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#JewishTikTok: The JewToks' Fight against Antisemitism

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Abstract

The chapter introduces the robust #JewishTikTok community members ("JewToks") in the United States and unpacks their creative attempt to communicate, educate and combat antisemitism on TikTok while facing two significant threats to their visual volume: (1) TikTok’s "dark" side that pushes users to memeify antisemitism (e.g., altering, repacking, or remixing) utilizing the platform’s trends and aesthetics; (2) TikTok’s algorithmic repression, in which the platform’s moderation system tends to moderate and block JewToks’ responses to antisemitic content. Based on interviews with creators and a close multimodal analysis of their strategies, we trace this vicious cycle of human and algorithmic hate while examining creators' innovative ways to employ TikTok’s various technological affordances to evade algorithmic oppression. Creators creatively harness the platform's memetic vernacular of humor, dance, and satire as dialogic modes for community building, destigmatizing Jewish culture, combating antisemitism, and translating Jewish concepts into memes while using a plethora of features and aesthetics (e.g., POV, green screen, lip-syncing, respond-to-comments).
“Hitler was right!” This frequently seen comment exemplies the toxic
environment that Jewish TikTokers (self-professed “JewToks”) have
faced in the age of TikTok. Shadowed by the increase in hate speech on
social media since the Trump presidency, antisemitism toward Jewish
communities in the United States has penetrated TikTok. “Ever since
I joined TikTok and recognized myself as a Jew, I received antisemitic
comments daily, regardless of the content,” one JewTok explained in
an interview for this chapter. For her, as for hundreds of Jewish crea-
tors, TikTok has become an echo chamber where hateful ideas circu-
late and sinister content ourishes.
In response, a squad of Jewish-American TikTokers have decided
to cleanse the digital atmosphere and dedicate their accounts to com-
batting antisemitism. Our chapter introduces four leading TikTokers
who identify as part of the emerging #JewishTikTok community in
the United States, transforming TikTok into an afnity space to com-
municate about and educate on Judaism. Examining the subculture’s
infrastructure on the platform, we rst elaborate on two signicant
threats to Jewish creators’ visibility: (1) TikTok’s dark side that pushes
users to “memeify” antisemitism utilizing the platform’s trends and
aesthetics; (2) TikTok’s algorithmic repression, in which the platform’s
moderation system tends to block JewToks’ responses to antisemitic
content.
This vicious cycle leads Jewish creators into performative strate-
gies, which we analyze to unpack the dialogic modes of communica-
tion involved. Based on interviews with creators and close analysis
of their strategies, we explore their unique ways of combating anti-
semitism by translating Jewish concepts into TikTok’s vernacular.
By being attentive to trends and harnessing #JewishTikTok, a hash-
tag with over 650 M views, creators grant access to their subculture’s
burning issues. Among others, they combat Holocaust denial while
4 #JewishTikTok
The JewToks’ Fight against
Antisemitism
Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
DOI: 10.4324/9781003280705-6
48 Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
dancing and lip-syncing in challenges, destigmatize Jewish culture
using the respond-to-comments feature, immerse themselves in Jew-
ish history with the green-screen effect, showcase Jewish customs,
reveal behind-the-scenes takes on the matchmaking “industry,”
and even go “live” to broadcast antisemitic attacks in Israel and the
United States in real time.
Combating (Human) Hate on TikTok
“TikTok has a Nazi problem.” This red ag was being waved back at
the beginning of 2019 when Motherboard published one of the rst
comprehensive examinations of the dark side of TikTok under this
title.1 The article traces examples of “blatant, violent white suprem-
acy and Nazism” in proles that support and encourage the murder
of Jews and Black people. Accompanied by antisemitic caricatures
of Jewish gures and Nazi symbols, anonymous neo-Nazi users were
posting “all jews must die” and “kill the fucking Jews.” In response,
some Jewish TikTok accounts reused the videos to direct the platform’s
attention to this stream of hate. TikTok’s moderation system was still
in its early stages due to the app only having been available in the US
market since 2018, but the company promised better regulation and
addressed the situation as “a challenge for the industry as a whole.”2
Since then, TikTok has become the subject of many regulatory con-
cerns, leading countries like Indonesia and India to ban the applica-
tion, as well as class-action lawsuits in the United States over national
security issues, child privacy, pro-violence content, and more.3 The
number of hate videos on TikTok has skyrocketed in the past two years,
resulting in a “seismic increase” of 912% in antisemitic tropes, images,
rhetoric, and comments in 2021.4 Similar to trends on YouTube, Face-
book, Twitter, and Instagram, the distribution of antisemitic content
on social media increased across languages,5 and strategies like ap-
propriating hashtags (e.g., #Auschwitz, #Jews) has led content to be
“highly offensive and discriminatory in nature.”6 TikTok’s immense
popularity, together with an algorithmic infrastructure that often
lends prominence to controversial content, has opened the gate for
those who seek to use the platform “to promote, support or encourage
hatred and extremism.”7
In 2020, a report from The Sun revealed that the app exposes teens
to a “cesspit of hate” while praising terrorists and encouraging Hol-
ocaust denial.8 The investigation revealed a series of highly engaging
videos featuring antisemitic symbols such as caricatures of Jewish
men with large noses or the existence of proles like @Holo-hoax
The JewToks’ Fight against Antisemitism 49
or @CovidCaust cynically disparaging the Holocaust. For example,
users co-opted a popular “duet” featuring a TikToker talking about
the dangers of antisemitic slurs, combining it with another video
showing a user opening an oven door and pointing inside as a refer-
ence to the cremation of Jews in the Holocaust. The wild circulation
of harmful content led TikTok to score a “C” on the Simon Wiesen-
thal Center’s digital terrorism and hate report card for how social
media platforms combat extremism.9
Compared to other platforms, TikTokers spread hate especially
quickly because the infrastructure encourages trending audiovisual
memes or videos that are “geared toward imitation and replication.”10
TikTok trends relying mainly on sounds and images serve as a “driv-
ing template and organizing principle for content.”11 This makes the
experience for content creators more immediate, intuitive, and autodi-
dactic, leading to the memeication of antisemitism on TikTok, such
as in the case of “If I Were a Rich Man,” from the Jewish cultural
touchstone Fiddler on the Roof. This song became an audiovisual trend
and a popular Expressify lter in which TikTokers lmed themselves
singing with exaggerated facial expressions. Soon enough, antisemitic
spreaders co-opted this trend and repackaged it as a template for hate
by using it to resemble the “happy merchant,” an antisemitic meme
praised by the alt-right and identied as a hate symbol by the Anti-
Defamation League.12
“Our cultural symbols are being hijacked on TikTok,” mentioned
one of the JewToks during our interviews. “Haters can take any video
that I upload that has to do with Judaism and give it an antisemitic
remix.” Similar to the reactions to the Fiddler sound, JewToks try to
reclaim visibility on the platform by encouraging their online com-
munities to interact with their videos, keeping their original trends
circulating on the For You page (FYP) or the audio-track main page.
“This is a war on our Jewish existence in TikTok,” added one of the
JewToks.13
Contextualized in TikTok’s participatory culture, this memetic
“war” between users over Jewish narratives exposes a communalized
force that undermines TikTok’s familiar logic. Though considered an
individualistic, content-driven platform in which interpersonal con-
nectivity is downplayed, JewToks testify to a profound social collabo-
ration when, for example, a “JewTok-friend is being raided by trolls.”
Moreover, the platform’s vernacular supports new modes of sociality14
that enable the creation of protected spaces for empathetically com-
municating Jewish sentiment, “especially when such spaces may not
be physically available or where safety is a concern.”15
50 Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
Combating (Algorithmic) Hate on TikTok
JewToks’ practice of ghting against hate speech serves as a double-
edged sword. On the one hand, the utilization of the platform’s unique
quality of templatability enables JewToks to successfully ght hate
creators and have “one united ‘voice’ to which they can creatively add
their personal storyline”16 while raising awareness of antisemitism. On
the other hand, TikTok’s algorithm poses a threat to their ability to
use the platform to ght antisemitism because TikTok’s moderation
system tends to block and identify JewToks as spreaders of violent con-
tent due to their memetic use (e.g., altering, repacking, or remixing) of
antisemitic content.
This internal contradiction in TikTok’s algorithmic moderation
came up in one of our interviews:
When I encounter antisemitism content on TikTok, I know I’ll
face even a more frustrating challenge than combating the troll,
and that is TikTok’s algorithm. According to protocol, I need to
alert TikTok on the troll’s activity, but the report systems take
days and even weeks to react. So, to effectively ght antisemitism,
I need to creatively reuse the troll’s existing hate content, whether
by its comments or its own generated content…but most of the
time, JewToks who counter speech are the ones to be agged and
shut off for days by the algorithm due to ‘violation of terms’…in
the meantime, trolls can spread hate freely.
JewToks consider TikTok’s algorithm to be a black box in which
“complexity and technical opacity hid[e] and obfuscate[e] their inner
workings.”17 When it comes to the mysterious “algorithm regime”18
of YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, researchers have unpacked vari-
ous aspects, revealing controversial algorithmic moderation ranging
from user’s performance of sexual identity19 to the tendency for in-
frastructural racism,20 and users’ resistance to algorithmic power and
oppression.21 Meanwhile, in response to growing pressure from nu-
merous stakeholders, TikTok has revealed aspects of the algorithmic
logic powering its recommendation system,22 in which users’ interests
and preferences are analyzed through their interactions with content
to construct a personalized and curated FYP.23
Some scholars have attempted to unpack the operations and impli-
cations of TikTok’s recommendation and moderation algorithms. For
example, the algorithm’s potential for enhancements of sociopolitical
identity has been researched in the context of President Trump and
The JewToks’ Fight against Antisemitism 51
the #TulsaFlop,24 or user’s beliefs about the TikTok algorithm25 and
its role in the distribution and representation of LGBTQ+ content.26
Some have even criticized TikTok’s algorithmic ability to control users’
visibility as an “authoritarian technology”27 practice. Still, TikTok’s
“secret sauce” of how users take full agency of their visibility requires
further inquiry, especially concerning its role in content moderation.
Conceptually, the instability of the platform’s moderation system
might be explained through TikTok’s embrace of imperfections, un-
like most other social media platforms. TikTok users are encouraged
to create (and consume) content that contains aesthetic aws without
adhering to the organized schemes of other visual online cultures.28
This imperfect visual grammar, featuring authentic, non-polished, af-
fective, and messy content, generates a viral “creative chaos”29 from
which the algorithm is being “fed.Within this chaotic environment,
the powerful yet inherently unstable algorithm tends to deliver imper-
fect, unorganized, and mostly unexpected moderation choices, like
those we detail below. This correlation between the platform’s chaotic
and messy collection of content and its recurring algorithmic glitches
might be seen as “a feature, not a bug of the online world.”30
Whether it is infrastructurally intended or not, members of JewTok
do not need “proof” to feel validation that they battle with TikTok’s
algorithm daily, and even full transparency on how the platform po-
lices content will not automatically empower creators to gain visibil-
ity. In this sense, JewToks is not alone in the experience of algorithmic
discrimination. For instance, in June 2020, during Black Lives Matter
protests across the United States, Black activists accused TikTok of
censoring popular #BLM posts and lowering their views.31 TikTok
admitted having a “technical glitch” and blamed the hate speech
detector for being “triggered by this combination of words.”32 Simi-
lar complaints were made by TikTok’s Black inuencers about being
agged on TikTok’s Marketplace for inappropriate content,33 and by
participants in the #BlackTikTokStrike who refused to choreograph
original dances to a hit song due to misattribution and “hijacked” rou-
tines on the FYP by white imitators.34 At the same time, TikTok has
been accused of censoring support videos of pro-democracy protests
in Hong Kong, which led to American concerns about TikTok’s Chi-
nese ownership.35
Although they require further improvements, TikTok’s human and
algorithmic moderation systems are intended to ght the penetration
of hate speech, prejudices, and discrimination into the digital realm.
In the meantime, JewToks raise concerns about the ability of Tik-
Tok’s algorithms to potentially reinforce social, political, or cultural
52 Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
stereotypes outside of digitally mediated contexts.36 One member of
JewTok stated,
Sadly, TikTok is the perfect place for educating or even encourag-
ing trolls to hurt Jews on the streets. I will not be shocked to nd
out that a future assassin was ‘raised’ in and by TikTok. The algo-
rithm ‘teaches’ him that he can spread hate and get away with it.
JewToks believe that prevention must start by humanizing the Jewish
community. With this in mind, we now turn our attention to selected
videos from JewTok’s members and analyze how they educate on Juda-
ism as part of their creative combat against antisemitism on TikTok.
JewToks Fight Antisemitism: Dance, Humor, and
Creativity
Prominent JewToks mainly perform two strategies to respond to anti-
semitic distortion and hate. The rst strategy contributes to a different
image of Jews and Judaism on TikTok and utilizes the platform to ed-
ucate about Jewish history, culture, and religious customs. This strat-
egy points toward two interconnected directions: First, it offers a way
to build a Jewish community on TikTok as a “safe space” that benets
from the algorithmic structure of the FYP which promotes content
that closely adjusts to the users’ interests. Second, it uses TikTok to
react to questions or popular stereotypes related to Jews and Judaism.
Thereby, JewTok accounts such as @thatjinjyjew (Moses & Zippora)
or @thatrelatablejew (Sarah Haskell) create a more differentiated and
complex image of Jews and Judaism on TikTok. “For decades, Jews
have been trying to ght so many twisted ideas about Judaism. It is
mainly because people are not exposed enough to our everyday. Tik-
Tok changed it. I am able to deal with stereotypes by using humor and
dance. This really changes perceptions,” said one of our interviewees.
The second strategy of JewToks is to mock antisemitic ideas and
directly address antisemitic content on and through TikTok. The
American JewTok duo Jewcrazy, for instance, playfully addresses
anti-Jewish stereotypes such as Jews as being rich and having devil
horns. They create relatable comedic content with a “Jewish twist” by
using popular styles of expression on TikTok like over- exaggeration
and irony. This strategy, common among other JewTok proles, re-
veals antisemitic resentments as such and simultaneously points to-
ward the irrational and inconsistent character of enduring antisemitic
imagery. “Everyone knows that those vicious narratives are old as time
The JewToks’ Fight against Antisemitism 53
but still holds on to that. In this context, TikTok functions as a tool
for not only combating toxic beliefs but also welcomes ignorant users
that suddenly see how stupid it is to believe that Jews are monsters or
malicious people,” added another JewTok interviewee.
Both strategies enhance the visibility of American JewToks and in-
tegrate Jewish perspectives into the algorithmically organized social
media environment of the platform. These videos utilize the dialogic
structure of the app by responding to both Jewish and non-Jewish
TikTokers. Moses & Zippora, an American Jewish Orthodox couple,
refer to questions posted by users in their explanatory videos about
Orthodox Jewish customs and traditions. Jewcrazy reacts to antise-
mitic comments, sometimes addressing specic comments directly.
JewToks adjust their Jewish perspectives and content to the variety of
trends provided by the platform. For example, Sarah Haskell, who em-
powers her Jewish identity by communicating Jewish sisterhood, cre-
atively builds on the memetic nature of the platform. Haskell created
a “Shabbat-transformation-meme” utilizing techniques usually used
for fashion, time travel, or character transformations. In her memes,
Haskell celebrates the beginning of the Shabbat—in itself a trans-
formative moment in each week of the Jewish calendar—by lming
herself in casual clothes, doing a sudden movement as a transition, and
then appearing in a festive Shabbat dress. Haskell’s Shabbat meme in-
terconnects modern Jewish life with typical TikTok vernaculars: per-
formance, dance, fashion, and transformation.
In their Rosh Hashana video celebrating the Jewish New Year,
Moses & Zippora perform a similar move to Haskell. Seated in their
kitchen and dressed casually, they stand up from their chairs and
move toward the camera when they suddenly change and transform
into festively dressed, Orthodox Jews bearing the typical signs of the
holiday—a Shofar, honey, and an apple. In so doing, they empha-
size the special character of the high holidays in the Jewish life circle
and the transformative moment indicated by this shift. They also re-
connect the appearance of religious Jews as a strange and different
other to ordinary and everyday spaces and life situations shared with
non-Jewish TikTokers.
Many JewToks include one of the best-known characteristics of the
platform: dance. All JewToks discussed in this chapter utilize dancing
for building “explanatory choreographies” while connecting with the
platform and its particular aesthetics. In some of their videos, Zippora
uses dance to combat old beliefs that Orthodox Jewish women are pro-
hibited to dance in front of men while dancing with Moses. The duo
Jewcrazy introduces an ironic tone while dancing as an act of resistance
54 Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
to stereotypical comments that attempt to mock the dance culture as-
sociated with the Jewish religion, such as “Jews got no rhythm.As a
reaction, they suddenly jump on the kitchen countertop and perform
a synchronized, dazzling, and ecstatically fast dance. @oochdawg
( Michael), another leading member of JewTok, utilizes TikTok’s cul-
ture of co-opting challenges and performing in the foreground of other
TikTokers’ memes to raise awareness of antisemitic ideas.
The case of Sarah Haskell highlights the declaratory function of
the JewTok ght. In an exemplary video, she asserts that she will not
stop acting as a proud Jew even though she is confronted with an-
tisemitic comments. Haskell’s videos adopt typical elements from
the TikTok environment such as dance moves and lip-syncs or the
superimposition of short texts. In doing so, Haskell presents herself
as immersed in TikTok logic, demonstrating that TikTok is her nat-
ural environment and that she communicates with the authority of
a TikTok creator. At the same time, she connects this ‘safe space’ to
her own Jewish identity. Her speaking position as a TikToker merges
with her speaking position as an American Jew. Thereby, TikTok be-
comes a “Jewish” space, and whoever attacks her as a Jewish crea-
tor is marked as an intruder of this space. Though Haskell does not
directly attack any concrete expressions of hate speech, her TikTok
labels such attacks as alien to the communication platform that she
appropriates for Jewish expressions.
The Jewish TikTok creator Michael uses different tools to counter
hate speech and antisemitism. He adopts the narrative structure of
an edited self-conversation, presenting himself as a Jewish TikToker
and as a TikTok user asking his alter ego about his experiences. These
videos show what “love” looks like in the comments section on Tik-
Tok. Further, utilizing the green screen effect, these TikToks address
viewers through a didactically arranged short narrative lm that ends
with screenshots from antisemitic comments as the punch line. Reus-
ing TikTok material and merging it with newly generated content is
another popular form of appropriation on the platform, which here is
utilized for the purpose of problematizing and countering hate speech
without offering space for harassing TikTokers.
In the case of Jewcrazy, they mainly mock anti-Jewish stereotypes in
their TikToks. They utilize the theatrical dimension of the app to cre-
ate playful videos that contain short ironic or comic miniatures. Re-
sponding to the popular #QuestionsIGetAsked challenge, they posted
the version “Questions we get asked as Jews,” which addressed topics
such as the use of electricity on Shabbat, the antisemitic stereotype
The JewToks’ Fight against Antisemitism 55
that Jews own banks, and the myth that Jews own space lasers. By
overplaying stereotypes (“Jews are rich”), they respond to antisemitic
discourses on TikTok in a playful way while harnessing the platform’s
ludic vernacular. At the same time, they also mock Jewish traditions
such as the Brit Milah, the circumcision of Jewish boys after their
eighth day, in many of their TikToks. In “Dance moves for Jews at a
party,” they shift from the classic “Travolta Dance” in Quentin Taran-
tino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) to a gesture imitating scissors.
Jewish TikTokers also reference other JewToks and antisemitic at-
tacks on fellow Jewish TikTokers with the help of the duet function.
For example, Haskell expressed her solidarity with a fellow Jewish
TikToker who was censored for “hate speech” after being reported by
anti-Jewish trolls in a duet with Melinda Strauss. Jewcrazy performed
a duet with Michael which utilized a dance trend to address antise-
mitic resentments. In doing so, Jewcrazy expressed their support for
his attempt to challenge antisemitic posts (“When they get 6 million of
you, yet you still manage to ‘run the world’”). Utilizing trending dance
elements as well as additional ironic textual layers (“On our way to the
secret bank owners meeting”), these TikToks represent complex and
multilayered attempts to establish Jewish spaces on the platform and
react to anti-Jewish and antisemitic expressions.
Conclusion
One of our JewTok interviewees summed up the community’s moti-
vations with particular eloquence, saying, As Jews on TikTok, our
ght for our community’s legitimacy is never-ending. It can be hu-
man hate trolls or the algorithm itself—the threat keeps on changing
when it comes to TikTok. However, we need to make an impact in the
real world. This needs to be our goal. This is why we are so motived
to make lemonade out of TikTok’s lemons when it comes to ghting
and educating people about their misunderstandings and blind hate
against Jews. We have creative, engaging, and highly visible tools for
that on TikTok, and although we are struggling, we believe TikTok is
the place to start this change.”
While hate speech, racism, and antisemitism are a disturbing, sad,
and toxic reality on TikTok (as on other social media platforms),
the app also facilitates subversive counter strategies and the estab-
lishment of particularly “Jewish” creative spaces and communities.
JewToks have developed different strategies to counter antisemi-
tism and hate speech. Some present a different image of Jews and
56 Tom Divon and Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
Judaism that contradicts dominant stereotypes and simultaneously
educates about Jewish traditions and customs. Others directly con-
front antisemitism and hate speech by responding to other TikTok-
ers or screenshots of antisemitic comments. At the same time, they
utilize the playful environment provided by the app to establish a
creative Jewish space. Connecting with other Jewish creators and
intersecting TikTok aesthetics with Jewish traditions and customs,
Jewish American life, and culture become an integral part of the
diverse environment provided by and constituted through TikTok
and its creators.
Notes
1 Joseph Cox, “TikTok Has a Nazi Problem,” Motherboard, December 18,
2018, accessed September 9, 2021, https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw74gy/
tiktok-neo-nazis-white-supremacy.
2 Ibid.
3 Justin Sherman, “Unpacking TikTok, Mobile Apps and National Security
Risks,” Lawfare, April 2, 2020, accessed July 16, 2020, https://www.law-
fareblog.com/unpacking-tiktok-mobile-apps-and-national-security-risks.
4 Jordan Pike, Antisemitic Content on TikTok Increases by 912%—
Study,” The Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2021, accessed September 25, 2020,
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/antisemitic-content-on-
tiktok-increases-by-912-percent-study-673588.
5 Ahmed Omar, Tarek M Mahmoud and Tarek Abd-El-Hafeez, “Compar-
ative Performance of Machine Learning and Deep Learning Algorithms
for Arabic Hate Speech Detection in OSNS.” In The International Confer-
ence on Articial Intelligence and Computer Vision. Springer, Cham, April
2020: 247–257.
6 Gemma Commane and Rebekah Potton. “Instagram and Auschwitz: A
Critical Assessment of the Impact Social Media Has on Holocaust Rep-
resentation,” Holocaust Studies, 25, nos. 1–2 (2019): 172.
7 Ciaran O’Connor, “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and
Hate Speech on TikTok,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 24 Aug. 2021,
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/hatescape-an-in-depth-analysis-
of-extremism-an d-hate-speech-on-tiktok/, 2021: 7.
8 Richard Wheatstone and Ciaran O’Connor, “TikTok Swamped with
Sickening Videos of Terror Attacks Murders, Holocaust Denials and Vile
Racist Slurs,” The Sun Online, March 1, 2020, accessed May 15, 2020,
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9 Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Digital Hate on Social Media,” 2021, accessed
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10 Diana Zulli and David James Zulli, “Extending the Internet Meme:
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The JewToks’ Fight against Antisemitism 57
11 Jing Zeng and Crystal Abidin, “OkBoomer, Time to Meet the Zoomers’:
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13 For a profound understanding of the Jewish community on TikTok, we
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Jewish TikTokers (as stated in their prole activity) by scrolling on TikTok
and contacted them via Instagram’s DM. Six consented to our requests
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19 Tobias Raun, Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community
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22 Louise Matsakis, “How TikTok’s ‘For You’ Algorithm Works,” Wired,
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23 Benjamin Guinaudeau, Fabio Vottax, and Kevin Munger, “Fifteen Seconds
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24 Jack Bandy and Nicholas Diakopoulos, “#TulsaFlop: A Case Study of
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