The Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok, which has been the subject of extensive legislation in the United States in recent months, has made headlines again after a senior employee blew the whistle over some of the pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism habitual behaviors of moderators for the platform, according to a Fox News exclusive.
The article claims that TikTok has also refused to publish ads about the civilians, specifically the women and children, kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 because they are “too political.”
The story was broken after an internal memo by a senior employee at the company’s Israel office was seen by the site. The memo drew attention to what the employee felt was an unequal policy applied for pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian accounts. Humanitarian campaigns made by Israeli families were shown less often compared to content by Palestinian groups, and graphic, biased, and content inciting violence was allegedly allowed to remain despite it violating the guidelines of the platform.
The employee claimed that many of TikTok’s own employees, specifically moderators, express beliefs that "support… terrorism or endorsed extremist movements" against Israel. "This, very likely, influences the amount of hostile propaganda against Israel and Jews and harmful misinformation on our platform, both in the USA and Europe," the Israeli employee told Fox.
A spokesperson for TikTok responded stating, "These allegations are false and do not reflect TikTok policies in any way.
"We are clear in our advertising policies what content is allowed to be advertised and apply those policies equally to all ads on TikTok. We invest heavily in training our moderators to apply these policies consistently."
Fox claimed to have seen screenshots confirming that TikTok employees were celebrating Hamas’s October 7 attack, and the actions of other Iranian-backed terror groups, in internal work chats.
In one example shared by Fox, an employee allowed guidelines by the BDS group, despite local laws criminalizing the actions.
Another exclusive by Fox published on December 7 also detailed TikTok as being a hostile and antisemitic environment that left Jewish employees feeling unsupported. This report also accused the moderators of enabling antisemitic content and fake news.
Employers told the site that antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments were being openly shared in company chats. Some of the employees even reported experiencing abusive behavior from their managers and that the company "no longer has any control over the 40,000 moderators working to fact-check and remove content that is inflammatory, inciting, and simply incorrect."
"Currently, the atmosphere for Jewish employees at TikTok is very difficult," a Jewish employee based in the US told Fox Business. "We feel we were not provided with the relevant support that was afforded to our peers working in other tech companies at the outset of the conflict. We feel that we had to fight for recognition that something horrible had happened to us and fight for recognition of our very difficult feelings of insecurity."
The employee later described that Jews at the company "should keep his or her head down far more than any other minority in terms of expressing themselves culturally or politically."
National security concerns over TikTok
A US judge on December 11 upheld Texas' ban on state employees, including public university employees, using Chinese-owned short video app TikTok on state-owned devices or networks.
TikTok sued Montana in May, seeking to block the US state ban on several grounds, arguing it violates the First Amendment free speech rights of the company and users.
More than 30 states and US federal agencies, including the White House, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, have banned TikTok from government devices.
The TikTok ban on federal devices mandated by Congress in December 2022 does not apply if there are national security, law enforcement, or security research activities.
TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, the world's most valuable start-up. Numerous countries have raised concerns over its proximity to the Chinese government and its hold over user data across the world.
TikTok, which has more than 150 million users in the United States, denies it improperly uses US data.