Original version

BBC World Service Australasia

Click

Digital Planet

Magazines & Reviews

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Technological and digital news from around the world.

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

Digital Planet: Distress of TikTok fake school accounts

Factual: Science & Nature

TikTok logo displayed on a smart phone

16/11/2021 GMT

Distress of TikTok fake school accounts

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Distress of TikTok fake school accounts

After US school TikTok challenge, UK schools are dealing with fake accounts.

TikTok School challenge – what’s happening and what’s being done. Twitter disinformation campaign in Kenya and the lack of diversity in the AI workforce across the world.

TikTok School challenge
It’s November so school children in the US are being encouraged to “Kiss your friend’s girlfriend at school”. In September the TikTok school challenge suggested they “Vandalize the restroom”.  These are just two of the examples that schools in the US have been dealing with following a call on TikTok to pupils. Now in the UK teachers are facing an onslaught of online abuse via TikTok too.  Headteacher Sarah Raffray, who is also the Chair of the Society of Heads in the UK, is live on the show.  The fake account created at her school has been removed by TikTok as have hundreds of others, but is the social media platform doing enough to control this libellous behaviour?

Disinformation campaign in Kenya
The Pandora papers revealed that Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his family have offshore accounts containing $30m.  Following the release of this information a collaborative disinformation campaign manipulating Twitter’s algorithms was launched attempting to exonerate the President.  Odanga Madung is a Mozilla fellow and is on the programme to discuss a report he’s co-authored  “How to Manipulate Twitter and Influence People: Propaganda and the Pandora Papers in Kenya”.  So far 400 accounts have been deleted, but with elections next year this campaign could already be influencing the outcome.

AI (lack of) diversity in the workforce
Research from the Digital Planet team at Tuft’s University has examined the world's top AI hubs and ranked them in terms of diversity. Bhaskar Chakravorti, who led the team behind the work, tells us that San Francisco has the lowest proportion of black AI talent in the US. When it comes to the proportion of women in the field, AI is much less diverse than the industry overall. 17 percent of the AI talent pool in the 50 hotspots in the world is female as compared to 27 percent in STEM overall.  Tel Aviv comes out on top globally for employing women in AI.  We discuss how this imbalance is impacting AI development.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

Studio Manager: John Boland
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Image: TikTok logo displayed on a smart phone.
Credit: Illustration by Nikolas Joao Kokovlis/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Digital Planet

Distress of TikTok fake school accounts

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Australasia

About BBC World Service