Story at a glance
- School districts across the country canceled classes for Friday after rumors over an alleged shooting threat circulating on TikTok
- TikTok officials looked into the rumored threats and could not find any posts suggesting school shootings or bombings were scheduled to take place Friday, Dec. 17.
- The social media platform also confirmed that law enforcement could not find a credible threat on the app.
School districts in a handful of states have canceled classes for Friday in response to school shooting threats allegedly being made on the social media platform TikTok.
While some schools in California, Missouri, Texas and Minnesota canceled classes, others in Arizona, New York, Illinois, Connecticut and Pennsylvania increased their police presence on Friday, according to USA Today.
Law enforcement officials in Tooele County, Utah said they think the threats originated on the platform as “a way for students to skip school” and have spread to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, according to a statement.
Officials reminded students and parents that if they come across a threat online to report it and not repost online, the statement added.
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TikTok said it was taking the rumored threats seriously and later posted to Twitter that local authorities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Homeland Security confirmed that there was “no credible threat.”
1/ Update: we’ve exhaustively searched for content that promotes violence at schools today, but have still found nothing. What we find are videos discussing this rumor and warning others to stay safe.
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) December 17, 2021
“We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness, which is why we’re working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok,” TikTok tweeted.
2/ Local authorities, the FBI, and DHS have confirmed there’s no credible threat, so we’re working to remove alarmist warnings that violate our misinformation policy. If we did find promotion of violence on our platform, we’d remove and report it to law enforcement.
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) December 17, 2021
“We’ve exhaustively searched for content that promotes violence at schools today, but have still found nothing. What we find are videos discussing this rumor and warning others to stay safe…Local authorities, the FBI, and DHS have confirmed there’s no credible threat, so we’re working to remove alarmist warnings that violate our misinformation policy. If we did find promotion of violence on our platform, we’d remove and report it to law enforcement.”
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