When searching for content related to the Greens, a political party in Germany, the TikTok search suggestions included “Habeck’s wife leaves,” which is a reference to the leader of the Green Party and German vice chancellor Robert Habeck. The suggestion was included even though there is no substance to the claim and no related videos to be found on TikTok.
“The suggestion insinuates a gossip-like curiosity based on a spread of false information for the sake of a seemingly newsworthy headline that has little political implications,” the researchers wrote in the report.
TikTok did not respond to how or why these search terms were suggested.
Other examples include the promotion of random clickbait-style search suggestions such as “bisexual princess” when searching for the Social Democratic Party or fear-mongering suggestions like “Putin’s last warning” when searching for the Greens.
Research shows that even if users don’t click on any of the search suggestions in the app, simply seeing the suggestions is enough to make the terms stick in people’s brains, and the more extreme the suggestions the more likely they are to remember.
In research conducted last year by Interface and AI Forensics, the group found that users presented with a series of search suggestions most often picked the most suggestive headline available to click on. In one case, a headline titled: “Olaf Scholz Caught in a Club”—which was unrelated to any actual incident and didn’t have any corresponding videos on TikTok—also became the fake headline most people remembered.
“People actually remember these gossip or clickbait headlines that are kept in the system without actually having any video or any content backing it up,” Degeling said. “We see this as evidence that the search suggestions, just by themselves, whether there’s any video related to them, actually stay in people’s mind.”
Research by Interface and AI Forensics found that 67 percent of 18-to-25-year-old TikTok users in Germany used the search function on the app frequently, lining up with research from Adobe published earlier this year that found 40 percent of Americans are using TikTok as a search engine now and that some Gen Z users were relying on it more than Google. Search on TikTok is becoming an increasingly important way that users, particularly younger users, discover content on the app.
Within TikTok, search suggestions appear in multiple locations, but for this study, the researchers focused on results from the “Others searched for” option. This is a group of eight different search terms that appear below the initial results on the search page, and, on the face of it, appear to be linked to the search term just used.
TikTok said that many factors contribute to whether a search term is recommended, and which keywords are suggested, including comments and common searches made after watching a video.
The researchers did find that TikTok had taken some steps to limit the spread of inaccurate or incendiary search results for certain parties or politicians, but the moderation efforts were not applied consistently across the platform.
The researchers also said their findings appear to show that TikTok was employing a “blocklist,” because one in three search terms used for TK?! returned nothing in the “Others searched for” box. These terms spanned the political spectrum from the AfD to the left-wing Free Democratic Party and Greens.
TikTok told WIRED that it was “inaccurate to assume” TikTok used a blocklist but did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about how it chose which search terms returned blank results.
“If there is a moderation policy in place, it’s not consistent,” says Romano.