A group of 40 mostly Jewish tech leaders and business executives confronted TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over their concerns about antisemitism and the allegedly disproportionate popularity of pro-Palestine videos on the app, according to multiple reports.
During the Zoom meeting, held last month, the executives reportedly presented an analysis of TikTok data during the Israel-Hamas war and pushed for answers on what they felt was an “unexplainable discrepancy” in content that favored Palestinians, Fortune reported.
The analysis was backed by 90 co-signers, including Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, ex-Meta chief revenue officer David Fischer and Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn, according to Bloomberg.
“For every view of pro-Israel posts, there are about 54 views of pro-Palestine posts,” one of the executives, AIX Ventures partner Anthony Goldbloom, told Fortune. “If TikTok was just a mirror reflecting back what people believe, it shouldn’t be a 54:1 ratio.”
The executives also raised concerns about the rise of antisemitic violence and nudged TikTok to reconsider its thinking on which videos violate its guidelines.
The meeting, which was said to be “cordial,” occurred during a period of renewed criticism over the China-owned app. Chew was reportedly one of multiple TikTok executives in attendance.
“This is an extremely difficult time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg. “We feel it’s important to meet with and listen to creators, human rights experts, civil society and other stakeholders to help guide our ongoing work to keep our global community safe.”
TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment on the meeting.
The spread of inflammatory content related to the Israel-Hamas war has provided fodder for critics who allege that the Chinese Communist Party uses the app as a propaganda tool to sway Americans and capture their data – charges that TikTok has denied.
As The Post reported, a number of Republican lawmakers renewed their calls for TikTok to be banned in the US due to their concerns about the spread of anti-Israel posts on the platform. TikTok said there was “no basis to these false claims” that pro-Palestine videos was spreading more rapidly.
The uproar intensified in mid-November after TikTok influencers posted a number of viral videos in which they praised 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “letter to America” – in which the terrorist leader described the creation of Israel as a “crime which must be erased” and referred to the AIDS epidemic was “a Satanic American Invention.”
TikTok had pushed back on criticism in a Nov. 13 blog post that slammed what the company described as “misinformation and mischaracterization about how the TikTok platform actually operates.”
The company said it has worked quickly to take down any videos that violate its policy against hateful content.
“Blunt comparisons of hashtags is severely flawed and misrepresentative of the activity on TikTok,” TikTok said.
“For example, the hashtag #standwithIsrael may be associated with fewer videos than #freePalestine, but it has 68% more views per video in the US, which means more people are seeing the content,” the post added.
The company has also described claims that pro-Palestinian videos have spread more than pro-Israel videos as “simply false.”
TikTok isn’t the only social media platform to face scrutiny over its response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. A growing number of blue-chip firms, including Disney and Apple, have paused advertising on X due to concerns about antisemitic content – including problematic posts by the company’s owner, Elon Musk.
Musk fired back in an already-infamous interview at the New York Times’ DealBook summit this week, telling companies that yanked ad dollars to “go f—k yourself” and specifically calling out Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Musk has denied that the problem is worse on X than it is on other social media platforms.
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