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Popular TikTok videos: The clip shown on the left has since been deleted, the screenshots on the right are from posts by Alina Volik
Photo: alina volik / TikTok
The last thing Alina Volik shared on TikTok before the Russian invasion is a video collage from Egypt.
The 18-year-old rides a camel, stretches with a sun hat on a motorboat, dolphins swim just below the surface of the water.
A selfie in front of the pyramids.
Now Alina is sitting in her house in Zaporizhia in south-eastern Ukraine.
In Germany, people know Zaporizhia because parts of Europe's largest nuclear power plant caught fire there a week ago.
Alina no longer shares travel videos.
On February 26, she posted a collage with pictures from her everyday life: her emergency backpack with passport, cash, and a first aid kit.
Duct tape on windows "so the splinters don't spread."
Videos of her friends from air raid shelters.
"POV: You live in the Ukraine" is the name of Alina's ten-second clip, which has meanwhile been viewed more than 16 million times.
"I want to show what Ukraine was like," says Alina, "and how it is now." World history instead of a trip around the world.
With her videos, she also wants to show that the war is real, Alina tells SPIEGEL in a video call.
She is concerned with the “truth about Ukraine”.
And she wants to make a difference to others.
Because TikTok, which has always wanted to be apolitical and above all a platform for “entertainment”, has become a battleground in information warfare.
What is a joke, what is a lie?
Videos like Alina's, in which young Ukrainians pointedly share their suffering with the world, meet videos in which influencers apparently spread propaganda in a coordinated manner.
What is real on TikTok and what is not, what is information and what is disinformation, what is a joke and what is a lie, is often difficult to tell apart.
And the operators of the platform can't keep up with deleting questionable clips.
Videos are often viewed millions of times before they quietly disappear.
For many users, the war currently dominates the most popular channel within the app, the so-called »For You« feed.
Because TikTok's software routines, which according to internal documents are designed to keep users in the app for as long as possible, do their job even in times of war: Those who get stuck on the subject of Ukraine will get more of it.
A few seconds of missile alert here, a few tears there, a short Russian sketch.
The overtired Volodymyr Zelenskyj, backed by Tom Odell's heartbreak song "Another Love".
Statements of solidarity with Ukraine are in circulation, as are Putin-friendly talk show quotes from Sahra Wagenknecht and videos in which Russian-Germans report discrimination.
Putin and Zelenskyj are portrayed as super villains and super heroes, as if they were fictional characters from a TV series.
Like no other major platform, TikTok is designed for a portion of such videos to go viral, from zero to everywhere.
In contrast to Instagram, for example, users in the "For you" feed rarely see content from channels they follow.
Based on its own usage behavior and the reactions of others, the app decides what might keep the viewers interested.
What they are most likely to stick with, what they could mark with a heart or share.
If the algorithm gives the content enough momentum, even videos from unknown users can be played out to millions of people within a few hours, across national borders.
However, to go viral, the videos don't have to be real or recent.
They don't have to show what they say they show, either.
The features of the app even favor the distribution of misleading videos or videos full of false information.
"Awww, that's super cute and really nice"
A video, for example, which had 5.8 million views and 365,000 hearts within a few days, shows a Russian soldier handing drinking bottles to Ukrainian children, according to a text overlaid in the image.
"Humanity is very important at this time," says the image, the video is accompanied by melancholic string music.
Users comment on it with sayings like "Awww, that's super sweet and really nice" or "The Russians are an honor".
In fact, the video is not from the Ukraine war at all.
According to SPIEGEL research, the scene was captured on video in November by a Belarusian photographer on the border between Belarus and Poland, where numerous refugees were staying at the time, mostly from countries like Syria or Iraq.
The best evidence for this location is a photograph showing the moment the soldier offers a girl a drink from a different perspective.
A so-called reverse image search suggests that the photo was published on Russian and Belarusian websites as early as November 2021.
Accordingly, it is not a Russian soldier, but a Belarusian.
It appears that the TikToker that uploaded the clip with German text copied the footage from the Belarusian photographer's channel and intentionally miscontextualized it for the German audience.
The fact that it's so easy is also thanks to TikTok itself. The platform is a place that encourages remixing and reinterpreting other people's clips: with overlays, with emojis, with so-called duets.
It's easy to download other users' clips and re-circulate them through your own profile.
If you want, you can also add well-known pieces of music or soundtracks from third parties to your own recordings, directly via the app: In times of peace, this "add sound" function spurs on the creativity of users.
In times of war, it helps to make videos even more emotional and haunting - but at the same time it also encourages targeted manipulation.
Shaky shots from backyards, for example, are made more interesting with gunshot noises.
Those who follow such audio tracks often come across material that is several years old and has nothing to do with the Ukraine war.
Million hearts despite a false claim
Sometimes old video snippets are garnished with new false information on TikTok.
On Wednesday, one of the most liked clips for the search term Ukraine was a video with the text »Ukraine being happy getting troops from USA«.
The clip, perhaps intended as a joke, suggested that the United States had entered the war with parachutists - which, according to the comments, many users thought was good and true news.
The video, which in its second part recycled an older parachute clip that had long since become a running gag online, was viewed more than 16.3 million times.
By then, already given 2.8 million hearts, TikTok finally threw it off its platform on Wednesday evening, just like the soldier video – as a result of a SPIEGEL request.
Millions of users who had already seen the two clips at this point will no longer notice anything.
The motivation behind such misleading videos is often unclear: is the sender interested in generating attention and thus likes and followers with a current topic?
Or is it about deliberately spreading misinformation and stoking fear?
Or is the content to be understood as meme art, as funny collages?
Propaganda can also be found on TikTok.
Last week, for example, it was no coincidence that a number of Russian influencers spread the same pro-Russian message: We fight for peace.
After someone cut several of the videos together to reveal their similarity, some deleted their videos.
More than a billion users worldwide
All of these are cases that show that the app by the Chinese company ByteDance has long since ceased to be just a place where children upload dance videos.
With more than a billion users, it is also an important news source for many people, especially since TikTok cell phone clips have a reputation for being particularly direct and particularly authentic.
"There are people who are seeing war on TikTok for the first time right now," disinformation researcher Abbie Richards told the New York Times.
These people would have faith in the app.
"The result is that many people see incorrect information about Ukraine and also believe it."
TikTok itself is currently asking its users with a kind of warning to think about what they see in the app.
Among other things, it is advised to pay attention to when exactly content was created – which is actually not in the interests of the platform.
In its "For you" feed, the app suggests that it always delivers fresh material.
All videos are deliberately played out without specifying the time of publication.
Even more than on Twitter or Facebook, information on TikTok is often completely decontextualized.
When asked about such problems by SPIEGEL, TikTok said it was “continuing to respond to the war in Ukraine with increased security resources in order to identify new threats and remove harmful misinformation”.
They also work with independent fact-checking organizations to support their efforts to “keep TikTok a safe and authentic place.”
Russian TikTokers can no longer upload anything
Companies in Russia recently took drastic measures.
Last weekend, TikTok announced that it would temporarily suspend live streaming and the ability to upload new content there.
It was not a move against local propaganda, not a public protest against the Russian invasion, but in response to a new Russian media law that would carry a prison sentence of up to 15 years for disseminating unpopular information about the Russian army.
Alina Volik, the young videomaker from Zaporizhia, is unsure whether restricting TikTok so severely in Russia will help.
In Ukraine, she says, the app is one of the top ways for youngsters to find out what's going on in other cities.
TikTok can create a sense of community.
Young people in the neighboring country should also see that bombs are falling in Ukraine every day, tanks are driving on the streets.
"Otherwise they'll stay in the fairy tale that there's no war here."
Alina herself will probably not be uploading videos from Ukraine for much longer.
She now wants to flee with her mother;
a girl had offered her help via Instagram.
