TikTok honors Holocaust Remembrance Day

On Thursday, January 27, the world celebrated International Holocaust Remembrance Day—and viral media platform TikTok has joined in to do its part in memorializing the holiday, and combatting antisemitism on the platform.

Yesterday, TikTok officially announced that it would be offering new tools and features to combat the spread of hate speech and marginalization, as well as provide users with educational content to counter any misinformation on the platform.

To do this, TikTok has partnered with UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress to display a new banner across the screen, which users will see when they search for certain Holocaust-related phrases. The banner reads, "Remember to consult trusted sources to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation," a text accompanied by a link to aboutholocaust.org.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder, stated that "the World Jewish Congress is proud to partner with UNESCO and TikTok in making factual and reliable information about the Holocaust available to the TikTok community," as recorded in TikTok's official blog post.

“TikTok allows us to reach a new audience," he continued, "some of whom may be uninformed about the horrors of the Holocaust and therefore be potentially susceptible to misinformation. We welcome the platform taking responsibility and leveraging its reach to stop the spread of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.”

January 27 marks the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—the largest Nazi concentration camp—in 1945. It is a day on which the whole world gathers to remember the millions of people who were killed in the Holocaust during World War II.

However, TikTok's decision to spread awareness about antisemitism isn't limited to the Holocaust Remembrance Day holiday, nor to a week, or even month, after the event. According to the blog post, this will be a permanent change to the platform, implemented along with the provision of new educational reading material on TikTok's main Discover page.