China’s TikTok fosters a hostile, antisemitic work environment, according to the company’s Jewish and Israeli employees, who say they have been harassed, personally attacked, and have even faced boycotts in the wake of the terrorist attack against Israel by the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
Antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments are freely expressed by TikTok employees on the Chinese company’s internal chat system, which is called Lark, according to Jewish employees who added that they have received little support from senior management, according to a new report by Fox Business.
A support group dedicated to Palestinians has also been created on TikTok’s internal chat in the wake of the terrorist attack against Israel, but no such group has been created for Israelis, because the company claims that would be too political.
Instead, TikTok reportedly told employees to use an existing Jewish support group, despite the fact that not all Israelis are Jews and Hamas targeted both Jews and non-Jews during its October 7 terrorist attack.
The Jewish employees also told Fox Business that TikTok seems to have lost control over its 40,000 moderators, who they said, allow antisemitic and anti-Israel content, as well as false claims, to remain on the platform due to their personal views, rather than actual fact-checking.
“The teams dealing with policy at TikTok have always been overwhelmingly staffed with individuals who are openly hostile to Israel and whose opinions often blur the lines on antisemitism,” a Jewish employee told Fox Business.
One of the most obvious examples of this, the employee said, “is the permissible posting of anything violent or gory relating to issues sympathetic to Palestinians. But when videos depicting evidence of atrocities against Jews are removed before the world can see them, we then feel that the world’s most popular media platform is working against us as a people.”
While a TikTok spokesperson told the outlet that it has “strong policies against discrimination and harassment in the workplace,” adding that these reports from employees “do not reflect the experience of the majority of our employees,” screenshots from Lark, obtained by Fox Business, show increasing fear among Jewish employees.
“Currently, the atmosphere for Jewish employees at TikTok is very difficult,” a Jewish employee, who is based in the United States, said. “We feel we were not provided with the relevant support that was afforded to our peers working in other tech companies at the outset of the conflict.”
“We feel that we had to fight for recognition that something horrible had happened to us and fight for recognition of our very difficult feelings of insecurity,” the employee added..
This is not the first time TikTok has been called out for hosting content that supports terrorists.
As Breitbart News reported last month, young Americans went viral on the Chinese app sympathizing with Osama bin Laden and recirculating his 2002 letter in which the terrorist leader tried to justify the mass murder of Americans on September 11, 2001.
The young Americans are defending bin Laden for his opposition to America’s support for Israel amid the public debate on the Israel-Hamas war.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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