This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 25th, 2026.
After the attack in Fagersta, attention has turned to TikTok’s darkest corners. The platform claims that almost everything inappropriate is caught before it is published – but the gaps are still wide. At the same time, TikTok is making a choice that risks making the problem worse.
It’s called algospeak – the words used on TikTok to avoid getting caught by the safety filters. By now they are so established that everyone knows what is meant.
“Unalive” instead of “kill,” “seggs” instead of “sex.” Everyone understands – except the filters themselves, which after several years of this still don’t seem to have caught up.
Getting around TikTok’s filters, in other words, requires no great linguistic effort. In the wake of last week’s attack in Fagersta, questions are once again being asked about whether there were signals the platforms could have picked up earlier.
But the question is how highly TikTok actually prioritizes fixing this.
As recently as July this year, the company told The Independent that 97 percent of all inappropriate material on the service was removed by automated systems. A full 99 percent disappeared before anyone had even reported it, according to the company.
That sounds impressive at first. But the context of the statement is less flattering: it came as an explanation for why TikTok was laying off 300 employees in Ireland who worked on precisely that – moderation and safety.
The people who presumably understand this best – the human moderators, whose job it is to review video clips – are not impressed.
An anonymous TikTok employee tells the paper that its AI systems get things wrong “all the time.” And it goes both ways – they miss material that should have been removed, and they take down posts that should have stayed up under the platform’s own rules. Holding up two fingers and a thumb is sometimes read by the AI as holding a gun. A human sees the difference in a second; the artificial intelligence is not always that smart when it comes to this particular thing.
In some cases, the glorification of violence and the celebration of murderers happens completely out in the open. In the Fagersta case, there is much to suggest that the suspected perpetrator took part in the TCC movement, True Crime Community. It is a loose grouping that venerates convicted killers and glorifies violent crime in general. According to information obtained by SvD, there are indications that he had several TikTok accounts suspended, only for them to reappear under near-identical names.
TCC is one of several violence-oriented groups that exist on TikTok and similar platforms. It connects people who would otherwise be alone with these interests, and can contribute to radicalization. Crimes of this kind are usually committed by individuals, but those individuals belong to a wider setting that lives online.
The column inches now being devoted to TCC say something about how visible the movement is – this is no hidden subculture that requires special knowledge to find. It sits in the open on TikTok. And still the platform cannot keep it out.
That young people gravitate toward services like TikTok is well documented. Much of the debate – in Sweden too – has therefore been about stopping them from getting there in the first place. Minister for Social Affairs Jakob Forssmed (KD) has talked about an age limit for social media in Sweden, a question now under official review.
Australia has gone furthest, becoming the first country in the world to ban social media for minors. But new figures show that the share of 13- to 15-year-olds using TikTok there is now just one percentage point lower than before the ban took effect. The prohibition has not solved the root problem, at least not yet. The underlying drive – to find like-minded people on the internet – remains.
TikTok cannot be held responsible for everything its users do. But it is equally wrong to describe these perpetrators as individuals acting in a vacuum. They are part of a milieu that celebrates brutality and urges its members to commit terrible acts. We know this. And TikTok knows it too.
Knowing that movements organize and plan attacks on your own platform ought to carry a substantial responsibility. TikTok’s head of communications in the Nordics told Expressen that “violence and violent extremism have no place on TikTok.” Yet the company is cutting hundreds of moderators and letting automated systems take over more of the work. There are clearly large holes in those safety filters – and they now risk getting worse.
We are long past the point where TikTok can plead ignorance. This can, unfortunately, happen again.
