Tik Tok & disinformation: A new warning from a media watchdog

By Tom Hall,

Malarie Pinkard-Pierre, Teria Rogers, Rob Sivak

Published September 19, 2022 at 3:17 PM EDT

The TikTok app (whose logo is seen here on a Tokyo mobile device on Sept. 28, 2020) may be the platform of choice for catchy videos, but anyone using it to learn about COVID-19, climate change or Russia's invasion of Ukraine is likely to encounter a lot of misleading information, according to a new report by Newsguard. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)

Joining Tom now is journalist Jack Brewster. He’s a senior analyst for NewsGuard, a media monitoring organization based in New York.

Jack Brewster is a journalist and a senior analyst tracking political disinformation activitiesfor Newsguard, an independent media monitoring outfit. (courtesy photo)

In this month’s edition of Newsguard’s Misinformation Monitor, he and his colleagues report about misinformation on Tik Tok, a domain that is wildly popular with young people in particular, and which, according to the report, is chock-full of posts that include conspiracy theories and all manner of bad information.

Jack Brewster joins us on Zoom from Ridgefield, Connecticut.