My journey on TikTok Shop started out with a search for “hip hop jewelry.” It’s an innocuous search query multiple users have likely typed in, hoping to find something to wear. While browsing the cheap jewelry, I was struck by what TikTok’s algorithm repeatedly suggested that I might also be interested in: jewelry with blatant Nazi symbolism.
TikTok continues to struggle with moderation as its in-app ecommerce store gains traction with younger users. Last year, the social media platform removed multiple antisemitic products from its store. Most recently, many users who were scrolling through videos on their For You pages expressed outrage when a swastika necklace, under the name “hiphop titanium steel pendant,” was promoted to them in late December as an on-sale product in TikTok Shop that cost $8.
The platform eventually removed the product as some users who claimed to encounter the suggested item on their feed shared screenshots in viral social media posts.
Despite TikTok removing that necklace, my investigation into TikTok Shop uncovered an algorithmic web of far-right product search suggestions that nudged me toward white nationalist and Nazi-related terms. In the dedicated shopping tab on TikTok, I looked for products to buy and followed what the algorithm recommended to me in the “Others searched for” boxes. This recommendation box sometimes appears in TikTok’s mobile app as a set of four related search suggestions, each with a picture, as users look for products and scroll through what’s available on TikTok Shop.
ScreenshotPhotograph: WIRED Staff
TikTok spokesperson Glenn Kuper confirms that the type of search suggestions seen in my reporting violate the company’s policies. He says TikTok is currently working to remove these algorithmic suggestions from the app, in response to a detailed list of questions from WIRED.
Kuper also highlights TikTok Shop’s safety report, which states that the ecommerce platform removed 700,000 sellers and 200,000 restricted or prohibited products in the first half of 2025.
Buddhists widely used manji symbols, which can often look identical to swastikas, for thousands of years before the Nazis. Even so, the necklace that was promoted in December included a detail suggesting the piece of jewelry was so widely seen because it was potentially part of an attempt at trolling by extremists, rather than a cultural misunderstanding.
Joan Donovan, the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and coauthor of the book Meme Wars, encountered the viral necklace first-hand in her feed. In this context, Donovan says, the necklace’s description hints at “HH,” an abbreviation of the “Heil Hitler” slogan widely used by Nazis. For her, what differentiated the swastika necklace was a dog-whistle tucked in the product’s description: “hiphop.”
Read the full article here