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My conspiracy is that the US is worried about TikTok because it’s actively been pushing younger folk to the left. It has been a huge awakening to folks to learn

My conspiracy is that the US is worried about TikTok because it’s actively been pushing younger folk to the left. It has been a huge awakening to folks to learn and hear about topics that their education system has failed them on. I’ve noticed a general awareness increase of western atrocities of the past century amongst folk. Note this is just my feelings on this and I don’t have the data to back this up (tldr source: I made it up)

atleastoptimal 3y ago
Personal anecdote but my girlfriend has been pushed to the right due to her TikTok habits. At least what is considered the "right" in the US.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  It may be to China's benefit to encourage moves in both directions.
  - makingstuffs 3y ago
    Division is everything. It is immeasurably more difficult to control and manipulate a unified mass than it is to manipulate multiple different fragments of said mass. This applies to pretty much everything from flat-pack furniture to society.
  - ketzo 3y ago
    It is psy-op 101 to push people to any extreme you can; left, right, up, down, doesn’t matter as long as they’re mad as fuck.
  - _huayra_ 3y ago
    It's pretty telling how effective China thinks it is, given their restrictions on Douyin ("internal Chinese TikTok"). iirc kids can only use it for <1 hour / day.
    - hwillis 3y ago
      That's absolutely evidence of the opposite. If china thought they could use the app's algorithms to promote national unity, they would do that. They have their own exclusive app. China thinks its effective at wasting time. Children also aren't allowed to play video games monday through friday, and are limited to 1 hour per day otherwise- a law which existed before douyin limits: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58384457 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58384457 The country that is obsessive about its children and their productivity, the country famous for kids competing in chess and abacus and piano... that country is just banning douyin because it's a time waster.
      - ketzo 3y ago
        I think that is kind of orthogonal to the point I don't think encouraging national unity and encouraging strife and polarization are the same thing at all, and in fact I would bet the latter is easier at scale Maybe they're restricting Douyin because it's a timewaster, maybe because it much more naturally encourages discord than unity. Maybe both. Probably both, frankly.
      - hoseja 3y ago
        They also don't peddle fentanyl within their borders.
      - HeartStrings 3y ago
        Honestly, that’s pretty great. We have limitations on online casinos, because of social harm. How is TikTok and vidya different? They do objectively harm prodouctivity and implement addictive dark patterns, loot boxes, consuming over producing. Sometimes limiting personal freedom actually can be for one’s own good.
  - hbbio 3y ago
    Yes, until civil war. I dunno if TikTok should be banned, but Nepal motives are truthful.
  - jlmorton 3y ago
    Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. The sum total of what China is doing with TikTok is restricting what people in China see, which is what China is worried about.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      > It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. Honestly, I feel like you're right. But at the same time, it'd be a genius strategy to destabilize a country. We'd be getting beat at our own game we pull on other countries.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      What justifies the strength of your confidence? From game-theoretic point of view: is China a geopolitical adversary? Yes. Does China control TikTok? Yes. Is TikTok a tool to tweak how citizens of your adversary think? Yes. Is that powerful? Yes. So the facts our - our adversary is in control of a tool which can influence how we think, which is valuable to them. We don't know for sure that they use the tool but... why wouldn't they?
      - hwillis 3y ago
        > Does China control TikTok? Yes. No. Not in any meaningful way. The data and employees are in the US. Every intelligence agency in the US is watching those buildings and reading their data. The US has no laws against inspecting every single packet sent internationally, the employees are subject to US laws, and tiktok has distanced itself from china. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong... They are not meaningfully different from any other US company. It's not like they don't give data to china: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hong-kong-authorities-last-year-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hon... Tiktok is just the new banana republic, the new gulf war, etc. The US government is aggressively anti-competitive with non-domestic corporate threats to its largest industries. It has always attempted to destroy competition and maximize domestic control of furs, then produce, then oil, and now social media and advertising.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    Let's be real. It's not TikTok, it's social media. Twitter had a reputation as a cesspool where people yell increasingy extreme political opinions at each other long before TikTok was popular. Gamergate was before TikTok. TikTok is just the most refined version of the same rotten medium.
  - stjohnswarts 3y ago
    Obviously they want social chaos in the USA, pitting right against left is one way of doing that, so maybe just have a self adjusting algo that detects which way they lean and then slowly increase the ratio of right to neutral/left ideas(videos). Slowly push the person in that direction a bit at a time over months. I've been thinking about signup up for a mysudo account and playing with the algos to see how long it takes to become a full on Marxist and also a MAGA extremist.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Interesting, I'm curious but what opinions have changed?
  - atleastoptimal 3y ago
    She is now more of the opinion that anti-Asian hate is primarily perpetuated by African Americans, which seems to be a fringe opinion in left-leaning circles. I don't know if it's true overall: she says it's due to seeing a lot of videos of Asians being harassed by African Americans and almost none of harassment by any other group.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      I guess the interesting thing with this one is, while this statistically is __factual__ (at least from my readings of whats going on), we also know statistics do a horrible job in actually showing causation. And an even worse job when it comes to explaining sociological issues because it's always one/few dimensional. Scientific racism wasn't just absurdist rhetoric. It was, on the surface level, logical (albeit, cherry picked data) to push a specific view point that "felt logical." So yeah I think you're right about that being an interesting pushed-to-the-right view point. And unfortunately due to it sounding `logical`, it's very hard to convince people to look a bit deeper into it and compare it to historical repeats of that rhetoric.
      - latency-guy2 3y ago
        I will believe your rhetoric if you can give an example where the same thing can be said for leftist thought. Where "logical" thought trumps confounds as you say, but the confounds are what hides the truth.
    - 93po 3y ago
      This is probably indicative that videos featuring someone who is black being racist drives more views and engagement than a white person. So it's the ones the algo shows to her. This is why algos are dangerous.
cdogl 3y ago
Learning facts cherry-picked by the algorithm to promote engagement is not the same as being informed.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  To be honest, everything we learn is cherry picked by someone.
- Spivak 3y ago
  You can either exert editorial control to push content that fits your rhetorical needs at the cost of engagement (because by definition you're not pushing the most engaging content) or you can push the content that is the most naturally engaging. You can't have both. And boy do I have bad news about the places you would typically turn to be more informed about current events -- the news -- and how what you see is also designed to promote engagement.
- mistermann 3y ago
  Someone who acquires more factual knowledge via TikTok would be more informed than one who did not, all other things being equal, no?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Not necessarily. A carefully selected set of facts can tell a very inaccurate story.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      They are still more informed though. One important thing they could be more informed about for example is how slippery and illusory colloquial English language is, and the effects that has on the "reality" one experiences.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        No, they are misinformed and may believe entirely incorrect things as a result. An example of this is Holocaust denial. A carefully selected set of facts in isolation can make someone believe the Holocaust didn't happen; this does not make "the Holocaust never happened" an informed belief.
arvinsim 3y ago
Tiktok is also a vector for propaganda. There is not guarantee that all content there is true.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  True content can also be propaganda for instance via the glorification of a particular lifestyle and its second order effects (implicitly elevated social capital).
- sekia 3y ago
  Sure it is true like other SNSs, like Musk's X, are so too. Some particular people call it the "Free Speech".
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    Like Rashida Tlaib, or Ilhan Omar to further your example
    - sekia 3y ago
      Although I'm not very interested in the US politics, it looks to me that these 2 are politicians rather than platforms. Could you find other trees where your propaganda seems more plausible in context, please.
      - latency-guy2 3y ago
        Sure you are, that's why you're whinging about X for free speech reasons. Will you be honest?
- aaomidi 3y ago
  For what it’s worth, propagandaness (is that a word?) of content has very little to do with how factual it is.
leakybit 3y ago
If by US you mean republicans, then yea, but they say that about every big tech company.
teeektalker 3y ago
> It has been a huge awakening to folks to learn and hear about topics that their education system has failed them on. Fully agree - Tiktok university is a great place to graduate from.
tristor 3y ago
Since we are just sharing how we feel, anecdotally, my observation with my teen and her friends is that TikTok makes people think they are informed while actually misinforming them. This is very much not limited to social and political issues but can be about physical matters like home repairs, how cars work / how to fix them, etc.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  Anecdotally, almost every teen I've ever known has thought they were well informed while actually misinformed. For every one that could fix a car, there'd be five who knew how to change oil and ten who maybe knew how to add more oil. All of them (us) thought they were well informed. I don't think TikTok is behind this.
- xyst 3y ago
  the amount of misinformation is insanely high on TT. From “news” to even specific trades (ie, construction, cooking, DIY). I have had to carefully engage with only topics I am interested in else I get flooded with bs vids (ie, thots, “alternative medicine”, far right content, joe rogan, …) For what it’s worth though, the content moderation is slightly better than other platforms. When I report dangerous videos (literally a person tailgating/road raging), the videos get removed pretty fast. Not a half bad “status report” system either.
blackoil 3y ago
Tiktok and social media in general are polarising by nature. If I am aligned to any side, I'll get more videos of it and rage-inducing engagement magnet videos against other side. So you'll see right side being moving right and left being more left. So a right winger's feed will be full of Fox and Peterson. A central view doesn't get interacted with a lot so will be pushed out.

atleastoptimal 3y ago

Personal anecdote but my girlfriend has been pushed to the right due to her TikTok habits. At least what is considered the "right" in the US.

ceejayoz 3y ago
It may be to China's benefit to encourage moves in both directions.
- makingstuffs 3y ago
  Division is everything. It is immeasurably more difficult to control and manipulate a unified mass than it is to manipulate multiple different fragments of said mass. This applies to pretty much everything from flat-pack furniture to society.
- ketzo 3y ago
  It is psy-op 101 to push people to any extreme you can; left, right, up, down, doesn’t matter as long as they’re mad as fuck.
- _huayra_ 3y ago
  It's pretty telling how effective China thinks it is, given their restrictions on Douyin ("internal Chinese TikTok"). iirc kids can only use it for <1 hour / day.
  - hwillis 3y ago
    That's absolutely evidence of the opposite. If china thought they could use the app's algorithms to promote national unity, they would do that. They have their own exclusive app. China thinks its effective at wasting time. Children also aren't allowed to play video games monday through friday, and are limited to 1 hour per day otherwise- a law which existed before douyin limits: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58384457 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58384457 The country that is obsessive about its children and their productivity, the country famous for kids competing in chess and abacus and piano... that country is just banning douyin because it's a time waster.
    - ketzo 3y ago
      I think that is kind of orthogonal to the point I don't think encouraging national unity and encouraging strife and polarization are the same thing at all, and in fact I would bet the latter is easier at scale Maybe they're restricting Douyin because it's a timewaster, maybe because it much more naturally encourages discord than unity. Maybe both. Probably both, frankly.
    - hoseja 3y ago
      They also don't peddle fentanyl within their borders.
    - HeartStrings 3y ago
      Honestly, that’s pretty great. We have limitations on online casinos, because of social harm. How is TikTok and vidya different? They do objectively harm prodouctivity and implement addictive dark patterns, loot boxes, consuming over producing. Sometimes limiting personal freedom actually can be for one’s own good.
- hbbio 3y ago
  Yes, until civil war. I dunno if TikTok should be banned, but Nepal motives are truthful.
- jlmorton 3y ago
  Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. The sum total of what China is doing with TikTok is restricting what people in China see, which is what China is worried about.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    > It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. Honestly, I feel like you're right. But at the same time, it'd be a genius strategy to destabilize a country. We'd be getting beat at our own game we pull on other countries.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    What justifies the strength of your confidence? From game-theoretic point of view: is China a geopolitical adversary? Yes. Does China control TikTok? Yes. Is TikTok a tool to tweak how citizens of your adversary think? Yes. Is that powerful? Yes. So the facts our - our adversary is in control of a tool which can influence how we think, which is valuable to them. We don't know for sure that they use the tool but... why wouldn't they?
    - hwillis 3y ago
      > Does China control TikTok? Yes. No. Not in any meaningful way. The data and employees are in the US. Every intelligence agency in the US is watching those buildings and reading their data. The US has no laws against inspecting every single packet sent internationally, the employees are subject to US laws, and tiktok has distanced itself from china. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong... They are not meaningfully different from any other US company. It's not like they don't give data to china: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hong-kong-authorities-last-year-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hon... Tiktok is just the new banana republic, the new gulf war, etc. The US government is aggressively anti-competitive with non-domestic corporate threats to its largest industries. It has always attempted to destroy competition and maximize domestic control of furs, then produce, then oil, and now social media and advertising.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Let's be real. It's not TikTok, it's social media. Twitter had a reputation as a cesspool where people yell increasingy extreme political opinions at each other long before TikTok was popular. Gamergate was before TikTok. TikTok is just the most refined version of the same rotten medium.
- stjohnswarts 3y ago
  Obviously they want social chaos in the USA, pitting right against left is one way of doing that, so maybe just have a self adjusting algo that detects which way they lean and then slowly increase the ratio of right to neutral/left ideas(videos). Slowly push the person in that direction a bit at a time over months. I've been thinking about signup up for a mysudo account and playing with the algos to see how long it takes to become a full on Marxist and also a MAGA extremist.
aaomidi 3y ago
Interesting, I'm curious but what opinions have changed?
- atleastoptimal 3y ago
  She is now more of the opinion that anti-Asian hate is primarily perpetuated by African Americans, which seems to be a fringe opinion in left-leaning circles. I don't know if it's true overall: she says it's due to seeing a lot of videos of Asians being harassed by African Americans and almost none of harassment by any other group.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    I guess the interesting thing with this one is, while this statistically is __factual__ (at least from my readings of whats going on), we also know statistics do a horrible job in actually showing causation. And an even worse job when it comes to explaining sociological issues because it's always one/few dimensional. Scientific racism wasn't just absurdist rhetoric. It was, on the surface level, logical (albeit, cherry picked data) to push a specific view point that "felt logical." So yeah I think you're right about that being an interesting pushed-to-the-right view point. And unfortunately due to it sounding `logical`, it's very hard to convince people to look a bit deeper into it and compare it to historical repeats of that rhetoric.
    - latency-guy2 3y ago
      I will believe your rhetoric if you can give an example where the same thing can be said for leftist thought. Where "logical" thought trumps confounds as you say, but the confounds are what hides the truth.
  - 93po 3y ago
    This is probably indicative that videos featuring someone who is black being racist drives more views and engagement than a white person. So it's the ones the algo shows to her. This is why algos are dangerous.

cdogl 3y ago

Learning facts cherry-picked by the algorithm to promote engagement is not the same as being informed.

aaomidi 3y ago
To be honest, everything we learn is cherry picked by someone.
Spivak 3y ago
You can either exert editorial control to push content that fits your rhetorical needs at the cost of engagement (because by definition you're not pushing the most engaging content) or you can push the content that is the most naturally engaging. You can't have both. And boy do I have bad news about the places you would typically turn to be more informed about current events -- the news -- and how what you see is also designed to promote engagement.
mistermann 3y ago
Someone who acquires more factual knowledge via TikTok would be more informed than one who did not, all other things being equal, no?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Not necessarily. A carefully selected set of facts can tell a very inaccurate story.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    They are still more informed though. One important thing they could be more informed about for example is how slippery and illusory colloquial English language is, and the effects that has on the "reality" one experiences.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      No, they are misinformed and may believe entirely incorrect things as a result. An example of this is Holocaust denial. A carefully selected set of facts in isolation can make someone believe the Holocaust didn't happen; this does not make "the Holocaust never happened" an informed belief.

arvinsim 3y ago

Tiktok is also a vector for propaganda. There is not guarantee that all content there is true.

orangepurple 3y ago
True content can also be propaganda for instance via the glorification of a particular lifestyle and its second order effects (implicitly elevated social capital).
sekia 3y ago
Sure it is true like other SNSs, like Musk's X, are so too. Some particular people call it the "Free Speech".
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  Like Rashida Tlaib, or Ilhan Omar to further your example
  - sekia 3y ago
    Although I'm not very interested in the US politics, it looks to me that these 2 are politicians rather than platforms. Could you find other trees where your propaganda seems more plausible in context, please.
    - latency-guy2 3y ago
      Sure you are, that's why you're whinging about X for free speech reasons. Will you be honest?
aaomidi 3y ago
For what it’s worth, propagandaness (is that a word?) of content has very little to do with how factual it is.

leakybit 3y ago

If by US you mean republicans, then yea, but they say that about every big tech company.

teeektalker 3y ago

> It has been a huge awakening to folks to learn and hear about topics that their education system has failed them on. Fully agree - Tiktok university is a great place to graduate from.

tristor 3y ago

Since we are just sharing how we feel, anecdotally, my observation with my teen and her friends is that TikTok makes people think they are informed while actually misinforming them. This is very much not limited to social and political issues but can be about physical matters like home repairs, how cars work / how to fix them, etc.

boomboomsubban 3y ago
Anecdotally, almost every teen I've ever known has thought they were well informed while actually misinformed. For every one that could fix a car, there'd be five who knew how to change oil and ten who maybe knew how to add more oil. All of them (us) thought they were well informed. I don't think TikTok is behind this.
xyst 3y ago
the amount of misinformation is insanely high on TT. From “news” to even specific trades (ie, construction, cooking, DIY). I have had to carefully engage with only topics I am interested in else I get flooded with bs vids (ie, thots, “alternative medicine”, far right content, joe rogan, …) For what it’s worth though, the content moderation is slightly better than other platforms. When I report dangerous videos (literally a person tailgating/road raging), the videos get removed pretty fast. Not a half bad “status report” system either.

blackoil 3y ago

Tiktok and social media in general are polarising by nature. If I am aligned to any side, I'll get more videos of it and rage-inducing engagement magnet videos against other side. So you'll see right side being moving right and left being more left. So a right winger's feed will be full of Fox and Peterson. A central view doesn't get interacted with a lot so will be pushed out.