It turns out that TikTok's algorithm may be actively suppressing criticism of the Chinese government
It has been revealed that searching for terms such as 'Uighur' and 'Tiananmen Square' on TikTok is likely to result in pro-China videos. Researchers who investigated this phenomenon reported that 'TikTok's algorithm is suppressing criticism of the government and brainwashing users.'
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TikTok Algorithms Actively Suppress Criticism of Chinese Regime, Study Finds | NTD
https://www.ntd.com/tiktok-algorithms-actively-suppress-criticism-of-chinese-regime-study-finds_1010353.html
Researchers from Rutgers University and its Network Infection Research Institute (NCRI) in the United States created 24 accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, posing as a 16-year-old American user and watching content on each service. While watching, they searched for four words related to the Chinese Communist Party: 'Uighur,' 'Xinjiang,' 'Tibet,' and 'Tiananmen Square,' to see what kind of videos would appear.
The researchers collected over 3,400 videos from the search results and classified each one as either 'pro-China,' 'anti-China,' 'neutral,' or 'irrelevant.'
With regard to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the videos deemed 'pro-China' included idyllic depictions of ethnic minority folk customs and rural life, while the 'anti-China' videos included those detailing the plight of the Uighur people in China and calls for a boycott of products made in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
As a result of the classification, only 2.3% of search results for 'Xinjiang' on TikTok were classified as 'anti-China,' a stark difference from 21.7% on YouTube and 17.3% on Instagram.
Meanwhile, more than 26 percent of search results for 'Tiananmen' on TikTok were 'pro-China,' compared with just 7.7 percent on YouTube and 16.3 percent on Instagram. The researchers report that pro-China videos about Tiananmen Square included videos that denied the massacre, were historically revisionist, or simply contained photos of the square without mentioning the massacre.
In the search results for 'Tibet,' TikTok's 'anti-China' content accounted for 5% of the results, while pro-China content accounted for 30.1%. The 'pro-China' content in Tibet was related to the Chinese Communist Party's claim that Tibet had been liberated, while the 'anti-China' content included videos of Tibetan protests.
Based on these results, the researchers reported that 'TikTok's algorithms actively suppress content critical of the Chinese Communist Party, while at the same time supporting pro-China propaganda and promoting distracting, unrelated content.'
It was also pointed out that these algorithms may be changing users' impressions of China.
The researchers surveyed 1,214 American TikTok users and found that 'heavy users' who spent more than three hours a day on the app had a 49% increase in favorable feelings toward the Chinese Communist Party compared to light users. In contrast, those who spent more than 15 minutes but less than three hours on TikTok had a 36% increase. In contrast, use of YouTube and Instagram did not show a significant relationship with changes in perceptions of China.
'This suggests that TikTok's content may contribute to the psychological manipulation of users, which is consistent with the Chinese Communist Party's strategic objective of creating a favorable impression among young audiences,' the researchers wrote.
A TikTok spokesperson responded to the findings, saying: 'This is a flawed experiment that has not been peer reviewed. Previous studies by NCRI have been refuted by independent analysts and this latest paper is similarly flawed.'
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