The museum tweeted a statement on Wednesday in response to videos shared on the Chinese app, in which some users wore striped uniforms such as those of prisoners in concentration camps, such as Star or David bracelets that Jews were forced to wear. use among the Nazis.
“The trend of ‘victims’ on TikTok can be hurtful and misleading. Some videos are dangerously close to or already outside the bounds of trivialization of history,” tweeted the Auschwitz Memorial.
“But we need to discuss this so as not to embarrass and attack young people whose motivation seems very different. It is an educational challenge,” the organization added.
The museum added a lengthy statement to the tweet that raised a nuanced critique of the role of social media in commemorating the Holocaust.
While some of the videos were made by TikTok users to be part of a trend instead of commemorating victims, others seem to be a way to express personal memory, the statement said.
“We need to be very careful in this discussion, because the language used – also very often in social media – seems to carry a lot of emotions, sometimes very strongly,” reads the statement, which again warns against ‘insulting’ involved in the trend,
Social media is “part of our daily lives and communication,” the statement went on to say, but respect should be given to victims.
“Educators need to work with young people to present the facts and stories, but also to teach and discuss how they can think in a meaningful and respectful way.”
The museum also noted that there are bigger issues with social media, including algorithms that promote “anti-Semitism”, and platforms that allow content of Holocaust denial.
The company has a “zero-tolerance attitude” on accounts linked to anti-Semitism and it removes “racial harassment and denial of violent tragedies, such as the Holocaust,” it said.
Since the beginning of the year, TikTok has released at least 380,000 videos in the United States that violate their hate speech policies, the post said. It has also banned more than 1,300 accounts.
It is estimated that some 6 million Jewish people died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Roma people and individuals with mental or physical disabilities were also killed.
In 2018, CNN polls showed that the memory of the Holocaust in Europe was starting to disappear, with a third of respondents knowing they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust.
Offensive and racist content plagues many social media platforms, with some governments increasing the pressure on companies to take action.
TikTok, which has 100 million users in the United States, is currently facing a huge backlash from US President Donald Trump. Trump has claimed the app is a threat to national security and has threatened to ban it if it is not sold by his Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
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