TikTok warped Americans view of the Iran war one post at a time

American military forces deployed an impressive range of weaponry against the Iranian regime during Operation Epic Fury — but Tehran’s allies may have been striking back on an entirely different battlefield.As the conflict raged, TikTok’s algorithm appears to have quietly nudged the American information landscape in the Islamist regime’s favor, a rigorous new analysis has found.Based on that data, the odds of this anti-American, pro-regime bias happening by chance are astronomically low — about one in 6.5 million.Spring AI, an Israeli tech company, looked at over 37,000 video impressions across nearly 9,000 politically charged TikTok posts about the conflict, collected in the United States over 32 days in March and April.The researchers’ findings indicate that pro-American content received about 19% less exposure than the platform’s baseline would normally predict.Conversely, pro-Tehran content saw more than a 7% boost.This nearly 27-percentage-point gap wasn’t just random noise: The probability of the pro-American suppression alone occurring by chance is around one in 200,000.Factor in the simultaneous pro-Tehran amplification, and you get that incredibly slim one-in-6.5-million chance.To put it plainly, while US forces were engaged in an active war and winning the military battle in the air, the news app most influential for Americans under age 30 was systematically guiding users toward the adversary’s narrative.TikTok was helping the Islamist regime win the other air war. More than a third of US adults use TikTok — and for those age 18 to 29, it’s now their primary news source.Yet unlike traditional news outlets, this platform doesn’t vet what its users post.It blurs the lines between verified reporting and outright conspiracy theories, while feeding you more of whatever keeps your thumb scrolling.This is a massive advantage for any government that uses disinformation as a tool of statecraft — such as the Chinese Communist Party, Tehran...