‘A cascade effect’
The accounts we found are seeking to exploit the rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK. A poll last month by Ipsos found that concern about immigration was at its highest level in a decade, while Reform UK, a party that recently announced a series of hardline immigration policies, has consistently led Westminster polls for several months.
A number of the videos we found refer to migrants as “invaders”. The most popular one, with nearly 4 million views, shows a group of South Asian people approaching the shore on a small boat as a white man shouts through a megaphone: “You can only come in if you promise to wear deodorant.” The creator’s TikTok Shop sold Monster energy drinks, creatine and lining papers for an air fryer.
“The design of [social media] platforms is to make profits out of engagement,” said Beatriz Lopes Buarque, a fellow at the London School of Economics working on online misinformation and the far right. “There is a huge tension between the economic incentives and the social and political impacts of this content, because hate is profitable.
“If it captures our attention, in the case of TikTok, we may watch the video until the end, and this is already enough for the algorithm to start recommending more of that , so we have a cascade effect.”
