How long before new TikTokers see Nazi content? 75 minutes, according to a Jan. 6 committee test
An account called Alice did not interact with the TikTok app in any way, and it still showed her Nazis

Tik Tok is one of the most popular social media apps. Photo by Getty Images
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol wanted to test how fast it took social media to get to radical content. The answer, when it came to TikTok and Nazis, was just over an hour.
It took TikTok 75 minutes to deliver Nazi content to a new user who did not seek it, the committee found, according to a report Thursday in Rolling Stone. The magazine is one of a number of publications reviewing the committee’s final release of documents as the U.S. House of Representatives transitions from Democratic to Republican control.
Committee staffers were testing a theory that social media giants were reluctant to police right-wing extremist content in part because of pushback from then-President Donald Trump and his supporters who argue that such controls inhibit conservative speech.
The Jan. 6 riot, which resulted in multiple deaths, was carried out by supporters of Trump who believed his false claim that he had won the 2020 election. That lie spread on social media, where right-wing accounts were some of the most seen during the period between the election and Jan. 6, after which several social media giants, including Twitter, banned Trump.
The staffers on the committee’s social media team invented Alice, a 41-year-old woman from Acton, Massachusetts. It took “Alice” 75 minutes of scrolling without prompts or interactions to get to Nazi content, the staffers reported.
The social media team said in a draft summary that “Alice” was “just one of the Committee’s experiments that further evidenced the power of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm in creating rabbit holes toward potentially harmful content.”
The incoming Republican majority in the House, which includes a substantial portion of Trump backers, has indicated that it will seek to bury as much of the findings of the Jan. 6 committee as it can. Meanwhile, legislators on both sides of the aisle have said they plan to scrutinize TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, because of its presentation of harmful content and its potential security risks.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Opinion Is this new documentary giving voice to American Jewish anguish — or simply stoking fear?
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee said there’s ‘no such thing as a Palestinian.’ It’s worth thinking about what that means
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Think every Palestinian in Gaza is Hamas? This week’s protests prove you’re wrong
-
Opinion A Palestinian Oscar-winner’s arrest shocked the world. For these Jewish activists, it was terrifyingly normal
-
Opinion In the Trump administration and Israel, a grotesque display of virility coupled with a loss of humanity
-
Fast Forward Cornell’s new Jewish president says he is ‘very comfortable with where Cornell is currently’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.