TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor with Pro-China Content Originating from State-Linked Entities, Study Claims
TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor with Pro-China Content Originating from State-Linked Entities, Study Claims
The report from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University heightens concerns about how Beijing influences content on one of the most popular social media platforms with Americans under 30.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1814468
Here is the stuy: The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive
TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor, Study Claims
A study published on Thursday asserts TikTok’s algorithms promote Chinese Communist Party narratives and suppress content critical of those narratives, a claim the embattled company forcefully denied to KQED.
Titled “The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive,” the study by the Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute argues that much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities. ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns TikTok.
Institute co-founder Joel Finkelstein wrote that includes media outlets and influencers, such as travel vloggers who post toothlessly about Chinese regions like Xinxiang, where the government has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities.
“This manipulation is not just about content availability; it extends to psychological manipulation, particularly affecting Gen Z users,” Finkelstein wrote.
[...]
An NCRI analysis published in December looked at the volume of posts with certain hashtags — like “Uyghur,” “Xinjiang,” “Tibet” and “Tiananmen” — across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. That report found **anomalies in TikTok content based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government. **For example, researchers wrote, hashtags about Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population appeared to be underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram.
following the first report’s publication, TikTok disabled its hashtag measurement functionality in a move that made it impossible for the researchers to replicate their findings.
much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities
Ok... But do people actually think that anti-USA/empire material doesn't get censored in USA? That propaganda from "state-linked entities" isn't boosted? The treatment of Uyghurs is terrible but maybe they should look at the treatment of Palestinians too. Maybe NPR should analyze their own programming because it's disgustingly biased.
- https://theconversation.com/bias-hiding-in-plain-sight-decades-of-analyses-suggest-us-media-skews-anti-palestinian-216967
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/digital-apartheid-gaza-unjust-content-moderation-request-israels-cyber-unit
- https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/05/tech/palestinian-american-sues-meta-instagram/index.html
That is clearly whataboutism.
It's not a story about the USA, and there are other countries affected, including all of Europe, some middle eastern countries, and most of Asia (and many countries that do not have an adversarial relationship with China, such as lendees of the BRI).
You're free to criticize the USA. US News outlets are also free to do so, and do it all the time; they also don't, or may honor or not honor a request from the white house to publish or hold back a story. They are publishers and allowed to do that (NPR included).
This story is specifically about an accusation of the Chinese government influencing articles seen (not moderation of ToS breaking, or illegal content) on the U.S. version of TikTok.
NCRI said in its report that “our findings, which, while not definitive proof of state orchestration, present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok’s covert content manipulation.”
TikTok has repeatedly said the Chinese government has no influence over its U.S. app, and proving otherwise would be difficult — something that the Department of Justice has acknowledged in discussions over a law that could ban the app.
Meta is another story; they are free to moderate/censor content, but if they start curating content, and not letting an algorithm decide what to show users based on their behavior, then that is another story. It is still legal for them to do, but they may also be determined to be responsible as a publisher.
If Meta advertised themselves to users as a curation of 'conservative news', or 'US propaganda', and that's what their users are signing up for, then that is fine. They advertise themselves as social media, with what people see being based on user behavior and posted content. If Meta was US Government owned, or funded, then they are welcome to do that in other nations as well, as long as they follow that nation's laws regarding the matter, otherwise foreign governments are welcome to act on it in their nation has appropriate. (Meta is not US government owned, they actually have quite a few legal battles and inquiries by the US government, and are a self-interested greedy corporation).
The same applies of TikTok. If they advertised themselves as a Chinese propaganda source and registered as a foreign agent (as is necessary when a foreign government has content control of the medium in question in the US for political purposes), then that would be fine; they explicitly denied that though, and push the value of their algorithm, and that they are social media.
The US famously does have foreign state funding TV networks, and US Citizens are allowed to watch it if they so choose, just that they need to register as such:
The Justice Department announced the registration just hours after RT’s chief editor said the company had complied with the U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The move doesn’t restrict the channel’s content, but the network is required to publicly disclose details about its funding and operations as well as mark certain content distributed in the U.S. with labels.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/69e84148c8a44512bdc648b1bcac4f34
China has also had such TV Networks in the US since the 1990s.
Hey look, the classic "America bad" comment on a post critical of China!
Are these people bots or something? It's possible to be critical of both at different times.
Remember when everyone kept saying Tik Tok needed to be banned because it can be manipulated by China, and when the US started to ban it everyone started saying that it needs to be saved, and now (shock horror) China is manipulating it? Pretty sick timeline we're in
If you have the impression that there's a dominant, homogeneous "mass" sharing the same opinion, you are right there in the middle of an information bubble and a victim of those "algorithms".
Sorry, I guess I should make it more overtly clear when I'm speaking in hyperbolics. Quite obviously, I'm aware that not every single person living or dead shares the same opinion. What I mean to say is that most of the popular channels (internet forums, news outlets, social media) seemingly flipped the script overnight, and likely will now do again.
Just to cover my bases: trends are not indictive of every single individual opinions and should not be viewed as such, but are a roughly reliable way to gauge overall public opinion
Tiktok could make the algorithm and how it functions openly visible so the international community stops criticizing them over it, since how it performs being mysterious is what is making them have to defend itself. All algorithm based social media for that matter.
"TikTok does what every social media company does but this time it's Chinese so it's bad" is what this headline should really say.
From the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Whataboutism, the rhetorical practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation, by asking a different but related question, or by raising a different issue altogether. Whataboutism often serves to reduce the perceived plausibility or seriousness of the original accusation or question by suggesting that the person advancing it is hypocritical or that the responder’s misbehavior is not unique or unprecedented.
Whataboutism is typically also an admission of guilt. When the CCP normally use it, they aren’t disagreeing with the accusation, they are justifying their actions.
In this case ByteDance specifically denies the allegations. It doesn’t mean whataboutism can’t be used without a ‘even if’, but the user you are responding to is admitting TikTok is doing things TikTok says they aren’t doing. Doesn’t mean they are a representative of TikTok or the CCP, but definitely not helping their cause.
Let's play Devil's Advocate: ...maybe it's not TikTok's algorithm's fault, but the CCP's ability to have people skilled at manipulating it? TikTok could probably tweak its algorithm to prevent that, but maybe it's more profitable to do nothing?