AN MP has blasted Tik Tok for not removing a “beautiful but wicked” anti-vaxxer who claims the Covid-19 jab is made of “aborted foetuses”.
SNP politician John Nicolson has blasted the social media platform for allowing dangerous anti-vaxxer “fanatics” to spread lies about the life-saving vaccine.
Mr Nicolson grilled Theo Bertram, public policy director at Tik Tok, at the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select committee today.
He stormed: “We’re in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, 1.7 million people have died, of that, 66,000 in the UK alone.
“At last, we get a vaccine, and yet you allow vaccination fanatics to spread lies on your platform? Why?”
When Mr Bertram claimed that “wasn’t accurate” and that Tik Tok “doesn’t allow anti-vaccination information on the platform”, Mr Nicolson once laid into him over one woman with tens of thousands of followers spreading absurd claims.
He blasted: “Do you know who Olivia Madison is? She’s got 606,000 followers on her platform.”
“I suspected you’d tell us you were taking down all these videos, so i looked her up.
“She’s very beautiful and what she does is utterly wicked.”
He quoted a ridiculous claim from the Tik Tok user saying the jab “contains foetuses” and she “doesn’t believe in injecting a baby with another baby”.
Suggestions the vaccination contains aborted foetuses is a frequently spouted conspiracy theory which has been thoroughly debunked.
Mr Nicolson said: “606,000 followers and her videos are still up.”
The user has 606,000 likes and 38,000 followers, rather than hundreds of thousands of followers.
JUST ONE OF MANY
Responding to the fake theories being spread on Tik Tok, Mr Bertram said: “I’d be happy to refer her to the team so I can review, that certainly sounds like it’s violating our rules.”
But Mr Nicolson said she was just one of many on the platform.
“It took me just minutes to find lots and lots of people saying similar things, with tens and hundreds of thousands of followers, up on your platform.”
And he accused Tik Tok of failing to take control of the abundance of lies being uploaded.
“The point I’m making is, if you can’t sort out somebody with 606,000 followers, what chances are there that you’re going to get rid of the smaller fry? I mean this woman’s just screaming lies as publicly as she possibly can, very professionally produced videos.”
Mr Bertram said he “couldn’t make a judgment on that specific video” but promised to “review it”.
“What I can say is that we have a clear policy against vaccine disinformation, we had that in place since March.”
Mr Nicolson cut into his explanation of the policy, saying “it’s not working”.
