4 ms·

People here are focusing too much on the "TikTok" in the title. This is not about Tiktok. This is about everyone having a device in their pocket in which they

by slg 5y ago

People here are focusing too much on the "TikTok" in the title. This is not about Tiktok. This is about everyone having a device in their pocket in which they can immediately record video and post it to social media. The platform is irrelevant. If TikTok manipulates content that video can go to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit...

webmobdev 5y ago
The point is that the Platform matters as it allows certain countries to control the narration. Do you think US BigTechs don't take orders from the US government or act for US interests? China also has such platforms. The internet is now being cartelized into corporate platforms, and this is only going to increase and become worse (from a consumers point of view).
joefife 5y ago
Only if they're aware that the information was manipulated.
nomel 5y ago
> The platform is irrelevant. I understand your point, but I think the platform is relevant. There are four platforms that have a considerable number of users (TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram), and they all have provenly effective censorship, especially optimized over the past couple of years. If it's one of those four, it does matter. I would also claim that the platform is only irrelevant if removing that platform results in a negligible reduction in views. Removing TikTok removes 1/4 of the services, and probably the vast majority of younger eyes.
- slg 5y ago
  These platforms don't exist in a vacuum. Imagine we have a table with four legs. What happens when one leg is too short or too long. It becomes immediately obvious by comparing it to the other legs. If everyone on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube is talking about something, people will be talking about it on TikTok. If they aren't, that is noticeable and that too will be something people will talk about. That can actually lead to more attention on that platform due to the Streisand effect. The primary concern would be if all the social networks censor the same thing, but that isn't a concern here due to the opposing political views unless your concern about censorship is just these platforms not allowing extreme violence, but that isn't what the article is discussing.
  - yuliyp 5y ago
    Detecting censorship/downranking in a service is quite hard to demonstrate: everyone gets a different feed; knowing what could have gone into that feed but didn't is known only to the service which generated it. Measuring the extent to which there is bias in that ranking on a given service is hard. Comparing an individual user's feeds across services won't tell you a trustworthy story, since each service has different signals about what that user likes.
    - slg 5y ago
      Yes, it is difficult for an individual user to detect this. Collectively it is easier to notice. TikTok has already been caught multiple times biasing results in ways that many in the west generally disagree with. They can be caught again.
  - bouncycastle 5y ago
    You are wrong here. Even if you think that "everyone" is talking about it, you may be actually in the same filter bubble as on all the other networks.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    This is a really naive view. TikTok wouldn’t just have a banned message that pops up if you try to discuss it. Instead you’ll get a curated list on the topic that alters your perception of the popular opinion. Or some other “controversy” will fill up the feed to distract you.
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    I don't think so. Google and YouTube is completely censored for years and people don't care.
    - joshspankit 5y ago
      IMO this is down to two things: 1) “Wtf, why’s your dog laying on a nail??” “It doesn’t hurt enough yet” 2) YouTube is paying people enough that they make a good living and questioning the policies means potentially risking their bills not getting paid.
- skissane 5y ago
  > There are four platforms that have a considerable number of users (TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram), and they all have provenly effective censorship, especially optimized over the past couple of years. If it's one of those four, it does matter. Three of those platforms are American-controlled and one is Chinese-controlled. Even if all four have "effective censorship", it seems unlikely that American-controlled and Chinese-controlled platforms will block/manipulate in the same way and to the same end. This is not a fixed set either – every few years, a new platform pops up. Tiktok is a relatively recent example, Instagram an earlier one. If content restriction gets too heavy-handed, people will respond by moving to new platforms which are less restrictive – at least in free(-ish) countries. I personally think that inconsistent and overly heavy-handed moderation – punishing too many users by algorithm for innocent or trivial things, even while reports against other users doing seemingly much more serious things are dismissed – is one of the factors behind Facebook's recent slide in users. Added to that, many people on the political right (30-40% of the population) view these platforms as politically biased against them, and are keen to find new places without that perceived bias. Attempts at establishing more conservative-friendly platforms generally come unstuck by being overrun by extremists (neo-Nazis, antisemites, etc) who push mainstream right-wing users away, and also through pure incompetence (both technical and business). But I think it is likely that sooner or later someone is going to come up with the right balance to succeed in that space.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
    Let's be real, all 4 are American controlled. Douyin which is Chinese TikTok has no global currency.
- joshspankit 5y ago
  At this scale, if the platform was censoring or pushing a narrative and it was exposed, people would simply upload those same videos to a different platform. The common idea is to assume that “the masses” move slowly, but the reality is that when properly motivated everyone wakes up early and changes technology in a matter of hours. Many of them bringing their followers with them with only the last of the followers being the ones moving slowly.
psyc 5y ago
But they can’t go to LiveLeak. The videos on the platforms you listed will be mostly talk. Nothing too graphic, nothing deemed hateful.
Mezzie 5y ago
The question is whether there is enough ambient knowledge throughout the general citizenry to defeat the censorship, and I would argue the answer is yes. Everybody and their mother has a cell phone and bandwidth is cheap: If Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YT all censored in the same way, the immediate response would be for a ton of forums, email lists, Telegram groups, etc. to pop up. All the censorship would do is decentralize the spread of both information and misinformation, and that's not in anybody's interest. You can't wage an information war in the dark. Much like when communications go down and the amateur radio enthusiasts come out. Or how when the roads are impassable in the UP by car, you'll see people out on snowmobiles. There are enough people with reserve tech skills that I genuinely don't think it would matter if the big platforms attempted to suppress all information. What's far more likely is that things are going to be selectively suppressed in a way that's invisible to the average person in order to control their feelings and support for whatever is occurring.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > If Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YT all censored in the same way, the immediate response would be for a ton of forums, email lists, Telegram groups, etc. to pop up. In theory and in reality, they will and have had no idea it's manipulated because they have no basis for comparison. Social media manipulation is hardly new; Russia itself has been doing it for many years. And most people say they don't care and still use Facebook, Twitter, etc., and many buy into and spread the disinformation. > whether there is enough ambient knowledge That 'knowledge' has to come from someplace. In fact, I would say that 'ambient knowledge', and the belief in it as some source of truth, is the medium of disinformation.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
> The platform is irrelevant. This is about trusting the source, sure it could weaken traditional media outlets, but some of them are driven by social media, you will often see stuff first on Reddit and then a day or two later its a DailyMail story. That tiktok footage of the two jets fighting was shown on a UK tv news channel, but watching it, I couldnt tell you the date time or location, I dont recognise the location so cant say where it was, and its like watching the mainstream media, their reuse of library shots sometimes labelled as library shots and other times not, makes anything hard to trust. Another technique I saw on the news, was one studio news reporter asking a military base commander some questions, the interview was shown again later on but 2nd time around, the studio news reporter was a different person asking the same questions. Anything which doesnt include two people in the same shot is questionable. In todays age, where CGI makes the past come aline, you can get software from Adobe which can instantly change the colour of clothes in video clips with minimal effort, and photoshopping, makes this a distraction. If anything its a psychological measure of fear, to work out how people react to different situations, which the internet is very good at doing. I also find it interesting talking to people to see what they bring up thats been on the news and not, I sometimes think in todays digital age with digital transmissions and digital tv and settop boxes we get a personal form of news. Why do I say this, well we are given an idea of how the news studios work, but what about the other studio presenters, are they doing the same in a different studio, have the news anchors recorded a variety of piece to camera's and they get edited and digitally delivered to different people. Question everything, but unless you see it with your own eyes, dont rate it too highly and even if you saw something with your own eyes, have you been surreptitiously drugged, or are you just seeing some live performance with actors? Obedience to authority experiments are always ongoing. Introducing doubt into an argument is a valid debating technique. Edit: I saw this as someone who witnessed some people winning the UK National Lottery in dubious circumstances.
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  > Question everything, but unless you see it with your own eyes, dont rate it too highly and even if you saw something with your own eyes, have you been surreptitiously drugged, or are you just seeing some live performance with actors? It’s good to be skeptical of all media these days, just as long as you aren’t too skeptical or contrarian just for the sake of it. That line of thinking has led to fantastical conspiracy theory thinking. One side refused to admit that COVID vaccines can potentially be harmful and have a nontrivial amount of risk. The other refused to admit any benefit and didn’t get vaccinated at all. If instead we were presented the full story, instead of 4 minute sound bites, I suspect the pandemic would have been over a long time ago. Same with the anxieties of WW3 in this case. Is the media culpable if it makes a normal, rational person go insane?
bitwize 5y ago
Controlling the information is unimportant. Controlling the narrative is everything. People really did see a bicycle thrown under the legs of the police horse in Ottawa, because that's what the press said was there.
blobbers 5y ago
TikTok can definitely sway the narrative. It’s the equivalent to being retargeted by ads and perceiving something to be top of mind. TikTok can sway the public mood of its users. People on TikTok aren’t reading twittter. They’re doomscrolling on TikTok and sponging information for better or for worse.
antattack 5y ago
Lets not forget that people can post deep-fakes as well. Perhaps we will see Ukrainian deep-fake politicians capitulating on Tik-Tok. If not deep-fakes than at least propaganda, like this one of Chomsky stating that US promised no NATO expansion which is not true: https://v16-webapp.tiktok.com/c7fe2cbc57cb276832f49e2542fe4f5a/62189afa/video/tos/useast2a/tos-useast2a-pve-0068/d60bb586cbab40fdb5311a87ce32852e/ https://v16-webapp.tiktok.com/c7fe2cbc57cb276832f49e2542fe4f...
wolverine876 5y ago
> If TikTok manipulates content that video can go to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit... That works only if people know it's manipulated and then are motivated to act. It's hard to know if query results (broadly: search results, timelines, etc.) are manipulated because you have no basis for comparison. And IME most people don't care about social media manipulation - the disinformation campaigns have been well researched and documented for a long time.
powerapple 5y ago
social media has been around for quite some time now, why suddenly this is the first war on social media and everyone is talking about? There was three wars last year, as far as I know, a few still going on now.
- joelbondurant4 5y ago
ASalazarMX 5y ago
I won't believe people will use anything but the big (and censorship ready) social networks until I get the real news in Imgur or 9gag.

by slg 5y ago

webmobdev 5y ago

The point is that the Platform matters as it allows certain countries to control the narration. Do you think US BigTechs don't take orders from the US government or act for US interests? China also has such platforms. The internet is now being cartelized into corporate platforms, and this is only going to increase and become worse (from a consumers point of view).

joefife 5y ago

Only if they're aware that the information was manipulated.

nomel 5y ago

> The platform is irrelevant. I understand your point, but I think the platform is relevant. There are four platforms that have a considerable number of users (TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram), and they all have provenly effective censorship, especially optimized over the past couple of years. If it's one of those four, it does matter. I would also claim that the platform is only irrelevant if removing that platform results in a negligible reduction in views. Removing TikTok removes 1/4 of the services, and probably the vast majority of younger eyes.

slg 5y ago
These platforms don't exist in a vacuum. Imagine we have a table with four legs. What happens when one leg is too short or too long. It becomes immediately obvious by comparing it to the other legs. If everyone on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube is talking about something, people will be talking about it on TikTok. If they aren't, that is noticeable and that too will be something people will talk about. That can actually lead to more attention on that platform due to the Streisand effect. The primary concern would be if all the social networks censor the same thing, but that isn't a concern here due to the opposing political views unless your concern about censorship is just these platforms not allowing extreme violence, but that isn't what the article is discussing.
- yuliyp 5y ago
  Detecting censorship/downranking in a service is quite hard to demonstrate: everyone gets a different feed; knowing what could have gone into that feed but didn't is known only to the service which generated it. Measuring the extent to which there is bias in that ranking on a given service is hard. Comparing an individual user's feeds across services won't tell you a trustworthy story, since each service has different signals about what that user likes.
  - slg 5y ago
    Yes, it is difficult for an individual user to detect this. Collectively it is easier to notice. TikTok has already been caught multiple times biasing results in ways that many in the west generally disagree with. They can be caught again.
- bouncycastle 5y ago
  You are wrong here. Even if you think that "everyone" is talking about it, you may be actually in the same filter bubble as on all the other networks.
- kortilla 5y ago
  This is a really naive view. TikTok wouldn’t just have a banned message that pops up if you try to discuss it. Instead you’ll get a curated list on the topic that alters your perception of the popular opinion. Or some other “controversy” will fill up the feed to distract you.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  I don't think so. Google and YouTube is completely censored for years and people don't care.
  - joshspankit 5y ago
    IMO this is down to two things: 1) “Wtf, why’s your dog laying on a nail??” “It doesn’t hurt enough yet” 2) YouTube is paying people enough that they make a good living and questioning the policies means potentially risking their bills not getting paid.
skissane 5y ago
> There are four platforms that have a considerable number of users (TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram), and they all have provenly effective censorship, especially optimized over the past couple of years. If it's one of those four, it does matter. Three of those platforms are American-controlled and one is Chinese-controlled. Even if all four have "effective censorship", it seems unlikely that American-controlled and Chinese-controlled platforms will block/manipulate in the same way and to the same end. This is not a fixed set either – every few years, a new platform pops up. Tiktok is a relatively recent example, Instagram an earlier one. If content restriction gets too heavy-handed, people will respond by moving to new platforms which are less restrictive – at least in free(-ish) countries. I personally think that inconsistent and overly heavy-handed moderation – punishing too many users by algorithm for innocent or trivial things, even while reports against other users doing seemingly much more serious things are dismissed – is one of the factors behind Facebook's recent slide in users. Added to that, many people on the political right (30-40% of the population) view these platforms as politically biased against them, and are keen to find new places without that perceived bias. Attempts at establishing more conservative-friendly platforms generally come unstuck by being overrun by extremists (neo-Nazis, antisemites, etc) who push mainstream right-wing users away, and also through pure incompetence (both technical and business). But I think it is likely that sooner or later someone is going to come up with the right balance to succeed in that space.
- KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
  Let's be real, all 4 are American controlled. Douyin which is Chinese TikTok has no global currency.
joshspankit 5y ago
At this scale, if the platform was censoring or pushing a narrative and it was exposed, people would simply upload those same videos to a different platform. The common idea is to assume that “the masses” move slowly, but the reality is that when properly motivated everyone wakes up early and changes technology in a matter of hours. Many of them bringing their followers with them with only the last of the followers being the ones moving slowly.

psyc 5y ago

But they can’t go to LiveLeak. The videos on the platforms you listed will be mostly talk. Nothing too graphic, nothing deemed hateful.

Mezzie 5y ago

The question is whether there is enough ambient knowledge throughout the general citizenry to defeat the censorship, and I would argue the answer is yes. Everybody and their mother has a cell phone and bandwidth is cheap: If Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YT all censored in the same way, the immediate response would be for a ton of forums, email lists, Telegram groups, etc. to pop up. All the censorship would do is decentralize the spread of both information and misinformation, and that's not in anybody's interest. You can't wage an information war in the dark. Much like when communications go down and the amateur radio enthusiasts come out. Or how when the roads are impassable in the UP by car, you'll see people out on snowmobiles. There are enough people with reserve tech skills that I genuinely don't think it would matter if the big platforms attempted to suppress all information. What's far more likely is that things are going to be selectively suppressed in a way that's invisible to the average person in order to control their feelings and support for whatever is occurring.

wolverine876 5y ago
> If Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YT all censored in the same way, the immediate response would be for a ton of forums, email lists, Telegram groups, etc. to pop up. In theory and in reality, they will and have had no idea it's manipulated because they have no basis for comparison. Social media manipulation is hardly new; Russia itself has been doing it for many years. And most people say they don't care and still use Facebook, Twitter, etc., and many buy into and spread the disinformation. > whether there is enough ambient knowledge That 'knowledge' has to come from someplace. In fact, I would say that 'ambient knowledge', and the belief in it as some source of truth, is the medium of disinformation.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

> The platform is irrelevant. This is about trusting the source, sure it could weaken traditional media outlets, but some of them are driven by social media, you will often see stuff first on Reddit and then a day or two later its a DailyMail story. That tiktok footage of the two jets fighting was shown on a UK tv news channel, but watching it, I couldnt tell you the date time or location, I dont recognise the location so cant say where it was, and its like watching the mainstream media, their reuse of library shots sometimes labelled as library shots and other times not, makes anything hard to trust. Another technique I saw on the news, was one studio news reporter asking a military base commander some questions, the interview was shown again later on but 2nd time around, the studio news reporter was a different person asking the same questions. Anything which doesnt include two people in the same shot is questionable. In todays age, where CGI makes the past come aline, you can get software from Adobe which can instantly change the colour of clothes in video clips with minimal effort, and photoshopping, makes this a distraction. If anything its a psychological measure of fear, to work out how people react to different situations, which the internet is very good at doing. I also find it interesting talking to people to see what they bring up thats been on the news and not, I sometimes think in todays digital age with digital transmissions and digital tv and settop boxes we get a personal form of news. Why do I say this, well we are given an idea of how the news studios work, but what about the other studio presenters, are they doing the same in a different studio, have the news anchors recorded a variety of piece to camera's and they get edited and digitally delivered to different people. Question everything, but unless you see it with your own eyes, dont rate it too highly and even if you saw something with your own eyes, have you been surreptitiously drugged, or are you just seeing some live performance with actors? Obedience to authority experiments are always ongoing. Introducing doubt into an argument is a valid debating technique. Edit: I saw this as someone who witnessed some people winning the UK National Lottery in dubious circumstances.

mise_en_place 5y ago
> Question everything, but unless you see it with your own eyes, dont rate it too highly and even if you saw something with your own eyes, have you been surreptitiously drugged, or are you just seeing some live performance with actors? It’s good to be skeptical of all media these days, just as long as you aren’t too skeptical or contrarian just for the sake of it. That line of thinking has led to fantastical conspiracy theory thinking. One side refused to admit that COVID vaccines can potentially be harmful and have a nontrivial amount of risk. The other refused to admit any benefit and didn’t get vaccinated at all. If instead we were presented the full story, instead of 4 minute sound bites, I suspect the pandemic would have been over a long time ago. Same with the anxieties of WW3 in this case. Is the media culpable if it makes a normal, rational person go insane?

bitwize 5y ago

Controlling the information is unimportant. Controlling the narrative is everything. People really did see a bicycle thrown under the legs of the police horse in Ottawa, because that's what the press said was there.

blobbers 5y ago

TikTok can definitely sway the narrative. It’s the equivalent to being retargeted by ads and perceiving something to be top of mind. TikTok can sway the public mood of its users. People on TikTok aren’t reading twittter. They’re doomscrolling on TikTok and sponging information for better or for worse.

antattack 5y ago

Lets not forget that people can post deep-fakes as well. Perhaps we will see Ukrainian deep-fake politicians capitulating on Tik-Tok. If not deep-fakes than at least propaganda, like this one of Chomsky stating that US promised no NATO expansion which is not true: https://v16-webapp.tiktok.com/c7fe2cbc57cb276832f49e2542fe4f5a/62189afa/video/tos/useast2a/tos-useast2a-pve-0068/d60bb586cbab40fdb5311a87ce32852e/ https://v16-webapp.tiktok.com/c7fe2cbc57cb276832f49e2542fe4f...

wolverine876 5y ago

> If TikTok manipulates content that video can go to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit... That works only if people know it's manipulated and then are motivated to act. It's hard to know if query results (broadly: search results, timelines, etc.) are manipulated because you have no basis for comparison. And IME most people don't care about social media manipulation - the disinformation campaigns have been well researched and documented for a long time.

powerapple 5y ago

social media has been around for quite some time now, why suddenly this is the first war on social media and everyone is talking about? There was three wars last year, as far as I know, a few still going on now.

joelbondurant4 5y ago

ASalazarMX 5y ago

I won't believe people will use anything but the big (and censorship ready) social networks until I get the real news in Imgur or 9gag.