Discovering TikTok’s Troubles: Riots & Wrong Murder Blames

TikTok, a popular app, has seen some wild stuff happen. People have gone crazy, & sometimes they’ve accused innocent of murder. This bit talks about the crazy stuff going on there, showing how TikTok can be pretty wild.

Glenn Burgess

Former employees say that the problem isn’t being dealt with because they’re worried it might slow down TikTok’s growth.

These crazy situations, where TikTok makes some topics super popular, were confirmed by talking to people who used to work for TikTok, the app’s users, and looking at data from other social media sites. These situations have caused a lot of confusion and chaos in everyday life.

The BBC’s investigation found that TikTok’s computer program and how the app is designed make people watch videos they wouldn’t normally see. This makes people want to do strange things in their own videos on TikTok.

TikTok has said before that it’s not responsible for things like the almost-riot on London’s Oxford Street last month, which politicians blamed on the app even though it has billions of users.

However, we’ve found four instances in recent months where a lot of attention on TikTok led to harmful actions:

People got really obsessed with a murder case in Idaho, USA, and wrongly accused innocent mates.
There was interference with a police investigation in the UK when Nicola Bulley went missing.
Protests at schools in the UK turned into vandalism and spread to other places.
Riots in France got much worse than usual and spread to unexpected areas.

Former TikTok employees compare these frenzies to “wildfires” and consider them “dangerous,” especially because many TikTok users are young and can easily be influenced.

A TikTok spokesperson said that their “algorithm brings people together while making safety a top priority.” They claim to recommend different types of content to prevent things from getting too repetitive, remove “harmful lies,” and limit the reach of videos with unverified information.

The Idaho murders - November 2022

I had never heard of Moscow, Idaho, until last November. Suddenly, my TikTok was filled with news about the murder of four students in their bedrooms, while two other housemates were asleep. It was all over TikTok before it made it to the news.

People on TikTok started coming up with ideas about who might have done it, even though there wasn’t any evidence. TikTok users got really into it. Videos about the case got two billion views from November 2022 to August this year, while on YouTube, they only got 80,000 views.

Former TikTok workers say this happens because of how TikTok works. People mostly see videos on their For You page, which is filled with short videos picked by a computer program to match what each person likes.

When you post a video on TikTok, it doesn’t just go to your friends and followers like on some other social networks. TikTok shares it with users who might be interested in it based on their interests.

If people engage with your video, TikTok’s computer program might show it to millions more people really quickly, even more so than on other social media sites. What’s different is that TikTok users often make and share their own videos, not just watch them.

An internal document from 2021 showed that TikTok really wants people to be active on the app, and they consider participation a top priority.

But this can be scary for people like Jack Showalter, who got wrongly accused of being involved in the Idaho killings. He and his family faced threats and harassment because of videos made by internet sleuths. His sister said, “So many people suffered because of those online detective videos.”

One TikTok user named Olivia didn’t just watch the drama from thousands of miles away in Florida. She flew more than six hours to be at the scene and filmed there for a week.

At least one of her videos got 20 million views. She said, “I felt like I needed to go there, find answers, and help in any way I could.”

Olivia, an experienced content creator who’s shared videos about various true crime cases, admits that her TikTok content gets more attention when she goes to the actual location of the events.

She didn’t outright accuse anyone falsely, but she pointed out that, unlike traditional news, she can put out controversial ideas without having all the facts. She said, “I have the power to do that.”

According to Olivia, the high engagement on TikTok when it comes to topics like the Idaho murders motivates users to make their own videos. She explained, “One video on TikTok can get millions of views, while if I post the same video on Instagram, it might only get 200 views. It’s just because of TikTok’s algorithm.”

In December, Bryan Kohberger, who had not been named by any online investigators before, was arrested and later charged with murder.

The Nicola Bulley case - January 2023

Even if someone isn’t an experienced content creator, these frenzies can attract people who have never posted this kind of stuff before, and they can suddenly get tons of views.

For example, when 45-year-old Nicola Bulley disappeared in the small village of St. Michael’s on Wyre in Lancashire, Heather was one of the people who got caught up in the way TikTok was talking about the mystery.

Heather explained, “When you see it video after video after video of the same content on the same topic, it’s very easy to just think, well, I can join in. I’m just another person.”

So, she posted a video that wrongly suggested Nicola’s best friend, Emma White, was pretending to be the missing woman. This video got 3.6 million views in just 72 hours.

In the first three weeks after Nicola disappeared, I found that videos using the hashtag with her name had 270 million views on TikTok, while other major social media platforms had much fewer views on the same topic.

Some people blamed mainstream media for talking about the case too much, but on TikTok, false information spread even faster.

Heather showed me emails she got from TikTok, encouraging her to keep posting once her speculation went viral and praising her videos as successful.

She said that getting all this attention made her feel powerful and like she had a right to do this, and it can change how people act.

Now, Heather says she wishes she hadn’t taken part in the frenzy, and she’s deleted her videos.

Heather didn’t go to the place where Nicola disappeared, but many other TikTok users did. The police criticised how people were getting involved with the case just to make social media videos. They eventually had to issue a dispersal order, which lets officers remove people from the area to stop disruptive behavior.

Sadly, Nicola Bulley’s body was found in the river on February 17th, not far from where she went missing. An inquest determined that she accidentally drowned.

A TikTok spokesperson told that users naturally get more interested in stories when they become big topics of conversation, especially with 24-hour news coverage. They also mentioned that the BBC has posted on TikTok about stories like this one.

Protests and riots - February 2023 and June 2023

Recent events in British schools and on the streets of France have demonstrated how TikTok can play a role in making disturbances grow and spread.

For instance, in February 2023, a protest against Rainford High School in Merseyside checking the length of girls’ skirts was shared on TikTok. In just three days, students at more than 60 schools had organised and recorded their own protests. Within a week, students at over 100 schools had joined in.

Unfortunately, in some instances, things got out of control: windows were broken, trees were set on fire, and teachers were attacked.

Jasmine, a former TikTok moderator, expressed her concern, saying, “I feel like what TikTok is enabling people to do now is to take one thing that’s viral in one school and spread it to the whole region, turning it into a competition to see who can outdo the other schools and make it more extreme.”

According to TikTok, most of the videos from the school protests showed students peacefully demonstrating. However, teachers and students I spoke to were worried about the overall impact of all these videos.

During the school protests, I created an undercover TikTok account pretending to be a 15-year-old boy interested in typical things like football. After getting recommendations for football and gaming videos, the fourth video I saw was from a 25-year-old influencer named Adrian Markovac.

He not only encouraged self-improvement but also promoted rebellion against school rules on uniforms, homework, and even asking to use the restroom. He also used offensive names for teachers.

Comments under his videos included some UK teenagers saying they got suspended or expelled from school after following Mr. Markovac’s advice.

In an interview, Mr. Markovac mentioned that he encourages young people to “rebel against ridiculous rules” but stated that he couldn’t be held responsible for the bad choices made by a minority of his viewers.

A few months after the school protests, riots broke out across Paris and other parts of France following the death of 17-year-old Nahel M, who was shot by a police officer. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, blamed TikTok and Snapchat for the disorder.

The question arises: was there another TikTok frenzy playing a role, or was the French President simply deflecting responsibility?

The anger and frustration surrounding Nahel’s tragic death led to riots erupting independently of social media influence. However, TikTok did seem to give it more attention compared to other platforms.

I found public Snapchat videos using Nahel’s name with 167,700 views (not including those shared privately). On TikTok, videos with the hashtag amassed a staggering 850 million views.

In one town, Viry-Châtillon, located on the outskirts of Paris, videos depicted a bus on fire and a looted newsagent’s store. The mayor, Jean-Marie Vilain, noted that protests were rare in their town.

What struck him as “incredible and dramatic” was that the riots spread to “the provinces, in cities, in small towns where nothing is happening, where everything is fine,” reaching places as far away as Provence and Guadeloupe.

Regrettably, as the riots unfolded, TikTok seemed to serve as a platform for individuals to showcase their actions, essentially saying, “Look, this is what I can do. Can you top it?” Mayor Vilain’s assertion aligns with the videos I discovered on TikTok, which escalated in extremeness as the riots continued.

Mr. Vilain also mentioned that for some protesters, seeing acts of destruction widely shared on TikTok “became the norm.” This sentiment was echoed by TikTok users I messaged who were sharing this kind of content.

'It grew so fast'

Several former TikTok employees in both the US and the UK have revealed that controlling these harmful content frenzies was not a top priority for the social media company, as it could potentially hinder the app’s explosive growth.

One of these former employees, who I’ll refer to as Lucas, worked in data strategy and analysis at TikTok. He explained that TikTok expanded so rapidly that it couldn’t keep up with or anticipate every direction the app would take.

Lucas stated, “But when it comes to dangerous content, at least I never heard of them trying to proactively prevent it from becoming popular. Generally, they don’t want to stand in the way of rapid entertainment growth on their platform.”

TikTok stated that it employs over 40,000 “safety professionals” who use technology to moderate content, and that the “vast majority” of videos containing harmful misinformation never receive a single view.

The company also claimed to collaborate with academics, law enforcement agencies, and other experts to enhance its content moderation processes.