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My trip is on Tik Tok store I started by searching for “hip hop jewelry.” It’s an innocuous search query that many users would likely type, hoping to find something to wear. While browsing for cheap jewelry, I was amazed by what TikTok had to offer Algorithm I repeatedly suggested that I might also be interested in: Jewelry with blatant Nazi symbolism.
TikTok continues to struggle with moderation as its in-app e-commerce store gains traction with younger users. Last year, the social media platform removed several Anti-Semitic products From her store. Recently, many users have been passing videos on their For You pages He expressed his anger When the swastika necklace, under the name “Solid Titanium Hip-Hop Necklace,” was promoted in late December as a product for sale on a TikTok store at a cost of $8.
The platform eventually removed the product as some users who claimed to have encountered the suggested item in their feed shared screenshots in viral social media posts.
Although TikTok removed that necklace, my investigation into the TikTok Shop revealed an algorithmic network of far-right product search suggestions that pushed me toward white nationalist and Nazi-related terms. In the shopping tab on TikTok, I searched for products to buy and followed what the algorithm recommended in the “others have searched for” boxes. This recommendation box sometimes appears in the TikTok mobile app as a group of four related search suggestions, each with an image, as users search for products and browse what’s available on the TikTok Shop.
ScreenshotPhoto: WIRED staff
TikTok spokesperson Glenn Cooper confirms that the type of search suggestions that appear in My Reports 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.
Copper highlights TikTok Store Safety ReportWhich states that the e-commerce platform removed 700,000 sellers and 200,000 restricted or banned products in the first half of 2025.
Buddhists widely used manji symbols, which can often look like Identical to the swastikathousands of years before the Nazis. However, the necklace promoted in December included details suggesting the piece of jewelry was widely seen because it may have been part of a trolling attempt by extremists, rather than a cultural misunderstanding.
Joan Donovan, founder Institute for Critical Internet Studies And co-author of the book Meme warsconfronted the viral necklace directly on her feed. In this context, Donovan says, the description of the necklace alludes to “HH,” which is an abbreviation for the “Heil Hitler” slogan widely used by the Nazis. For her, what makes the swastika necklace stand out is the dog whistle found in the product description: “hip-hop.”