Over the last 10 years, social media has changed the way in which society accesses information and forms their own opinions. TikTok, released in 2016, was created by a Chinese Tech Giant “Byte Dance” (Big 3 Media 2025) and is a major force among social media, currently having 1.12 billion active users worldwide (Big 3 Media 2025). TikTok’s success lies in its use of music and a powerful algorithm that learns what material users want to see significantly faster than other social media platforms. With the recent U.S. election, TikTok’s algorithms maintains misinformation surrounding political individuals, including Donald Trump, prioritizing viewer engagement rather than reality. This therefore shapes how users recognize public figures. During and after Trumps presidency, TikTok emerged as a significant space where misinformation surrounding claims around Trumps election fraud, censorship and media bias which spread rapidly among users. TikTok’s design traps consumers in a one-sided information loop, reinforcing their preconceived notions, blurring the line between credible news and viral entertainment. The app has become a key news source, especially among the Gen z demographic, raises concerns about its potential influence on U.S politics.
This essay explores how TikTok’s “For you” page and algorithms spreads misinformation’s surrounding Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S election. This essay will examine different academic opinions surrounding the use of TikTok thought-out and after the 2024 election.
Many researchers and reports over the last couple years, argue that TikTok deliberately spreads misinformation surrounding political figures, such as Trump. A report conducted by the “Computer Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE” (Ibrahim et al. 2025) found that despite TikTok actually banning political advertising, (TikTok 2025) the apps role in the 2024 US election has been widely acknowledged and investigated in the media. For example, TikTok may have influenced the 2024 Romanian presidential election, researchers found many bot-like accounts engaging to promote the Pro-Russia candidate, Călin Georgescu. (Loftus. 2024). In the U.S., alarms about TikTok go past misinformation and include threats to national security, due to its Chinese owners. The report states that trump originally tried to ban TikTok in 2020 but later revoked his stance during the 2024 election. (Ibrahim et al. 2025) Despite this, the 2024 senate bill now demands that TikTok be septate from its Chinese parent company or face a country wide ban. The report goes on to say that “These debates reflect wider tensions between the U.S. and China over political and technological influence.” (Ibrahim et al. 2025)
The Report conducted serval studies, primarily, they tested how TikTok’s algorithm would recommend political content leading up to the 2024 U.S. election. It achieved this by using fake accounts across several U.S. states and analyzed over 340,000 videos to see if there was any political bias (Ibrahim et al. 2025). The results showed that the TikTok’s algorithm recommend more Republican related videos than Democratic content, regardless of engagement levels. This suggests that TikTok’s system may not be politically neutral during election periods, therefore showing a biased towards Trumps republican party. Recently a TikTok deal between the U.S. and China will give Americans six of the seven board seats and control over the popular social media app’s algorithm, the White House said on Saturday. “This deal means that TikTok will be majority-owned by Americans in the United States,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News Saturday morning. (Johansen 2025)
Another research report, titled “The echo chamber effect on social media” (Cinelli et al. 2021) explores how social media platforms can create echo chambers. They create environments where users are exposed to information that only reinforces their existing beliefs (Del Vicario et al. 2016). This phenomenon can lead to the amplification of misinformation and polarization among users. Misinformation surround Trump during the 2024 Election could have been caught in the echo chamber, resulting in users being fed false claims, influencing their appeal to vote for him or not. Echo chambers limit the users’ exposers to diverse perspectives and promote the spread of misinformation.
On the contrary, other scholars argue that TikTok enables young people to engage with politics more actively and creatively. Traditional news media (e.g. newspaper and T.V) are becoming less accessed for the younger generation, “Gen Zer’s are accustomed to accessing news content online, frequently relying on social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook for their daily news fix”. (Sudhakar, 2025) Therefore Gen z is likely getting all their political information from TikTok, allowing them to engage with society. The journal titled “Youth collective political expression on social media” (Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021; Highfield, 2023) recognizes social media as an important outlet for “youth political expression”. They go on to suggest that each platform’s design (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram) subtly guides the way in which young people choose to communicate, In their own unique way. In the context of the 2016 U.S election, the journal article analyzed 1651 youth created videos. The research explores how young people use musical.ly (now TikTok) as a space for “collective political expression,” where users connect with a theoretical audience through shared symbols like hashtags. By tagging videos with #makeamericagreatagain or #notmypresident, they weren’t just self-expressing but “becoming part of a larger discourse,” Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021; Highfield, 2023) using the platform’s affordances to “speak to a like-minded audience” and express political beliefs in unconventional, and creative ways. The hashtags are in relation to Donald trump in the 2016 U.S Election.
The study found that users of both #makeamericagreatagain and #notmypresident used “shared symbolic resources” such as songs, gestures, and speech clips to make their political commitment seen. Despite the opposing contexts celebration versus indignation both groups used musical.ly’s capabilities in similar ways, like combining pop culture music with filmed content, to create political messages that would resonate with an audience.
The study writes, “While social media platforms have enabled citizens to share the most ordinary aspects of their everyday lives, these spaces are also important sites for political expression” (Literat et al., 2021; Highfield, 2023). This highlights their support for TikTok as an area to share political information, despite If it is true or not.
TikTok Newsroom release an article titled “Protecting election integrity in 2024” to their official website. TikTok says it is “deeply invested in protecting the integrity of elections,” (Loftus 2024) with over 2 billion people voting in more than 50 countries this year. The platform has supported “over 150 elections around the world” (Loftus 2024) and continues to connect users to “trusted information” through local and U.S. Election Centres. These centres, created with partners like “Democracy Works”, give TikTok’s “150M+ US community members” reliable information about voting in all 50 states. TikTok also promotes media literacy best practices and partners with experts to help users identify misinformation and AI-generated content.
To maintain election integrity, TikTok employs “thousands of trust and safety professionals” (TikTok 2025) who enforce its guidelines, challenging misinformation, and other content that often appears during elections. The platform works with “17 global fact-checking organizations” (TikTok 2025) in over 50 languages, has rules against exploited content, and requires creators to label realistic AI-generated videos. TikTok also bans “paid political advertising” (TikTok 2025) and prevents political accounts from monetizing, while applying more nuanced account enforcement policies to protect the public interest and transparency during elections.
Based on the information presented, it is evident that TikTok algorithm has a strong influence over how political information spreads among the younger generation. In reference to the 2024 US election misinformation surrounding President Donald Trump seems to spread throughout the app to this day. While the company claims its platform is politically neutral multiple studies and investigation show that its system plays an active role in shaping what users say, believe, and share. TikTok’s for “you page”, which automatically selects videos for each user, gives the algorithm more control over the content that they are exposure than most other platforms, where viewers can select what they see. This then means that even a small bias in the algorithm can have a significant effect on what political message is reaching thousands of users. There is still little research about who creates political content on TikTok, how audiences engage with it, or how the algorithm works.
Recent reports have raised concern about how TikTok handles content related to Donald Trump and the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Some users have reported being unable to access videos that were critical of Donald Trump, even though the same content remind viewable in other countries. Some individuals demonstrated that switching to UK VPN allowed them to see results that were blocked in the US, igniting concerns about political suppression before the election. Simultaneously, a Global Witness investigation revealed that both TikTok and Facebook approved advertisements containing false election information, despite these ads violating their own content policies (Global Witness. 2024)
. TikTok performed the worst in the study allowing 50% of ads with false or misleading election claims to run. (Global Witness 2022)
Furthermore, just weeks before the 2024 U.S. election, the approved advertising was released, spreading false information. This happened despite a Global Witness investigation conducted 2 years earlier that had already exposed the fragility of TikTok’s content moderation system. (Global Witness 2022)
However, it is also important to realize that TikTok’s influence is dependent on user behavior. The algorithm learns from what people like, share, or even comment on; one search could flood your page with the same content (TikTok. “For You.” 2025). Users do play a role in shaping what goes viral. For instance, videos that support Trump often get millions of likes and shares, indicating to the algorithm that this kind of content should be shown to more users. Over time, this creates a feedback loop and, hence, an echo chamber. This is then where users mainly see content that reinforces their existing beliefs. For individuals already supporting Trump, this results in stronger biased beliefs and even less exposure to opposing viewpoints.
Nevertheless, TikTok is not entirely negative in its political impact. Some users, influences and organisations use the app to share accurate information and fact-check misleading claims, particularly about Trump. AI-generated videos about Trump’s arrest and the 2024 election where a particular example of this. As a Gen-z myself I tend to avoid the news on T.V as it is predominantly negative, TikTok is more of a positive new source for young people as humour surrounding very serious matters such as trumps abortion ban. Making fun of the president brings a new side, a biased that T.V news doesn’t always report on. These examples show that while TikTok can spread misinformation, it can also be a space for education and political awareness depending on how it is used a moderated. Overall TikTok’s algorithm gives a platform extraordinary power to shape political understanding and public opinion. The evidence suggests that while the app may not directly favour one political figure, the design of its algorithm and its inconsistent moderation and advertising practises can have unintentional political effects. In the case of Donald Trump, these effects can span from expanding supportive narratives to suppressing critical voices. As a result, TikTok plays a far more active role in political communication than many users realize. Holding the platform accountable, and ensuring transparency of how the algorithm works, is essential to protecting fair political discourse in the digital era.
In summary, TikTok’s algorithms plays a major role in shaping how political information spreads and how public opinion is formed. Studies shows that TikTok’s recommendation system can promote biassed or misleading content as seen in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, between Donald Trump and Kamela Harris (Global Witness 2024). The platforms design is centred around engagement and personalization and can unintentionally amplify misinformation. By prioritising content that keeps users watching, TikTok risks reinforcing bias narratives and limiting exposure to diverse viewpoints. However, it is also important to recognise their technological impact depends on not only its algorithm but its user’s behaviour on the app, can both distort and democracies political information. TikTok does Serve as a space where misinformation can spread rapidly but, it is also where truth and creativity can thrive. TikTok has shown to be a creative outlet for a lot of young people, and a primary source of news an expressionism. Moving forward transparency and accountability are essential to ensure social media platforms like TikTok are informing their viewers rather than manipulating them. Understanding and regulating algorithmics influence will be crucial in protecting democratic process is in the integrity of future elections in America.
LeighCor 
Elizabeth Harris