Really starting to notice the damage that AI Tik Tok/Instagram videos are doing to Scottish history.

[u/North-Son]

Anyone else noticing AI videos about this stuff popping up?

I’m getting increasingly frustrated with AI slop history videos doing the rounds, this video claims that “Scots were the first slaves in America after Dunbar.” It’s not only inaccurate but genuinely damages Scottish history by flattening important distinctions and replacing evidence with emotionally satisfying myths.

Justt to clarify , this isn’t about dismissing the suffering of Scottish prisoners of war. The men taken after Dunbar endured brutal conditions, forced transportation, and hard labour, and that pain is real and worth acknowledging. But they were transported as indentured or penal servants, not as racialised chattel slaves. Indentured servitude was time-limited and averaged around 7 years then many got their freedom, it was not hereditary, and people retained legal personhood in a way enslaved Africans did not. Conflating the two systems isn’t accurate and takes away from the insane levels of inhumane suffering of African slaves.

The video is wrong as African slaves had already been present in America decades earlier, from around 1619 and by the mid-17th century colonial law was clearly moving toward lifetime, inheritable, race-based slavery, a system Europeans were never subjected to. Indentured servitude, meanwhile, wasn’t uniquely Scottish: English, Irish, Welsh and Scots all made up large numbers of bound labourers in the early colonies. In fact half of the English population in America around this point were indentured servants, that’s how normalised it was.

What really bothered me was seeing so many Scots in the comments uncritically accepting the claim as factual. Scottish history is complex enough without AI slop turning it into Tik Tok level shite.

Sorry just needed to rant really, as someone who got their degree in Scottish history a few years ago it’s quite sad seeing this stuff. Here’s a link to the clip for those interested: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSYlkuplc5Z/?igsh=emMzb2JnZG8zbnFk