The influencer has been charged in Romania with rape and human trafficking
TikTok has come under fire for allowing misogynistic videos of controversial influencer Andrew Tate to circulate on its platform – which experts say are being viewed by children as young as 13.
Tate and his brother, Tristan, have been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women.
While the app – which is very popular with young people – says Andrew Tate himself has been banned, The Independent found his clips being shared both under the “Tate” hashtag and elsewhere.
The Tate hashtag have been viewed 75 million times in the UK in the past four months despite the public outcry about his content following his arrest last December.
Tate has said in his videos that women belong in the home and are a man’s property. He also says rape victims must “bear responsibility” for their attacks and said he dates women aged 18-19 because he can “make an imprint” on them.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate says Tate continues to have “quite a strong infrastructure of getting fans to upload his content dispensing advice”.
Callum Hood, the organisation’s head of research, told The Independent: “We know teens as young as 13 are being served content featuring Tate from experiments we carried out to see what videos TikTok’s algorithm recommends to its youngest users.”
A spokesperson for TikTok said: “Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok. We have dedicated significant resources to finding and removing content of this nature that violates our policies and [have] taken a number of steps to help our community make informed choices, reminding them of the dangers of hateful language.”
