In the last election cycle, Facebook and Twitter came under heavy criticism because they were used to spread misinformation and disinformation. But as those platforms have matured and others have surged to the forefront, researchers are now examining the negative influence of the newer players. Like TikTok.
The platform, which allows users to create and share short videos, has become tremendously popular, particularly among teens and young adults. It was the second most downloaded app during the first quarter of 2022, according to Forbes, and it has become the second most popular social media platform among teens this year, per the Pew Research Center.
And because TikTok is also eating into a big chunk of Google’s search dominance, it has become a significant source of misinformation.
Earlier this month, researchers at NewsGuard sampled TikTok search results on a variety of topics, covering the 2020 presidential election, the midterm elections, Covid-19, abortion and school shootings. They found that nearly 20 percent of the results demonstrated misinformation.
Emphasis theirs:
For example, the first result in a search for the phrase “Was the 2020 election stolen?” was a July 2022 video with the text “The Election Was Stolen!” The narrator stated that the “2020 election was overturned. President Trump should get the next two years and he should also be able to run for the next four years. Since he won the election, he deserves it.” (Election officials in all 50 states have affirmed the integrity of the election, and top officials in the Trump administration have dismissed claims of widespread fraud.)
Of the first 20 videos in the search results, six contained misinformation (if not disinformation), including one that used a QAnon hashtag. The same search on Google did not result in web pages promoting misinformation.
Similarly, a search for “January 6 FBI” on TikTok returned eight videos containing misinformation among the top 20, including the top result. Again, Google did not have any misinformation in the top 20.
While Google will search the entire internet – from government websites to news to videos to recipes – a TikTok search will only return videos uploaded to the platform by its users.
TikTok does have a content moderation system and states in its guidelines that misinformation is not accepted. But users appear to have found ways around the AI system that serves as the first line of defense against misinformation.
“There is endless variety, and efforts to evade content moderation (as indicated in [NewsGuard’s] report) will always stay several steps ahead of the efforts by the platform,” said Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, when asked whether there is anything the platforms can do to prevent misinformation from surfacing in search results. “That doesn’t mean the answer is always no, but it means that concrete investment in both understanding what misinformation is out there, how people talk about it, and effectively judging both the validity and danger are a significant undertaking.”
While advocates encourage social media platforms to step up their anti-misiniformation efforts, there are other steps that can be taken at the user end, particularly by stepping up education about identifying falsehoods.
“Users on social media need greater media literacy skills in general, but a key focus should be on understanding why messages stick,” said Hickey.
He pointed to three reasons people latch onto misinformation:
- Motivated reasoning: People want to find contentpeople statement that aligns with their beliefs and values.
- Emotional appeals: Media consumers need to pause when they have an emotional response to some information and evaluate the cause of the reaction.
- Easy answers: Be wary of any information that seems too good to be true.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.