased that it’s got attention.”
Latest In Middle East
Fetching latest articles