This is the best summary I could come up with:
It is being shared by everyone from students and political activists to comedians and anonymous bot-like accounts.Videos which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views have promoted unfounded rumours that a major scandal prompted Rishi Sunak to call an early election and the baseless claim that Sir Keir Starmer was responsible for the failure to prosecute serial paedophile Jimmy Savile.Satirical, fake AI-generated clips show Rishi Sunak declaring, “Please don’t vote us out, we would be proper gutted!” and making unevidenced claims about how the Conservative leader is spending public money - including how he will send his “mates loads of dosh”.
Other AI-generated videos share misleading claims about his national service pledge for 18-year-olds, suggesting young people would be sent to current war zones in Ukraine and Gaza.Some of these are described as satire or parody in captions, but the comments suggest some users are confused about which claims are factual.TikTok told the BBC it had increased its investment in countering misinformation for the UK general election, including adding a fact-checking expert to existing resources and employing AI-labelling technology.The videos were spotted as part of the BBC’s Undercover Voters project, which has created profiles for 24 fictional people on all the major social media sites, based on data and analysis by the National Centre for Social Research, external (Natcen).
The fictional profiles represent a range of voters in battleground constituencies across the UK, giving an insight into what content is promoted to different types of people.
They just like, follow and watch content relevant to their character traits informed by the Natcen research.I examined the feeds of the profiles of three of these fictional voters in the former “red wall” constituency of Bishop Auckland, a target for Labour which is currently held by the Conservatives - and where our Undercover Voters are younger.Their social media feeds revealed that, while other sites have also experienced a flurry of political content, TikTok had the most lively conversation, particularly among younger voters.TikTok has boomed since the last election.
These include comments about immigration, transgender rights, Brexit - and false claims that the shadow international development secretary called to “abolish the Army”.
A third Undercover Voter named Louise - in her 50s and politically undecided - was pushed more TikToks targeting political leaders with abusive comments, as well as satirical montages and parody videos about policy announcements such as national service.I tracked down some of the people behind the videos and posts shown to our Undercover Voters.One 16-year-old from the south of England, who made a satirical edit of that first Rishi Sunak TikTok about national service, said she was surprised how quickly her content took off.“I didn’t specifically create this account for the election and the reason I made the TikTok initially was just for a joke - I didn’t expect to get over 400k bloody views,” she said, adding that she is not affiliated with any party and has not received any money for creating the TikTok.“Social media really is the only platform for young people to have a voice nowadays in my opinion.”She said she knows satirical content can be “controversial” and she understands how her video “could mislead people” but would hope people could tell it was supposed to be a bit of fun.Alongside the video, some users had posted threatening comments towards Mr Sunak, but the 16-year-old said she did not think anyone would actually want to harm a politician.
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