Are TikTok Wildlife Videos Helping or Hindering Recorders’ Accuracy?

Hello all, I’ve been seeing more and more short TikTok clips where people show insects, plants, or birds and ask “What species is this?” Those videos sometimes spark lively comment threads, but they also sometimes spread misidentifications or oversimplified IDs.

From the perspective of an iRecord user or verifier:

Have you noticed cases where species were recorded or submitted to iRecord based on a viral TikTok post? What happened when you tried to verify them?
Do you think the reach of TikTok encourages more people to get involved in wildlife recording (which is good), or does it also introduce more noise and errors?
Are there ways the iRecord community or platform could engage with or guide social media–led observations to improve data quality?
For people making or consuming these videos: what practices or best-practices do you think could reduce misidentifications and help more accurate submissions?

Comments

I suspect it currently has very little impact on recording

I'm not on TikTok so am unaware of this trend, so am purely commenting from the iRecord user/verifier perspective on some of your points.

If most of these posts are someone asking for an ID and then lots of people chip in and comment, a large percentage of the replies are likely to be guesses, plus some incorrect or over-confident answers. In short, I can't see that sort of video regularly leading to any sort of useful learning experience unless the person making the original video does some research and records a follow up explaining what it is and why.
On the whole unless someone submitting a record said they had learnt about it on TikTok we wouldn't know of any viral link (although if lots of people all submitted records of one charasmatic species in a short space of time then that would suggest something has given that species some publicity).
The reach of TikTok might well encourage more people to develop an interest in wildlife, but are these viral videos encouraging/mentioning recording? My preconception is that they are more likely to be showing something interesting for engagement, and at best would then get people to look for it themselves out of curiosity.
iRecord mainly exists as a recording platform, i.e. once someone has identified something they report it here and it hopefully gets verified. I don't think there is any likelihood of the iRecord community engaging or guiding socal media on any sort fo large scale - it would take away volunteering time that could be spent verifying records. Obviously some of the people involved with iRecord are also involved with other systems and projects, so perhaps some verifiers might be interested off their own bat.
It is difficult to suggest what the people making the videos can do without viewing some of them - I suppose the key thing is "are the people making the videos knowledgeable about what they are showing people?" If it is people with lots of enthusiasm but little knowledge then clearly there will be lots of misidentifications, but if they are having fun and getting lots of views are they going to want experienced naturalists correcting IDs? I would suggest just let them enjoy nature. If people do develop an interest, then they would probably benefit from using iNaturalist, which allows photos to be uploaded and IDs crowd-sourced. For those consuming TikTok nature videos I would simply suggest they consider if the person they are watching is likely to know what they are talking about, are they in the UK (lots of similar but different species in America for example) and to not assume that the species they find are the same species as they have seen in a video unless they have checked in a field guide, asked a more knowledgeable person etc.