His son, whose identity will not be disclosed on account of his being underage, created and shared videos on his TikTok profile “Serbia to Serbs” which contained insults to Islam and Muslims. This included calls for a “reduction” of the Muslim population and their expulsion from areas inhabited by Serbs.

The minor’s father says his son recognizes his mistake and wants to find a way to make things right. He added that he himself is not a nationalist and does not know who convinced his son to share such content.

“He admits that he made a mistake. Having worked for the police before, I personally insisted that they take him to the station and talk to him, that he tell them who is influencing him, who is doing this to him. And he told them that. His mother is Muslim, and he shouldn’t be behaving like this,” the father said, explaining that his son was questioned and gave a statement to investigators.

The Bijeljina Police Department confirmed the identification of a minor who was observed insulting Bosniak citizens on the TikTok platform, adding that a report has been filed against this individual with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bijeljina.

The minor’s father notes that the incident has caused him considerable embarrassment and discomfort.  He says that while he personally does not use TikTok, the posts were brought to his attention by colleagues, friends, and close relatives. He also reports receiving threatening messages related to the videos.

“Naturally, as his father, I want it to be prevented and forgotten, for it to never happen again,” he stated.

The young man, who will come of age in a few days, told Detektor that TikTok only deleted his posts twice. He claimed he did not expect that his posts would cause offensive and expressed remorse for his actions.

“In order to defend myself and others, I said a lot of things, both things I should have said and things I should not have – but more things that I shouldn’t have said than things I should have,” he acknowledged. He recalled that on one occasion, TikTok removed a video he had posted in which he was using a knife to cut meat. Generally, however, he did not face content restrictions except for a recent three-day suspension, which was imposed after he shared a video of himself consuming alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

A recent analysis by the Srebrenica Memorial Center revealed that TikTok rarely removes posts t featuring genocide denial. Experts interviewed by Detektor have likewise voiced concerns over the platform’s failure to remove content that could incite hatred or glorify violence.

Bijeljina. Photo: BIRN BiH

The minor from Bijeljina says that TikTok never deleted his profile. While acknowledging that he was interrogated by police because several people reported him for making threats against Bosniaks, he denies having made any threats in his videos. This is despite posts in which he uses derogatory language and challenges viewers to confront him if they dare.

“I didn’t threaten anyone. That video, which is now viral…I didn’t make threats. I just said that whoever attacks me, I have something to defend myself with. So, I didn’t say, ‘I’m going to kill someone, set them on fire, slaughter someone,’ or whatever else,” he argued, expressing a lack of surprise at headlines in the media.

When asked whether he intends to continue posting content on TikTok, he responded that he plans to record live streams that will not cause offense to anyone.  He also mentioned the numerous threats received by him and his family.

“I’m sorry, it’s not that I’m not sorry, but I didn’t know that it would offend anyone so much,” he stated.

The videos on the “Serbia to Serbs” TikTok profile are no longer available.

Slobodan Blagovcanin from CAT BiH, a youth initiative working to combat hatred and radicalization among young people, believes that TikTok is underdeveloped, particularly in the context of the Bosnian market. He notes that due to the architecture of the social network itself, it is difficult to generate reactions to hateful videos.

“Facebook, due to the ability to write statuses, share outside links, and the manner of consumption in general, is much better for bringing these things into focus. TikTok users can only share this kind of content with each other, whereas on Facebook, by posting it on our wall, we are taking a bigger step, in a way. Especially if we clearly communicate that a certain phenomenon is deviant,” explained Blagovcanin.

Elaborating on the workings of TikTok’s content removal policy, he explains, “For example, if you live stream, you can’t smoke cigarettes, or have scissors or knives or those sorts of things in the video. Users who have had any of those things in their videos were ‘banned’ and their profiles deleted.”

Examples of genocide denial. Photo: Srebrenica Memorial Center

However, a recent analysis from the Srebrenica Memorial Center warned that content related to atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks a sufficient filter. Tarik Moćević, the project coordinator at the Sarajevo Media Center and co-author of a report about war crimes denial on TikTok, drew attention to data from the Center for Combating Hate in Digital Space. According to this data, social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, failed to respond to 84 percent of posts that warranted categorization as promoting hatred.

“TikTok, like other social networks, in principle does not allow the sharing of content which expresses hate speech, denies genocide, or glorifies criminal organizations,” says Mocevic. He adds that TikTok’s content removal guidelines are non-discriminatory, and that content is removed through a self-regulating system based on key words.

“As our analysis and this latest instance have shown, the system is obviously not efficient enough,” Mocevic says.

In reality as well as on social media, the Bijeljina office of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights identifies various forms of hate speech on a daily basis among young people, which they direct towards other ethnic and religious groups, says Mirjana Cuskic, a representative of the organization.  The Helsinki Committee, through various projects, works to promote media literacy among youth and mitigate the negative impact of disinformation by radical right-wing groups.

“Unfortunately, we can say that there are a large number of such posts by young people on social media,” says Cuskic.

She points to the recent emergence of TikTok as a leading platform for the spread of hate speech and violence.

“It’s certainly a popular network among young people, especially among minors. They use the network as a tool for spreading hate speech in order to gain presumed popularity. We have advocated for mechanisms to sanction hate speech on social media, but something that is perhaps even more important than this is to educate young people,” Cuskic said.

In her view, the most popular social media networks sometimes afford users a degree of anonymity, which is why it is impossible to stop the wave of content exhibiting certain connotations and hate speech.

“It’s even more significant that we don’t see the competent judicial and prosecutorial institutions adequately responding to instances of hate speech on TikTok and other social networks,” Cuskic asserts.

Nenad Nešić, the Bosnian Minister of Security, condemned the Bijeljina teen’s conduct and commended the swift action taken by the police in Republika Srpska. He emphasized that Bosnia and Herzegovina must ensure the safety of all its citizens, irrespective of their religious, ethnic, or racial background.

“We can discuss the overall impact of social media on our society. I think that social networks have entered everyday life, not to say that they essentially make up the everyday life of a modern man. We definitely have to find a way to ensure that certain things are not published on social media, or if they are already published, that they are taken down as soon as possible if they threaten anyone’s rights, if they jeopardize the safety of citizens and the state,” says Nešić.

Mocevic claims that while TikTok is allows and pays particular attention to reports submitted by state institutions, according to the network’s transparency reports, it has yet to receive a single report from authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He notes that in the first six months of 2022, Croatia reported four incidents, Kosovo reported three, Serbia reported two, and North Macedonia reported one case of harmful content on TikTok.

“I think that it is of foremost importance that our institutions start using the social media tools that already exist,” he concluded.

TikTok did not respond immediately to BIRN BiH’s inquiry.