TikTok was ‘just a dancing app’. Then the Ukraine war started

Many have called the invasion of Ukraine the world's first "TikTok war", and experts say it is high time for the short video platform - once known primarily for silly lip syncs and dance challenge - to be taken seriously.

Some politicians are doing just that. In a speech, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appealed to "TikTokers" as a group that could help end the war. Last week, Joe Biden spoke to dozens of top users on the app in a first-of-its kind meeting to brief the influencers on the conflict in Ukraine and how the US is addressing it.

But even as world leaders increasingly legitimize the platform, others continue to dismiss it as frivolous. The White House meeting was lampooned on Saturday Night Live in a skit, and mocked relentlessly on Twitter, while the Republican senator Josh Hawley scolded Biden for asking "teenagers to do his job".

Experts say this mentality is a mistake.

"TikTok is constantly overlooked and deprioritized by people who do not take the time to understand it," said Abbie Richards, an independent researcher who studies the app. "Many of the problems we are seeing with it today stem from this false idea that it is just a dancing app."

Ukraine-related content on TikTok has exploded since the country was invaded on 24 February, with videos tagged #Ukraine surpassing 30.5bn views as of 17 March. One report from the New York Times found that, proportionally, Ukraine content on TikTok outpaces that on platforms more than twice its size.

With that dramatic rise came an influx of misinformation and disinformation. Videos of unrelated explosions were re-posted as if they were from Ukraine. Media uploaded from video games were passed off as footage of real-life events. Russian propaganda went viral before it could be removed.