TikTok gives far-right more reach to boost profit; Neonazis recruiting teens on Telegram
TikTok is actively promoting far-right livestreams to viewers who aren't actively looking for them, according to an international study led by media scientists at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The social media platform profits from donations to the content creators. Neo-Nazis are actively approaching children as young as 12 on Telegram to recruit them, BNR reported based on its own research. Both platforms said that they don’t allow hate speech. In the run-up to the parliamentary election on October 29, TikTok has an election team active to detect and remove extremist content.
The researchers who investigated TikTok monitored the livestreams of over 300 German far-right TikTok users on one evening in July, NRC reports. These involved TikTok content creators who were identified as sympathizers of the far-right AfD party, or who were labeled as far-right because they shared racist or neo-Nazi content.
The researchers observed peaks in viewership during these livestreams, during which TikTok apparently pushed the streams to new viewers through the ‘For You’ and ‘Live’ sections, researcher Pieter van Boheem, who collaborates with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and is director of Post-X society, explained to the newspaper.
The same thing happened during the far-right riots in The Hague on September 20. NRC followed several TikTok users with several thousand followers who were live-streaming from the Malieveld. They sometimes received over 50,000 likes. According to the researchers, this indicates that their live streams were brought to the attention of hundreds of thousands of other users.
TikTok seems to be pushing the far-right livestreams because they get many donations from viewers, and TikTok keeps roughly half of the donations. Globally, donations for livestreams generate $10 million in revenue daily, according to TikTok itself.
According to BNR’s ongoing investigation into Telegram, neo-Nazis are approaching kids and teenagers in private chats on the messaging platform to recruit them. The youngest person approached was a 12-year-old girl, according to the broadcaster.
BNR investigated the Telegram group "Nationale Cultuurverdedigers" (National Culture Defenders), members of which were sentenced to prison for sedition and membership in a terrorist organization earlier this year. The convicted members were between 17 and 26 years old. The broadcaster found that veterans of the Dutch far-right are personally approaching the young members of this group to invite them to “comradeship evenings” or to share information about National Socialist ideology.
Marcel H., a 59-year-old former politician of the CP’86 party and formerly active in the Voorpost organization that was involved in the Malieveld riots, is one of the veterans actively approaching young people. He was the one to invite a 12-year-old girl to participate in far-right activities, according to the broadcaster.
Tom B., a Noord-Brabant resident who was involved with various far-right groups since the 1990s, was also active in Nationale Cultuurverdedigers. He offered to educate young people in classic National Socialist ideology, according to the broadcaster.
Tom B. did not respond to BNR’s request for a comment. Marcel H. denied that he was behind the account that BNR linked to his phone number. He also said that he did not target children. “I don’t even know a 12-year-old girl who’s active in the movement,” H. told the broadcaster. “And if you’re active on Telegram and invite someone, you really don’t know how old they are.”
Both TikTok and Telegram told the Dutch media outlets that they don’t allow hate speech on their platforms.
Asked whether TikTok was fine with creating more audience for right-wing extremism, a spokesperson told NRC that TikTok does not allow hate speech and terminated 19 million livestreams in the first four months of this year. “A 50 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. We are committed to continuously improving security on our platform,” the spokesperson said.
"Calls for violence and terrorist propaganda are always removed from our platform," regardless of how and where they are found, a Telegram spokesperson told BNR. Telegram works with the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology to combat this content and has removed over “116,000 groups and communities linked to terrorism in the first half of 2025,” the spokesperson said. According to the broadcaster, Nationale Cultuurverdedigers has been removed from Telegram, but the channels for White Lives Matter and Defend Netherlands are still active.
