do you have a link to that study?
Comment on House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok
CeeBee@lemmy.world 6 months agoPropaganda is a major problem no matter what.
I mentioned in another comment that Tiktok is a massively direct pipeline to the minds of younger people by the CCP. Studies have demonstrated that the Chinese only version of Tiktok (Douyin) promotes positive content to users whereas Tiktok promotes highly negative content. To the point that a study concluded it was affecting the mental health of younger people.
Nima@leminal.space 6 months ago
CeeBee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
nypost.com/…/china-is-hurting-us-kids-with-tiktok…
newsweek.com/douyin-tiktok-use-link-favorable-vie…
I can’t find the study I’m thinking of. It’s been at least 6 months since I saw it. But these articles at least backup some of what I said.
retrieval4558@mander.xyz 6 months ago
How do you differentiate purposeful manipulation vs it being a natural effect of Western social media? I stopped using Facebook and Twitter because it was obviously toxic and affecting my mental health. I use TikTok a fair amount and don’t find it nearly as bad.
It’s also possible that there’s manipulation in the other direction. In their own app they could be artificially increasing positive content while allowing the natural social media toxicity and ragebait to dominate in other areas.
My personal opinion is that TikTok is a way that peer to peer information and news travels very quickly in a way that they can’t control, and they don’t like that. As with all things, they want to keep us isolated.
CeeBee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company. Every major Chinese company, especially ones that operate outside of China, have CCP offices within the company. The “rights” that individuals and companies have in China are at best a facade. What the CCP says to do is what happens.
The major difference is tested by looking at how the algorithm promotes or suppresses certain topics. Tiktok has a Chinese counterpart called Douyin (which IIRC is the “original” Tiktok) that’s only available to people in China. The findings point to more positive content being promoted on Douyin and negative content on Tiktok.
What’s also noticed is that Douyin heavily promotes anti-west and specifically anti-American propaganda. And promotes pro-China and pro-CCP stuff, such as “China has solved homelessness and homelessness doesn’t exist there” and “China has solved poverty”. The second one is technically true on paper, because they recently reduced the poverty threshold to $600 a year.
On Tiktok huge pro-CCP campaigns have been discovered and that content is constantly being pushed. They use Western shills mostly and the propaganda aspect is cleverly veiled.
In the context of Tiktok, that doesn’t make sense. And what’s even more ironic is that Tiktok is Chinese owned, and people in China have zero access to the outside world. People are going to jail or even disappeared now for simply using a VPN. News coming out of China is almost completely censored. China has basically become North Korea with more money. And they have direct control over the content on the most widely used social media platform in the West.
retrieval4558@mander.xyz 6 months ago
I’m not here to be pro-china, and I definitely believe that they’re putting those things in douyin. I’m just not convinced they’re purposefully putting negative things in TikTok purposefully to harm mental health.
This is anecdotal and my personal experience, but I haven’t noticed any pro-ccp things on my personal algorithm. What I do notice is anti-US and anti-capitalist content by Americans. Whether or not they are shills, I can’t say for sure, but it feels like it would border on conspiracy theory thinking to suggest that many of them are.
To clarify the isolation comment, I mean that TikTok is a place where community building and the spreading of ideas or news (not necessarily good or bad ideas/news) spreads rapidly, especially among young people, in a way the people who run traditional media can’t control. Taking away this tool makes us more reliant on forms of media that they do control.
CeeBee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is true for many platforms like Reddit, Lemmy, Mastadon, etc., including ones that no longer exist like Vine. There have always been pages on the internet to share censored free content, and there likely will always be. The issue with Tiktok being a “way to spread news” is that most of the content is just “hearsay” without being verifiable. And that means false information spreads quickly and easily on Tiktok. There’s a reason most of the flat earthers have flocked to Tiktok lately.
Additionally, Tiktok is terrible for searchability. The platform isn’t designed to work that way. It’s designed to just doom scroll and you see what the platform tells you to see. The only other time you see something else is if someone shares a video. The random nature of the next video is where the issue lies, and considering it’s a CCP controlled company that controls the algorithm that picks the next video, I wouldn’t trust it with a video of watching paint dry.
There have been many studies demonstrating that the TikTok algorithm is hugely problematic.