TikTok and Anti-Migrant & Anti-Refugee Content
By Kevin D. Reyes and Lucy Cooper
Of 104 analyzed videos, only 3.8% were removed; comments calling for harm to migrants persisted for months, and TikTok's search recommended deliberate misspellings that evaded moderation.
About this research
This original report draws on a survey, a recommender audit and API/data analysis.
- Publication
- Original report · 16 pages
- Research approach
- survey, recommender audit and API/data analysis
- Reported study scale
- 104 videos
- Research materials
- Public-source data is described in the publication
Publication details prepared by Social Media Transparency from the original source.
Executive summary
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ISD conducted an assessment of anti-migrant and anti-refugee content on TikTok, sampling a set of videos and associated comments to test how effectively the platform enforces its own hate-speech and moderation policies against this category of content. The study forms part of a wider ISD body of research tracking hate speech trends on TikTok.
Of 104 videos analyzed, only 3.8% had been removed by the platform, indicating that the large majority of anti-migrant material identified by researchers remained accessible. The study also found that hostile comments calling for harm against migrants persisted on the platform for months without moderation action, and that TikTok's search function surfaced results for deliberately misspelled search terms designed to evade keyword-based moderation filters.
The report concludes that despite TikTok's public claims of improved enforcement, anti-migrant and anti-refugee content — including calls for harm — continues to circulate largely unchecked, and that simple evasion tactics such as misspelling remain effective against the platform's current moderation systems.
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