spain's government announces a new state of emergency as it tackles the virus — a national curfew from from 11pm until six in the morning is due to come in from sunday. after seven months, ballet dancers return to the stage with socially distanced tu—tu's at birmingham repertory theatre. now on bbc news... our world investigates how tiktok is changing us politics and how it is influencing the race for the white house. tiktok — one of the fastest—growing social media platforms in the world, and downloaded over 2 billion times. micro—entertainment has a bottomless well of content, and that means hours of engagement every day. normally the home for lip—syncing teens and out—of—control pets, its phenomenal growth means it's

starting to change the world. what we are seeing on tiktok, i think we know more about politics and about the latest news. and nowhere more than in the us election, where donald trump and joe biden supporters are fighting for the future of their country on tiktok. i am a conservative and i am a trump supporter. hey, bunker boy. any time he opens his mouth, it's good for content creators. more than 800 million of us have downloaded tiktok. i'm sophia smith galer, bbc reporter and tiktok creator, and have been following political content on the app for months, and it's not all good. there's clearly a huge amount of hate speech. there's a huge amount of divisive rhetoric. will the influence of tiktok on its millions of young voters have a say in who gets the keys to the white house? with polling day less than two weeks away,

the 2020 us presidential election is racing to the finish line. for months, the candidates have been vying for votes with online platforms becoming more and more important. but there's a new app in town that's blurring the lines between comedy, entertainment and politics. tiktok is the most dense content format known to man. josh constine is a technology expert and investor in social platforms like tiktok. content density is the measure of how many oohs, aahs and hahas per second are contained in a piece of content, and this is how addictive it feels, how quickly it gets to the point. tiktok videos last from a few seconds to one minute. its rapid rise in popularity means it now has over 800 million users worldwide and forjosh, that's all down to content density. there's some amazing examples of content density like this one, where two creators recreate the harry potter theme song

using their washing machine. playing hedwig's theme. and they spent hours figuring this out and then nailing the take, the exact button pushes. it has 100 million monthly users in the us and is transforming how we consume online content — content that's increasingly becoming political. we can't let the left take over the country. and also, make sure they vote for democrats. democrats, they founded the kkk. because this format gets its point across so quickly, you can actually trick people into hearing your message, even if they were to normally be opposed. someone can make you care about that issue with a very high—quality, quick, succinct tiktok. we're looking at tiktok, we may be banning tiktok... in the run—up to this election, president trump had threatened to shut down tiktok‘s us operations, and joe biden‘s campaign squad were effectively barred from using the video sharing app.

but this hasn't stopped their fans using it. hey, my name's zoe and i am your average teenage tiktok addict. as someone who is voting in this upcoming election as a first—time voter, i definitely think the politics on social media platforms, and especially on tiktok, can be very influential. thanks, and don't forget to vote! under 20 and female, zoe is your average tiktok user. she is also classic gen z — the cohort born from the mid ‘90s to early 2000s — and, for the most part, first—time voters. unlike facebook and youtube, paid political ads on tiktok are banned, but that doesn't mean people aren't using it to campaign, or simply learn about politics. us voters! i report on tiktok... i made a tiktok to see what americans had to say. and i want to hearfrom you. duet this video to answer my questions. one, what do you think about politicians using this app, and do you follow any? i think it's a great vehicle for people to express, like, what they support. two, do you follow people who post

about politics on here? are they reliable? do you learn much from them? people i follow aren't necessarily political but they do speak on issues. i like to think i do that too. three, do you think tiktok and the content on here could influence how you vote in this election? 0h, forsure. it's definitely influenced the way i'm voting. and there's one tiktok moment that summed up the app and its potential impact on voting and the election. i took part in the infamous tulsa rally prank on donald trump. sings to the theme of my favorite things: # fox news and breitbart, fascism for days. # these are a few of trump's favourite things. maya nepos is tiktok content creator. she's famous for her freestyle raps and has about 200,000 followers, which she mobilised injune. yells: trump, trump, trump! it was in that month that donald trump organised a rally in tulsa, oklahoma. for him, it was a huge event — a comeback rally to kick—start his re—election campaign after lockdown. massive shout—out

for this epic idea. had to try it. google "tulsa rally". you can put in fake information. i made a really short video about how easy it was to go to donald trump's website and sign up to, like, reserve a seat. and you're all set. just sit back and remember, don't actually go. he was very convinced that there was really a million people that wanted to go to his tulsa rally. and inside, acres of empty seats. the arena has a capacity of 19,000. the fire marshal today confirmed there were only 6,200 present. that was a great — one of my favourite forms of activism. harnessing the power of tiktok may have felt great for tiktokers like maya, but for one person, it was anything but. it's notjust individuals who are trying to get their political messages across. trump did nothing wrong. there are now organised political collectives on tiktok, and they are called hype houses. today i want to show you one of the funniest political ads i've ever seen,

and it comes from... my name is aidan. i am 16 years old. my tiktok username — that i regret making every day — is politicaljew. i'm jewish — i've gotten that question a few times. they're like "are you jewish?" i'm like "why would i — why would ijoke about being "jewish?" that's such a weird thing to joke about. and i post mainly political and comedic content. i am so excited for the presidential debate tonight! i just cannot wait! it's going to be so entertaining. it's gonna be so good! that was the worst 90 minutes of my life. aidan is a prolific tiktok poster and knows all about the hype houses. they're basically group accounts. people don't live together necessarily, but all they have the account password and username and they post videos on there. so there is the republican hype house, the conservative hype house, the democratic hype house, which i am a part of... aidan, you're 16. you can't even vote yet. but why are you spending so much time, then, on tiktok,

talking about political issues? i think that growing up in dc and having very political parents, growing up in such a political environment, inspired me to a certain degree. when i got tiktok, i was like "what videos am i going to make?" what do i talk about the most? politics! do you support the cancel... not really. ..culture, the cosmopolitan elites of nancy pelosi, chuck schumer and joe biden? yes, i do. do you believe in american greatness? not really. believe in yourself? no. in president trump? definitely not. in individual and personal responsibility? yeah, but not in the way that you would've. a lot of people assume that gen z isn't politically engaged. so that is not my experience. what we are seeing on tiktok and what we're seeing with 24—hour news and just this constant media storm all the time, i think we are learning and we know more about politics and about the latest news. gen z is totally — it's totally passionate and totally —

and totally wants to be civically engaged. the product design of tiktok means that the first page you land on is called the for you page, and aidan‘s will almost certainly serve him left—leaning content because it brings you videos based on your viewing habits. it's one of the most powerful recommendation algorithms on the internet. but it's not just liberals posting content. a study revealed 60% more videos are created by republican—leaning users than democrat ones on the platform. joie culin is definitely a republican—leaning user, and creator. pro—choice or pro—life? anti—death penalty or pro—death penalty? follow parts of the constitution or not follow parts of the constitution? joie belongs to the republican girls, a hype house with a huge following on the platform. we are all about republican and conservativism, creating a movement associated with today's

america, but also, these girls are like my sisters. i mean, we have each other‘s backs and we want to show that girls our age, gen z, girls that you can be a republican, it is ok. are you excited for dc? i'm super excited for dc... could you talk us through the growth of republican girls and where you're at now? so whenever i firstjoined republican girls, we had around 40.5k followers. and from there, we just took off. i mean, we grew 200,000 followers in a matter of four months. which is insanity. and i am officially a co—owner of the account and i mean, i take so much pride in our account. it's just boomed. good morning, my neighbours! hey, bleep you! videos that do best and definitely videos that have humour in them. tiktok is a safe space for people that want to just take a break from reality and see humorous, fun videos. so we really try to incorporate humour in all of them,

so we can get that full 15 seconds, full 60 seconds, so it counts for that view, but also it gives out the message that we're trying to display to our viewer. go home to mommy! go home. bye! go home to mommy! a number of voter registration initiatives have been partnering with content creators to persuade more young people to register to vote. hey, benedict donald. so we're kicking you out in 86 days... maya collaborates with one of these initiatives. raps: got my snacks, lunch is packed, ready for the attack. 86 days left until we 86 you... tok the vote is a tiktok account that creates content persuading gen z to register to vote. now, let's all vote and help him brighten up our starless night. i don't know specifically how many people, like, gen z that i have, like, registered to vote, but i know, like, 8,000 people have clicked the link in my bio that takes them to register to vote. so speaking to gen z where they are is probably the best way to get them engaged in politics and just getting them registered to vote.

tomorrow is the first presidential debate! maya's success with her politically—charged videos has not gone unnoticed by some big hitters on the campaign trail, who want to use her online presence to garner more votes. i've been working with bigtent creative for about a month, they're a group that was created by several upper—level leaders for different democratic primary campaigns. they sponsored one of my posts to inform gen z on why they should register to vote. i don't want to make everything political, but we have to vote. they want to pay me to post them, so that's awesome. um... some people might be surprised that content creators are paid to do some of these videos. it seems really easy, especially when it's like a as—second video, or a is—second video, but it takes a lot of time and also things like your equipment, like a lot of creators have ring

lights and microphones and things like that. whenever someone is paid to create content on tiktok, they should, according to us government rules and regulations, disclose that payment in the video. but plenty of creators like maya don't always do this. the problem is if you promote or attack a political candidate in the same video, it might quickly be construed as a political ad, and tiktok completely bans these. tiktok were made aware of some of these videos on its platform, and they have since been removed. but what about the politicians themselves? are they able to keep on side with tiktok? well, deep in suburban minnesota there's a savvy incumbent who's showing that politicians can play by the rules and be down with the kids. so, small vibe, right? all right. cross arms this time. state senator matt

little is a rarity. a politician who's fully embraced the site, promoting himself, not his party. the most successful videos are all just self—deprecating about either me or kind of my profession, i guess, as an elected politician. techno dance music. so, our most successful video by far is a video of another senator who comes into my office. 0h, hi, thanks for checking in. lam... # still a piece of garbage# so, you've told a lot of your tiktok followers that you're: "# still a piece of garbage?" oh, you got it down. yeah. have you actually told them about any of your policies? we absolutely have, in terms of education and healthcare, a lot of the work i have done to lower pharmaceutical prices in the us. and if it was just purely

a popularity contest, it wouldn't be as useful for us as a platform. if we compare it to other platforms where you do have to pay money, basically, to get noticed, have you observed higher organic growth from tiktok than those other platforms? well, i would say no other platform in my political career has gotten me an interview on bbc world news. so, i'm pretty happy with the success of tiktok in getting our message out to a wide audience! techno dance music. we've gotten a lot of anecdotal stuff while we're out and about, like, "i love your tiktok, i love your videos." in the last few days we have had two people say, "i only know you because my daughter knows you from tiktok." matt little, with over 150,000 followers, is one of tiktok‘s most followed american politicians. but this comes with its own problems. well, certainly my opponent's team is trying to use that against us and say i'm not very serious.

um, but when it comes time, and i'm on the senate floor, and i'm passing bills, i don't care how many tiktoks i've made or how many tweets i have sent. i'm getting stuff done for my district and people know that. senator little ? hey, vivian! what matt's doing on tiktok is all about soft power, influencing his electorate with comedy whilst getting his core message out — vote for me in the upcoming state election. windchime and glissando. looks good, vivian! but with a huge rise in political content on social media platforms like tiktok, some of the messages are more opaque. if someone approaches you and says this tiktok looks dodgy, how long does it actually take? i'm with the institute for strategic dialogue in london, who scour the internet, checking the veracity of online content. we are interested whether it's being used as a place to spread hate, disinformation and malicious content around the election. have you found any evidence for tiktok videos being used to spread election misinformation? a huge amount. and the reality is you don't have

to dig around to find it. so, one example, which is the very first video that comes up if you do a blanket search for #votebymail on tiktok. 2020 is an extremely important year, and i can tell you, as i come from south africa, which is a communist country... the top recommendation under that hashtag is from a south african—born american citizen. and after they've ta ken everything, then they start to come for your land. so your freedoms will be gone... so, it's hugely divisive, very scaremongering. let's not vote by mail, because that is a huge piece of fraud. tiktok are facing a very similar set of challenges to all of the other tech platforms over the last few years, they're just facing them a lot more quickly as they've entered this space just before the election in november, really. it's really an issue of enforcement, and there isn't yet a sense that tiktok have got in any way further ahead of the curve than the other

platforms in terms of how they're dealing with that problem. this is a promise... this video has now been taken down. but that's a drop in the ocean, given the sheer number of videos like this still on the site. and it is notjust misinformation that's got the isd worried. what are the main conspiracy theories that are being spread on tiktok, regarding the election? what we've seen here is a lot of conversations around the potentialforfraud via mail—in ballots, we've also seen covid—i9 conspiracies kind of bleed over into political discussions. 0ne hype house account had a video two days ago, saying they can't wait for covid—i9 to disappear after november 3rd, and they kind of left it hanging there, and the logical leap that people made in the comments made was covid—i9 has been used and manipulated by the democrats to bash and criticise president trump, and that after november 3rd, it's going to simply disappear. this video was uploaded two days ago

and by last count has 440,000 views, which are more than some news organisations could ever hope for on some of their content. this video was posted by the republican girls hype house. what doesjoie, who runs the account, think about misinformation on the republican girls‘ videos? so, with misinformation, it's very hit—or—miss. and this is whenever conservative censorship really takes place. you know, if something puts out something with a source that is wrong, we take that down immediately. if something is even remotely wrong, we take it down immediately. if something is debunked by fact checkers, and we check to see if it is actually wrong, and it's not, then, we — that's a red flag on the apps behalf. just to clarify, you are saying that if you think one of the republican girls has posted something wrong, you take it down, if you realise it's wrong? yes, absolutely. we — the last thing we want to do is spread misinformation.

so, what is tiktok doing to police their site? eric han is tiktok‘s head of safety in the us. our strategy has always been the same. which is: detect, triage, prevent. i think one thing that we always recognise as well is we are always going to try to get to 100% as quickly as we can, but also recognise that, hey, we're 99.9% correct. that 0.i% could lead to many mistakes. so that is the environment we live in and what we're fighting again. it's not actually been very long that you've been able to report a tiktok video for misinformation. why did that take so long to implement? we also recognise we're a two—year—old company, but to your point, we're seen as a ten—year—old brand. right? i saw a tweet once that said tiktok is speed—walking through everything the rest of the social platforms had 10—15 years to go through, right? so that includes our transparency

reports, that includes making sure our reporting functions are there, and i think if you were to compare us to our peers, and you look at the whole landscape, there have been times and situations where i think we've caught things faster. for example, the nancy pelosi video that was manipulated to make her look like she was inebriated. slowed down: and then they had a press conference in the rose garden with all of this, um... that is something that we caught really, really quickly. and it did not reach more than four digits in video views, whereas on other platforms, and it's easily discoverable. it racked up millions and millions of views. so i think there are going to be wins like that and there are going to be times where it's going to be much harder to catch information like that. as the 2020 presidential race enters its final phase, the volume of tiktok election videos has intensified, and hype houses are now really

pushing out their messages. do you think tiktok is going to sway the election? absolutely. a lot of younger people who may not have been as engaged in politics are more engaged now because of tiktok. i don't think that republican girls itself will sway the election, whether donald trump will win or lose. i do believe that more people will register to vote, i do believe more people go out and vote trump because of our influence. i do think tiktok is going to make a difference in this election. if you're someone who's registered to vote, and on november 2nd or even on november 3rd, you see it on your 'for you' page, "today's election day!", you're gonna be like, "oh my god! today's election day. " "i gotta go vote." i guess content producers would say this, but what about josh constine, the tech expert? gen z is the latest generation to gain access to the vote, and winning them could be crucial to the election. i think that this app could really get people out of their house and get to the polls. if you can go and shoot a tiktok over and over to get that perfect take,

you're going to be willing to get out there and get to the polls. people talk about tiktok like it's any other social media app, but that ignores this whole other world that's going on there. you don't only miss what is starting to dictate gen z culture, you also miss how older generations are trying to influence young people. if they do turn out to vote in this election, chances are that tiktok may well have had a lot to do with it. hello, good evening. i'm sure you don't need me to tell you it's been a very wet weekend across many parts of the uk. quite a blustery weekend as well. 0n the satellite picture, you can see this swirl of cloud, the area of low pressure bringing

the wind and rain this weekend. behind me, another area of cloud, this is hurricane epsilon which is drifting northwards. it won't be a hurricane as it moves its way towards our shores, but it will be an extremely deep area of low pressure. the centre of the low with the strongest winds will stay away to the north—west, but this is just going to continue to drive some very unsettled weather through the coming days. it will be windy. there will be some heavy rain at times but not all the time, rough seas across western parts particularly, signs that it will turn a little milder later in the week, particularly down towards the south. so, through this evening and overnight, we continue to see showers, some heavy, some thundery, blown in on a brisk breeze. the showers most plentiful across the west. further east, more in the way of dry weather, some clear spells and that is where we will see the lowest temperatures, maybe down to 2—3 degrees in some spots. for tomorrow, again, we will have seven spells of sunshine butjust like today, there will be some heavy thundery showers around.

these tending to migrate eastwards through the day, so the chances of showers across eastern scotland and eastern england will increase, where as for northern ireland, wales and the south—west, will see fewer showers. as we go through the afternoon, more spells of sunshine. quite windy towards the south, lighter winds developing further north. it will be a fairly cool day with highs of between 10—14 degrees. now, as we move through monday night, this area of low pressure will start to clear away briefly. see this little bump in the isobars? that's a a little ridge of high pressure. so that's going to settle things down for a time. could make it quite a chilly start to tuesday morning but that more settled spell is ver very brief. you can see this next weather system pushing in from the west on tuesday. some heavy rain with that. northern scotland holding onto some brightness. another windy day, highs of 10—14 degrees. and it stays very unsettled as we had through the middle part of the week. this big, deep area of low pressure still sitting up to the north—west. this will be the engine room of our weather,

it'll be driving strong winds and heavy downpours right across the uk, but it will start to turn a bit milder for the end of the week.

tonight at ten, the government signals no change in its policy on free school meals over half—term in england, despite mounting pressure. with families having to ration, england remains the one uk nation that won't directly provide meals for those who need them. i'm really anxious because i'm just, like, have i got enough that's going to last until i get that payment on the last day of the month, when i can go and do my shopping? businesses have stepped in to help, but ministers say local authorities have been given £63 million to support those in need. that £63 million for local authorities does cover this half term and we've seen a number of local authorities using it very specifically to support people who need that help for school meals and out of school meals in the holidays, obviously, for children. but the government has faced criticism of its policy from some

of its own backbenchers.