How TikTok Is Distorting the Memory of the Holocaust

Der Spiegel Guest Editorial by Eva Berendsen – political scientist and head of the communication and online education department at the Anne Frank Educational Center in Frankfurt. She has written extensively about the effects of social media on memory an artificial intelligence’s influence on racism and anti-Semitism. “Imagine for a moment your 13‑year‑old child stumbling across a TikTok video in which an AI‑generated Anne Frank with sad eyes recounts her story of persecution – though without an overly strict adherence to the facts. This AI Anne claims she was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz, even though Anne Frank and her sister Margot died in the Bergen‑Belsen concentration camp, most likely of typhus. One might be inclined to overlook this inaccuracy – if, that is, the video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, was not being praised by viewers as original educational content, a “good summary” and even a substitute for classroom teaching. “Learned more in five minutes than in five years of school,” one user wrote enthusiastically in a comment. The account has over 30,000 followers, and at the end of the clip AI Anne Frank also seeks to drum up a bit of business in good entrepreneurial fashion: “Please subscribe to my channel and leave a like if my story moved you.” The boundaries between dead and alive, fiction and historical accuracy are blurred – just as they are between commerce and basic decency. Now imagine the TikTok algorithm having a quick look at your child’s profile. From that point on, this algorithm, which has excited marketing professionals ever since the app from the Chinese company ByteDance appeared seven years ago, will continue to push more and more such history clips onto the “For You” page, as the feed is called on TikTok. It is quite possible that within a few days your child will encounter additional AI‑generated historical content packaged into short videos, including an android named “Anne Clank,” who, in a completely bizarre science‑fiction scene, shakes Joe Biden’s hand and spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories…”