The racism shows up after a few minutes
Culture
Karin Pettersson
,
Mattias Beijmo
,
Minna Höggren
Updated 2026-06-17 | Published 2026-06-16
This is a cultural article which is part of Aftonbladet’s opinion journalism.
When this year’s youngest first-time voter was ten years old, Tiktok broke through. For young people today, it is the dominant information channel, at the same time no one has any direct insight into how the algorithms control what is shown.
What political content is it that reaches through the noise?
We registered accounts for two fictitious 18-year-olds, “Erik” and “Maria”. This is what their feeds look like.
Decide in advance we to like any political content that pops up to show the algorithm that we are interested in that type of content. After six clips, the first one appears in “Erik’s” feed. It’s a Jimmie Åkesson look-a-like dancing to Swedish rap.
Shortly after, an AI version of a dancing one arrives Jimmie Åkessonwhich is followed by AI versions of a dancing Ulf Kristersson and Magdalena Andersson. We like all three in hopes of neutralizing the algorithm, but soon after the first video comes from an official party leader account. It’s from Jimmie Åkesson. The party leader of the Sweden Democrats talks about insecurity and violence in society and links it to Islamism. Sweden is called “a broken, divided country”.
It appears more and more “humorous content”, so-called local humor aimed at creating recognition (multivitamin fruit drink is the national drink of immigrants), as well as misogynistic jokes (this is why you should never let women drive your car). Clips also appear where a young guy pushes his girl away when they are “having fun”.
After scrolling for about twenty minutes, a gradual change occurs. “Erik” receives content from accounts with names such as Save Europe, Swedish vikings and Mother Svea. National romantic fantasies of blonde children are interspersed with clips from Palestine demonstrations and masked men shouting Allah akbar. Sweden then and now is compared. In one post it says “Don’t complain about the snow… it will soon be the only white we have left in this country…” In the clip, the police can be heard using the n-word. Occasionally clips from John Emanuel and Donald Trumpto then return to Jimmie Åkesson again.
The result is striking and supported by that the magazine Resumé noted the corresponding pattern in a recent review.Without searches, it took less than thirty minutes of scrolling before both phones—but especially “Erik”—were met with racism and right-wing propaganda.
When we scroll on “Maria’s” account, we are met with similar content, but with more allusions to the insecurity in society. Sweden is ranked as the most dangerous country in Europe by two guys. In a few months old clip from Joakim Lamotte he comments on the murder of the 23-year-old My in Rönninge.
Gradually towards an increasingly political and right-wing radical content
Aftonbladet created two new Tiktok accounts on separate phones. The accounts were registered as two fictitious 18-year-olds: “Erik” and “Maria”.
We skipped the step where Tiktok asks the user to select interests to make the accounts as neutral as possible. During the experiment, we liked all content related to or alluding to politics, regardless of orientation, to signal a general interest in politics.
To avoid sources of error, we used new prepaid cards on empty phones and did not use Wi-Fi connection.
At a later stage, we actively tried to leave out the political content by searching for other topics, including exercise, to see how quickly the recommendations changed.
The review shows how two completely new accounts, with no previous search history or political preferences, were gradually steered toward increasingly political and radical right-wing content.
Jan Emanuel is replaced Rebecca Fallenkvist who joke about asylum-seeking IS terrorists. In a clip there Alice Teodorescu Måwe criticizes the methods of Palestine demonstrators, it is written “imported Jew-hatred does not only affect Jews”. Occasionally, the usual classic self-help tips such as remembering to drink water appear, and then we are greeted by the only clip during our experiment where Magdalena Andersson’s official account is the sender. She defends grant recipients against Jimmie Åkesson in the rostrum. But even though we interact with the clip, nothing like it ever appears again.
We are waiting for one week without using the phones. When material that is too similar appears, we avoid interacting with it to see what happens. It only takes three videos before similar “nostalgic clips” appear in “Erik’s” feed. After that we get a clip up there “Crip” comments on a video and laughs mockingly at a guy who says he is from Sweden: “I could have stood on the moon and seen that he is not from Sweden”. The material that has some kind of political opinion is often wrapped in humor. Sketches where immigrants try to get in touch with the Migration Agency, help my wife vote left, as well as the neo-Nazis from the film “Night bus 807” (1997) who stand up for the Swedish tradition of “standing in line” to the tune of “Papaya coconut”. We have found ourselves in the proverbial quagmire.
The downright racist and the Islamophobic clips continue in both “Erik’s” and “Maria’s” feeds. They come in an unbroken stream; “Sweden 2026: Eva 71, must go to work so that Abdi, Fatima and their 12 children can live on benefits” is written on a clip, before tribute videos dedicated to Jimmie Åkesson published by the account “proud Swedish” appear. In “Maria’s” flow, the criticism against women who want to wear the hijab during working hours is particularly common.
The app’s recommendation system has determined that “Erik” will specifically stick around if it serves increasingly radical, far-right content. We get clips from Alexander Edbom which has been driving the Sweden Democrats’ coordinated troll accounts. Then a video appears with the right-wing nationalist Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski up, followed by a video with the far-right activist Nick Alinia. So it continues. The only material from official accounts is from Jimmie Åkesson, Alternativ för Sverige and Medborgerlig samling.
When we for the third time accessing “Maria’s” and “Erik’s” accounts, we decide to actively try to remove ourselves from the political content. We enter our own search: training. Soon training videos are interspersed with messages about “Sweden is the land of the Swedes”. On a clip where a package of bacon is sizzling in a frying pan, it says: “Happy Ramadan”. For Maria, it is first faster to get away from the political content. Her feed is filled with weight loss tips and recipes for healthier chocolate balls, but occasionally we return to Riks and “anti-sosse” content.
It’s easy to state that the platform rewards far-right content. But what kind of effect it has is difficult to both know and measure. The political is embedded in a world of aesthetic and cultural references where humor is mixed with seriousness, and there is a risk that older generations treat everything that happens on Tiktok with a grave seriousness and a detachment that differs from the younger users.
But what makes Tiktok seem such a good fit for far-right content? Part of it is about the political messages, with their simple proposals and solutions.
– Clips on Tiktok are so incredibly short, and there is research that shows that that format is particularly suitable for right-wing populist content, says Rebecca Bengtsson Lundin who carries out the research project “The Tiktok generation: Young people’s media consumption in an age of digital misinformation” for the Institute for Media Studies.
Don’t know how the algorithm works
• Tiktok is owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance. The app made its global breakthrough after Bytedance bought Musical.ly in 2017 and merged the services under the name Tiktok in the summer of 2018.
• The platform is based on a recommendation system that analyzes user behavior – for example which videos they watch, like, share or comment – to create a personalized flow.
• Tiktok is one of the world’s largest social media platforms with over a billion users globally.
• For many young people, Tiktok is one of the most important sources of news, social information and political content.
• How the algorithm exactly works is not publicly known. Researchers and authorities therefore have limited opportunities to examine why certain types of content are widely disseminated.
Also, the right-wing populist parties were much earlier active on Tiktok and experimented more, so they have a big lead over the left. The German researcher and expert on digital platforms Marcus Bösch also believe that the populist right has much better developed networks of activists who are active in comment fields which means that the content is rewarded in more feeds. In addition, in many European election campaigns it has been evident that foreign actors – in several cases Russia – have played an active role in spreading right-wing propaganda.
But in how to a great extent does this affect the young people before the election? Is this a partial explanation for the fact that more and more young people are moving out on the right and exhibiting conservative ideals?
– It is clear that the platform plays a big role in shaping young people’s political identities. But it’s not like they go into a room with their phone, check Tiktok and come out as extremists, says Marcus Bösch.
In addition, there is a problem in talking about young people as a particularly vulnerable group, “like poor little lambs released into a big dangerous world”, says Christopher Holt who is professor of media and communication science at Linnaeus University.
– The vast majority of people I have spoken to have developed their own strategies for decoding and handling the material. They don’t believe everything they see.
So it is for sure. But at the same time, it is a fact that Tiktok’s algorithm, with both ease and precision, quickly leads completely new accounts to a specific type of political content – from the harmless AI clip with dancing party leaders – to outright racist content that reinforces the image that immigrants have “ruined our country”. Which then turns out to be not entirely easy to get away from. There is humor and satire, but above all a tidal wave of racism and traditional gender roles that often spill over into misogyny. Each of the clips hardly affects anyone, but after hours of scrolling, the world outside the algorithm feels far away.
