Bre was 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 The 19-year-old has been scrolling the app for hours each day to watch the war videos, which show Russian troops and civilians being shot at by Ukrainian tanks.

The student in Los Angeles said that what she sees on TikTok is more authentic than other social media.

The video of Ukrainian tanks taken from video games and a soundtrack that was uploaded to the app more than a year ago were what Ms.Hernandez was viewing and hearing in the TikTok videos. The New York Times analysis of the videos traced the footage and soundtrack back to their original sources.

One of the most popular platforms for sharing videos and photos of the Russia-Ukraine war is the Chinese-owned video app TikTok. According to a review by The Times, hundreds of thousands of videos about the conflict have been uploaded to the app from across the world. The first TikTok war was called by the New Yorker.

TikTok is in a difficult position. For the first time, it is dealing with a flood of videos about a single event that has captured the attention of a global audience. It is leading it to confront a large scale of misleading and distorted information that has been a problem for more mature social networks and video sites.

Researchers who study the platform say that many popular TikTok videos of the invasion offer real accounts of the action. Other videos have been difficult to verify. The researchers said that some seem to be exploiting the interest in the invasion for views.

Pravda, a Ukrainian newspaper, posted an audio clip featuring 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island, an outpost of the Black Sea, facing a Russian military unit that asked them to surrender. The clip was used in many TikTok videos, which included a note stating that all 13 soldiers had died. The men were alive and had been taken prisoner, but the TikTok videos have not been corrected.

A still from a TikTok video that shared inaccurate information about 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Identifying information and language have been redacted.
ImageA still from a TikTok video that shared inaccurate information about 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Identifying information and language have been redacted.
A still from a TikTok video that shared inaccurate information about 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Identifying information and language have been redacted.

There are people who are seeing war for the first time on TikTok. A lot of people are seeing false information about Ukraine.

TikTok and other social media platforms are under pressure from U.S. lawmakers and Ukrainian officials to curb Russian misinformation about the war. Russia Today and Sputnik will be blocked in the European Union by YouTube, while Meta, the parent of Facebook, said they would label the content from the outlets as state sponsored.

Sputnik and Russia Today have not been labeled state-sponsored in the countries where they are still available by TikTok. The app said on Thursday that it had dedicated more resources to monitoring for misleading content.

Hilary McQuaide, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said that they continue to respond to the war in Ukraine with increased safety and security resources.

For a long time, TikTok didn't get much scrutiny about its content. TikTok only became widely used in the past five years, unlike Facebook, which has been around since 2004. The app was designed to make it easy to create and share short videos. It became a destination for addictive, silly and fun videos for young users.

The app has been involved in some controversy. It has faced questions about whether it protects users' privacy, as well as whether harmful fads originate on its platform.

The issues facing TikTok, which has over one billion users, have been made worse by the war in Ukraine.

According to a review by The Times, the amount of war content on the app far outweighs what is found on other social networks. The videos with the #Ukrainewar have amassed 500 million views on TikTok, with some of the most popular videos gaining close to one million likes. The most popular videos were viewed tens of thousands of times, while the #Ukrainewar hashtags had only 125,000 posts.

The TikTok features that help people share and record their own content have made it easy to spread fake videos on its platform. TikTok's For You page suggests videos based on what people have previously seen, liked or shared. Ms. Richards said that viewing one video with misinformation leads to more videos.

TikTok has a feature that allows people to reuse audio and make lip-syncing scenes of popular movies or songs. Ms. Richards said that audio can be taken out of context.

According to The Times review, audio from a 2020 explosion in Lebanon was uploaded to several TikTok videos that claimed to show present-day Ukraine. A soundtrack of gunfire that was uploaded to TikTok on Feb. 1 was later used in over 1,700 videos, many of which purported to be from the fighting in Ukraine.

A still from a TikTok video with audio from a 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, which claims to show present-day Ukraine. Identifying information has been redacted.
ImageA still from a TikTok video with audio from a 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, which claims to show present-day Ukraine. Identifying information has been redacted.
A still from a TikTok video with audio from a 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, which claims to show present-day Ukraine. Identifying information has been redacted.Credit...Andrea Austria/Media Matters

TikTok's global nature makes it difficult to remove such content. Once a video is uploaded, it is recorded and translated into many languages. If the videos are not reported by users, they need to be independently found by moderators who are proficient in those languages before they can be taken down.

Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook, said that video is the hardest format to moderate.

She knew she needed to fact check the videos of the war. Many of the videos appeared to be edited from news reports or commentary from people in the United States who were watching the events from afar, she said.

I feel like the videos I am seeing are designed to get me riled up, or to emotionally manipulate me, she said.

The student in Los Angeles said she was surprised to learn from a Times reporter that some TikTok videos she had seen were not accurate.

I don't know what war looks like, but we go to TikTok to learn about everything.

She said that TikTok was her preferred platform for news. She said that most of what she sees was real.