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Push alerts from TikTok include fake news, expired tsunami warning | News-style notifications include false claims about Taylor Swift, other misleading info.


News-style notifications include false claims about Taylor Swift, other misleading info.

TikTok has been sending inaccurate and misleading news-style alerts to users’ phones, including a false claim about Taylor Swift and a weeks-old disaster warning, intensifying fears about the spread of misinformation on the popular video-sharing platform. Other notifications falsely stated that “Taylor Swift Canceled All Tour Dates in What She Called ‘Racist Florida’” and highlighted a five-year “ban” for a US baseball player that originated as an April Fool’s day prank. TikTok declined to reveal how the app determined which videos to promote through notifications, but the sheer volume of personalized content recommendations must be “algorithmically generated,” said Dani Madrid-Morales, co-lead of the University of Sheffield’s Disinformation Research Cluster.

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