Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has angrily accused TikTok of creating “the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis.”
The “Borat” star lashed out during a virtual discussion Wednesday with executives from the social media site which has since been flooded by people even praising late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and justifying the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
He was joined by fellow celebs Debra Messing and Amy Schumer as well as more than a dozen Jewish content creators, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the New York Times.
“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Cohen told execs at the site, where he does not appear to have an account.
“If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images when they were small kids that led them to hate,” he continued, the Times said.
The British star told the TikTok execs they could simply “flip a switch” to fix antisemitism on the platform, which the meeting was told included people saying “Hitler was right” and “I hope you end up like Anne Frank.”
“Shame on you,” he told the execs, led by TikTok’s head of operations, Adam Presser, and global head of user operations, Seth Melnick, the Times report said.
The execs — who are both Jewish — seemed aware of the criticism., the Times suggested.
“Obviously a lot of what Sacha says, there’s truth to that,” Presser said, while maintaining there was no “magic button” to fix it.
Still, he conceded: “We can do better.”
“Will and Grace” star Messing, who has more than 37,000 followers on the platform, also used the opportunity to press executives at TikTok to ban the pro-Palestinian phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which many view as a call for the eradication of Israel.
The phrase, which was deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League, has appeared in comments on many Jewish TikTok users videos — regardless of what they’re posting.
But Presser said the use of the phrase was up for interpretation by TikTok’s 40,000 moderators.
“Where it is clear exactly what they mean — ‘kill the Jews, eradicate the state of Israel’ — that content is violative and we take it down,” the exec reportedly said.
But “Our approach up until Oct. 7, continuing to today, has been that for instances where people use the phrase where it is not clear, where someone is just using it casually, then that has been considered acceptable speech,” he stated.
Messing then asked the company to reconsider its stance.
“It is much more reasonable to bar it at this juncture than to say, ‘Oh, well, some people, they use it in a different way that it was actually created to mean.’
“I understand that you are in a very, very difficult and complicated place, but you also are the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate,” she argued.
Others who spoke at the 90-minute hearing questioned why they could not directly reach individuals at TikTok when they are being harassed on the app, with one user saying that after she reported an incident, it took three to five days for administrators to respond.
Presser and Melnick blamed it on a lack of staff.
They are now trying to reorganize its creator management teams to get more individual or community support for bigger accounts, Presser said.
The virtual showdown came after many of the same group sent an open letter to TikTok decrying Jewish users being bombarded with such hate.
“Simply put, TikTok lacks critical safety features to protect Jewish content creators and the broader Jewish TikTok community, leaving us in digital and physical danger,” said the letter also signed by Messing and Schumer.
“Sadly, rampant antisemitism is a common problem that TikTok has failed to address for far too long.”
“The daily reality for Jewish content creators on TikTok includes death threats, endless threatening comments on posts (many just for being Jewish) and a barrage of harassment in all forms of TikTok-facilitated interaction,” the letter read.
“As Jews, we are scared, distraught and at a breaking point,” it said, claiming, “this isn’t just ‘digital harassment.’ There are real-world implications.
“We fear that only an unfathomable tragedy befalling a Jewish TikTok creator will lead to change,” the signers wrote. “Is that what you are waiting for?”
They concluded by saying, “TikTok is more than just an app, and you have a grave responsibility as stewards of the daily influence and media consumption of more than one billion people.”
But as the TikTok users and celebrities met virtually on Wednesday, other users on TikTok were sharing Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” in which he claimed he orchestrated the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center that killed nearly 3,000 Americans because the US “attacked us in Palestine.
The terror leader also called the creation of Israel a “crime which must be erased,” and went on to assert that in the US, Jews “control your policies, media and economy.”
Speaking of the videos of Gen Z users promoting the letter, one person at the meeting Wednesday claimed it had become the “talk of the app,” and added, “In regards to trending topics right now as we speak, this trend needs to end.
“This app needs to ban this letter.”
A TikTok spokesperson has since said that “content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism” and added that the company was “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”
At the same time, the company bizarrely tried to deny that the bin Laden-related content had gone viral — despite videos that racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
“The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate,” the spokesperson added.
“This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”
TikTok has previously denied that it’s influencing young users, and has claimed it removed almost a million videos related to the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to The Telegraph.
It has also claimed that the volume of pro-Palestinian posts on its platform reflects the fact that younger generations are more likely to be sympathetic to the cause.
“We recognize this is an incredibly difficult and fearful time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community,” company executives said in a statement to the Times.
“Our leadership has been meeting with creators, civil society, human rights experts and stakeholders to listen to their experiences and feedback on how TikTok can remain a place for community, discovery and sharing authentically.”
