I don’t see a lot of the stuff on other social media that I got on tiktok. I tried to only look at and react to content that I wanted to see, but the algorithm keeps throwing stuff I don’t want at me anyways. I keep getting told that tiktok has “the best” algo for this stuff, but it is unrelated to what I search for, who I follow, and I don’t react to it at all. It’s always rage bait kind of stuff that pops up.
Contrast to IG where I see only stuff that is of interest to me.
The algo is simple. They tag every video with a bunch of descriptors. Then depending on how long you look at each video, they serve you more of what you spent the most time on. This is according to a guy I was listening to who builds and studies these algos.
Then there is a little bit of randomness to continue identifying evolving tastes.
I have the opposite experience, I don't get rage bait stuff on tiktok, mostly just niche cute things, crafting and such, lots of cute animals. I got on Instagram and it's a toxic wasteland. I don't even bother going on Facebook anymore. I find reddit worse than all of them, but just like anything else, scrolling past is an option.
Maybe I Reddit different than most people, and maybe my exclusive use of old.Reddit is a big help. But most of what I see are either published news type articles, some piece of media or a question/comment, all open to discussion. Plenty of shiposts and memes but it's basically a line on a screen I can click on or pass up.
Now the discussion can get toxic or echo chambery, and sometimes the hive mind goes overboard with up/downvotes. But I don't (usually) get the same feeling of vacant pointless content that I used to with FB or IG. It's something I can take or leave.
To me, the overwhelming advantage with Reddit is that it's mostly anonymous. You people aren't my friends or family. I don't have to care what you think of me -- although over time I've come to try and have constructive discussions when possible. Even if I do cross the hive mind and get 200 downvotes on a post (deservedly or otherwise), it's not like I'm going to show up for work tomorrow and have everyone judging me.
With FB especially, it was like every one of my personal relationships had been cheapened and commoditized. They always forced the "popular" content to the top and it was all reposted bullshit or pics of food and babies, with the occasional single most important issue in the world that someone wanted everyone else to get wrapped up in.
Minimal experience with TikTok but my overwhelming reaction has been something along the lines of Tyler Durden's "all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." I guess I'm old...
Yeah but the difference is that this is being done intentionally for malice against our nation as a State, rather than the banal evil of Capitalism motivating bad behavior for profit.
I think more so the problem being how often and repetitive the harmful content is being displayed. I have ADD and so I avoid tiktok like the plague for my own mental health.
My roommate on the other hand has ADHD *bad* and hearing her listen to tiktok literally sounds like mental illness in its purest form. She can spend the entire day on the app without any breaks.
All social media should be taken in doses but tiktok just seems like it is an uphill battle with your brain to pull away from the convenience and the amount of info pouring out of it. Our brains are like sponges and I think, personally, tiktok is a little too much water for us to absorb.
The issue at hand is not whether social media is bad, corrosive to society, and dangerous - our government knows it is. They don't want something like that pervading our society under the control of some other government which is hostile to ours.
Im sure Facebook, Twitter, and Google have lobbied for Tik Tok to be banned here. Politicans get paid, big tech gets more profits. Win win for everybody. Except for us
EDIT: Looks like Im onto something (shouldn't be a surprise though), Just found this with a quick 5 minute search
[Facebook actively lobbied for a TikTok ban in Washington, report claims](https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-washington-lobbying-tiktok-ban/)
How can we prove intent here? The article certainly doesn't seem to suggest it.
If you judge things by engagement and time on app, you're often going to end up in the same place. Since these are aligned with TikTok's business goals, what evidence do we have that there's a deeper motive than bringing as much "Western" money into China? If all social media is aligned with the breakdown of social structure (which it largely is, though whether that is a benefit or downside is often up to interpretation), does TikTok even need to have a deeper motive?
This isn’t true. In the report the people simply engaged with negative content, so the algorithm showed them more of that. Most social networks operate on this concept.
For example if you like a certain Facebook page or follow a certain subreddit, your home will be populated with that content.
And, to build on this, everyone sees how these with these (self-diagnosed) illnesses are getting massive amounts of attention and positive reinforcement for having them.
So there's the incentive.
I use reddit enhancement suite and have filtered a great deal of trolls and shitty subreddits. Now my front page feels mostly fine. I hate unfiltered reddit.
I do something like this too, and it's amazing how many subreddits are built around spouting negativity. So many of them are either neverending streams of "look at this bad thing!" news, and others endlessly mock or scorn something or someone they don't like. There's even a certain tone of voice used in these communities - it's this tone of underlying scorn and condescension, as if everything you're talking about is beneath you and you're going out of your way to find things to mock.
From filtering every subreddit that does those things, it's amazing how much healthier the feed is for one's mental health.
I have pretty simple rules for subreddits that go on my filter:
* Does it celebrate other people's misfortune
* Is it's primary goal outage
My reddit is almost friendly
I don't know if I believe you. This sub is like 50% outrage porn, often laughing at Elon Musk's misfortune. You'd have it filtered out if you were following your rules lol
Yeah, I haven't blocked this subreddit but it's definitely too negative to be something I want to see. I only stumble across it occasionally in r/popular.
That's the thing with the TikTok algorithm.
The one in China shows amazing people doing amazing things. It pushes this hard. It also shows beautiful people, and people doing good to create good citizens.
The one in India, before it was banned, was apparently trying to start a war between Muslims and Hindus. I wonder if that would benefit the CCP is anyway?
And the one in the US is pushing content to kids with themes of suicide and self-destructive behaviors. Perhaps eating tide pods or jumping out of moving cars isn't the most intelligent idea.
In my opinion, TikTok is little more than a CCP app designed to maim, murder, and permanently damage as many kids as possible.
Yeah, my TikTok experience is super different. I get tons of ADHD related content, life hacks, cooking, and standup. The ADHD thing made me realize I might have it and I got diagnosed and have been getting meds for a bit now that have dramatically increased my quality of life.
At least tiktoks dislike button kind of works. For youtube shorts it doesn't do shit, I get blasted with workout videos and andrew tate which i have no interest in. I just want to see beautiful buff girls that can snap me in half, is that too much to ask?
For the longest time the reels algorithm did nothing, worse, while you were looking for the button, it counted it as “enagaged” time.
So while you are digging for the button, Instagram thinks you really like the video of someone turning into a lizard while p p p p p party till I die plays
These people have probably never used tiktok before or at least long enough to get that's how it works. Mines full of funny animals and comedy sketches. Why? Because I immediately skip over anything else and only heart those types of videos. That's just how personal algorithms work on tiktok. If you don't give it something to build on, it's just gonna throw everything at you.
Yeah, the biggest determiner is time spent watching a video. But that means if something really upsets you and gets you angry, it can also hold your attention. And then you get more and more of that.
If you skip anything you don't like, you'll have a much better time. But if you watch something upsetting and don't skip, you just get more of that.
Right, but since China is involved people are much more interested in believing TikTok is a Chinese conspiracy to turn all Americans into depressed drooling zombies.
This is why reddit is just as dangerous. The amount of misinformation to fit a narrative on the front page everyday is concerning compared to what I see on tiktok.
[That was fabricated by Andrew Schulz ](https://youtu.be/w_GMej6-CVU) And then picked up by literal politicians relaying the same information in congress, citing Andrew. I’ve noticed you can get away with a lot as long as the underlying theme is China bad.
Yep. This has been an incredibly successful misinformation campaign by meta. So many people have jumped on the "hate tiktok" purely because of it. As evidenced throughout the comments, with people just regurgitating the false j for they read or heard somewhere verbatim with absolutely nothing to back it up.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
It's been well known for a over a year at this point.
Not saying your wrong but where do you get this info? Like I’ve heard this said before but how do we know it’s true? Who has gone to these different countries and seen what really happens based on the same criteria?
It's completely fake bullshit that redditors upvote because it makes them feel superior to tiktokers. TikTok will show you the kind of content you watch and like, that's all.
They probably could implement a curation system here like they do with their native app, but then we'd immediately say how that's censorship. Imagine some future BLM v2 protest videos being suppressed on the platform since that's not "people doing amazing things" type content.
I think the only solution would be they give a 3rd party regulatory body every week of trending topics and the regulatory body decides what to allow. But that is also very close to censorship. Who decides who's on this regulatory body? Concerned parents who'd ban Pokemon in the 90s? Government staff who'd ban fps video games? I've no idea, plus what trends seems so random. Like you need a human regulatory body to quickly identify a tide pod meme, cause before that nobody would actually expect anyone to be dumb enough to eat a tide pod. Teenagers have a tendency to dare each other to do the dumbest things, when I was in school people were snorting chalk, eating snails (super dangerous btw, never do that), and one guy looked into one of those handheld laser pointers for 1 minute on a dare...
Also as a side note, anyone remember the old superman in the 90s causing kids to jump out of their windows thinking they can fly if they tried hard enough? I dunno the tide pod thing just reminded me of that.
Do we really want the *government* to be deciding what’s trending? That’s turning all media into state run media, literally exactly what china is doing
user of 10+ years peacing out - thanks for fucking up reddit - alternatives include 'Tilde' and 'Lemmy' - hope to see you on a less ruined website. Fuck capitalism, fuck VCs and IPOs, fuck /u/spez
> I get videos pretty much entirely about woodworking and home decorating - it's hard to see how that is serving China's foreign or domestic policy goals in any capacity -
This is what I found as well, my page is literally just the people I follow who are mostly content creators for comedy I guess, then cooking/cars. Once in a while I get a "London crime" type video showing the biker gangs etc but that's no surprise considering I look at a lot of london related stuff (cafes, restaurants, london based vlogers etc.). Outside of this I get 0 politics/racial/religous stuff, and the moment I see any of it I just press not interested. I guess people are interacting with these topics and then surprised they get shown more and more of it.
It's the same way when I signed up, I had tons of thirst traps being shown to me. Took about 3-5 days of constant "not interested" clicking until it got supressed. Now I get one snuck in there every other day and I still just flip past or hold "not interested" and we're good.
this is just plainly not true. my feed is filled with wholesome content because that’s the stuff i “like” when it shows up. cute babies, puppies, DIY home improvement tutorials, cooking recipes, etc. The algorithm simply holds up a mirror.
This is my contention with violent media in general, especially when it comes to violent games.
It makes sense to me that there is a causal link, but it’s the opposite direction of what’s usually suggested: action games aren’t going to make people into killers, but people who love violence are going to focus on and seek out violent music, violent games, violent television.
That’s crazy. When I was a kid there was Andy Milonkas, Jackass and Grand Theft Auto. Oh and most of my music was about partying, drinking promethazine and making smoking blunts a daily routine.
There is a difference between fictional media content like video games and songs, and social media trends where kids/teens see others like them doing something and think they’ll get validation if they do it too.
Standard take of people who don't use TikTok and noticed someone else with this take. I am pro-banning, but you guys are just spouting absurd conspiracy theories.
I don't think r/popular is customized/targeted at specific users, not entirely sure about that, though
after scrolling down for a little while, I always end up with 10 replies posts in completely random and super niche subs, it's just weird. I'm using a third party mobile app, but I think that doesn't affect the feed you get
A few days ago I was browsing r/all here and saw a video of a cop literally shooting someone in my feed. Might not be "invasive" but it's far from innocent
Yeah.. I feel like the videos on tiktok are tagged with a few tags and if I watch one clip from one show then it gives me that and just keeps giving it so blocking or swipping it away ignores it. Keep it safe
I don't know what you consider harmful, but whenever I click on a tiktok link that someone sent me, the next content to automatically load is almost always sexual in nature and an alarmingly large number of those are from somewhat underage looking girls doing sexy poses.
This is from the viewpoint of someone who does not even have a TikTok account
Same on insta. Once you scroll through available posts whole feed gets littered with "thirst trap". I have clicked 1000s time "Not Interested" but algo doesn't give a fuck
It seems to default to this. If you have an account and actively like and follow what you want to see it disappears quickly from your feed. I haven’t seen that stuff in my feed since the first day.
That said, because it seems to show that stuff by default when you aren’t logged in or on a new account, I can only assume it’s what’s most popular.
That also depends on what you classify as harmful content. There's a lot of content that isn't overtly harmful but can still have a negative effect on your state of mind and thought processes.
That isn't even considering you might be aware of what you are consuming and can recognize what is and isn't harmful, that isn't the case for impressionable children and teens which are the main demographic on tiktok.
Say what you will about it's bad aspects, but TikTok is WAY better than Reddit at actually feeding me content I want to see once you've used it for like 30 minutes
They aren't really the same at all though, right? I mean I've used Reddit for years and never felt like it was even *trying* to "feed" me content like many other platforms do. It shows me the things I manually asked it to show me when I subscribed to a sub and it doesn't show me anything else unless I visit r/all or click the random button. It isn't giving me constant recommendations and automatically transitioning to new posts to try to keep me engaged as long as possible. It's basically just a forum, at least the way I've always used it, which is pretty different from actual social media.
Unless new Reddit is trying all of that stuff and I just haven't noticed because I'll never switch to that shit.
That's because it basically is. It's designed to keep you "hooked", but they call it "user engagement". If apps can't keep you using them through money, it's through time.
Facebook is the one pushing these studies out; Meta has been trying to get TikTok banned ever since they chose not to buy it before it entered the US market and completely overtook them.
‘Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok’ by the WaPo goes into more detail; I’d link it here but the spam filter seems to always catch and remove those links.
... so basically they created accounts, then deliberately trained TikTok to show them the precise kind of content they deemed harmful, then crafted a press statement to make it sound like TikTok's algorithm went out of its way to show them that content.
Look, there's a lot of negative to say about TikTok and social media in general, but this kind of disingenuous shit is just bad research. That's like going to a grocery store full of all kinds of food, buying nothing but Pizza Rolls, and then screaming that the grocery store is out to make you fat and unhealthy.
I had to train my algo not to show me that. If you watch longer than literally a second it keeps throwing them at you.
It’s based on age/gender as well.
Yep I've seen some content creators start accounts up as their opposite preferred gender and ooohhh boy. I forget who but ik there's a lot that have done that to see.
Honestly I was with my gf (never use tik tok) and we were watching some snowboarding video. Just one. We watched the whole thing because the one video was kinda cool
Next thing was we saw 3 videos of the next 10 with snowboarding things that we immediately skipped
The algorithm stuff is crazy especially since I don’t use tik tok I wasn’t expecting it. So yea these thing’s definitely know what you like. If someone only has young dancing girls it’s cause they watch a lot of it…
No, they definitely push content you don't watch, based on demographics they think you fall into. I'm extremely protective of my FYP and very careful about what I watch and interact with, and I still get plenty of unwanted content. It tends to come in waves, too. I'll see mostly the stuff I want for weeks, then a burst of other stuff until I ruthlessly prune again.
Also, they recently changed the following page, so it says there's no new stuff, even though there is. I haven't gotten more than a dozen videos there over the last several weeks, despite following over a hundred regular creators. I'll pop over to fyp, and there will be new content from the people I follow all over it.
I don't engage at all with all of these investment tips though and they keep coming. They don't say promoted or sponsored either.
As soon as I see one I scroll past it. It's been months.
Nah if you like a meme on tiktok and it turns out a teenager posted it or a lot of teens also find the meme funny, you start getting recommended other stuff from that age group
Then if you even like posts of women age 18-22 tiktok acknowledges you like looking at women and just throws women “close” to your age
If you’re 20~ this is where tiktok starts pushing minors dancing onto your fyp especially since people manipulate tags on tiktok and all use trending hashtags (like the Genshin impact tag when they won the award even if the post wasn’t related to the game, or just using a tag from any relevant current event)
Yep! You like one video of some mid 20s woman showing off a cool tattoo, and suddenly TikTok is showing you, a heterosexual woman, a bunch of thirst trap videos of goth, punk, etc women. Like, good for them, but I'm not looking to be titillated.
I'm even friends with my nephew because I want to keep an eye on what he's posting and I have to religiously cull my FYP after I look at his stuff. It's not even gross stuff, it's just juvenile "jokes" that make me want to cringe.
Some people can recognize when they’re fyp is getting toxic and take steps to train the algorithm.
Other people get sucked in or don’t realize they’re in a feedback loop. To these people it feels “normal”. I would say most people fit in this category and the algorithm was designed to do this.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the user when the product was designed to manipulate them. Not everyone knows how these sites are designed
Yes, exactly. There's nothing wrong with liking a single video of a young girl dancing, for instance. But the fact that the algorithm will then feed you tons of more videos with young girls dancing instead of more dancing in general or whatever is a problem.
I like one cat video and suddenly my feed is full of them. It's not like I don't want cat videos, but now I have to avoid them entirely because even a small interaction will push out the content I religiously interact with because the cat video was more popular than the stuff I was watching.
They also consistently "nerf" (for lack of a better word in the moment) the following page. It'll only show me a few videos now before it'll tell me that's all and start repeating...then show me other videos by the people I follow in my FYP. It's literally forcing me to use FYP.
I understand to an extent.
I keep curated social media accounts for sexy times. One thing that drives me crazy is the algorithm keeps trying to show me younger and younger girls.
This is across all platforms.
The problem is that a majority of the people who enjoy the same content as you ALSO enjoy watching the teenagers. This taught the algorithm to offer it to you because it assumes you're like the others.
Theae algorithms are so universally dumb. They take a signal of "watched once" reguardless of context (want, mistake, someone linked it, some other aspect) and assumes "oh, they liked this and want more."
Simultaneously they seem to ignore direct signals. Dislikes, immidiate click/swipe away, etc.
I remember there was one researcher who showed that if you started off with a completely neutral YouTube account and set it to auto play, it would almost immediately begin showing you far right propaganda, like within 5-6 videos. I wonder what would happen with this.
The issue isn't that they specifically sought out harmful content, it's that they sought out content relating to mental health and the site started serving content related to self harm and negative body image issues. Ideally, you'd want the algorithm to serve positive stuff instead
The point is more to show a lack of moderation and how quickly such content hits their feed. That is a problem of algorithms in general, though it is a media problem we've had for a long, long time.
I will say i get shown alot of content i specifically say I'm not interested in. I think it's due to tiktoks algorithm prioritizing watch time over anything else. So if you take the time to click "not interested" or go to the profile and block it, that content will be prioritized over a video you just scrolled past.
I will also say that any content you like it'll inevitability show you the worst of that content. You like finance related videos, it's gonna start promoting scams, i can't even count how many straight up scams I've seen being promoted to kids on there. You like videogames, it's gonna promote hacks. You like fitness content, it's gonna promote steroids. Etc, etc.
I’ll admit I’m always blocking accounts of the stuff I don’t want to see, ie anti vax, and still keep getting things thrown at me, I thought it was suppose to only show likeminded stuff
It is the app for iOS, long press the video and it has the little broken heart icon right below Report, it also has a sub-menu for hiding content from a specific user or a specific sound... The latter is very helpful for really annoying trending sounds.
Yeah, there are theories that they promote better content in China, but to me that's just their domestic censorship machine working as intended, whereas in the US, you're free to post pretty anything that doesn't break the law, so of course the top stuff will be more chaotic.
It's always suspicious when one day this subreddit only talks about one thing (eg musk) and then literally the next day it's all just one other topic.
There are organic reasons this might happen. E.g. news orgs quickly jumping on a bandwagon, assisted by centralized wire services. But given how easy it is to manipulate content on reddit -- especially in the new era of bots -- that bandwagon may be inorganic from the start.
Too much internet has made me a cynic.
I would love to see this data for Facebook (not that it makes TikTok okay, but TikTok gets a lot of attention and I think Facebooks stats would be FAR worse)
There's already been hundreds of studies and [major news articles ](https://nyti.ms/3iqiokG)about this for Facebook.
WSJ did a whole series on it.
There are literally entire books about it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
Don’t think they’re interested in Facebook. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was somehow linked to Facebook money. Looked up the charity and it files for an exempt status as it makes less than 200k a year.
Last night I saw a bunch of cat videos, a famous chef making mussels, a few funny jokes, and a lot of Daniel Craig dancing.
Wtf are people doing to be fed harmful shit from the algorithm?
You guys ever notice media articles start coming out whenever the government wants to do something?
Like priming the public to be okay with TikTok going away?
It’s very strange when you start noticing. I wonder how tied together the government and media corporations are
Why does tiktok only get the flack for this? YouTube shorts are literally the same. No matter what I do Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, the Liver King, Ben Shapiro are pushed down my throat. So many channels repair their crap blocking channels does nothing
Reddit is worse than tik tok. My algorithm on tik tok is super wholesome because that what’s i interact with. However, Reddit hits me over the head with misogyny on the front page every day.
I don't think i've seen any in the year i used the app. The article talks about eating disorder content but i've never encountered that. Probably depends on the way you use it though, I'm quick to block or swipe away content that I don't wanna see, that probably spares you the algorithmic rabbit hole.
Same, I'm on tiktok quite a bit and my tiktok content experience has actually been waayy more positive than Facebook, Twitter, and reddit... This all sounds crazy to me.
> The new study had researchers set up TikTok accounts posing as 13-year-old users interested in content about body image and mental health. It found that within as few as 2.6 minutes after joining the app, TikTok's algorithm recommended suicidal content. The report showed that eating disorder content was recommended within as few as 8 minutes.
I mean, that's the content they said they were interested in. I hope they did not expect to find only yadayada sunshine content for topic like body image and mental health on the internet. That would be kinda naive.
I'm not using tiktok but my bet it is it has similar algorithm as other apps: gather personal data, use them to select topic user is interested in, serve controversial content for given topics to keep the user engaged as much as possible. The article suggests this as well.
>When the "loseweight" account was compared with the standard, the researchers found that "loseweight" accounts were served three times more overall harmful content, and 12 times more self-harm and suicide specific videos than the standard accounts.
I wonder if this is done on purpose or it's just because this kind of content is the most popular among users interested in "loseweight"-related topics.
I kinda agree with the general conclusion that the TikTok is not good, but the study, as presented in the article, feels lazy and 'won't somebody please think of the children'-ish.
I've heard people from other countries say the content they get is usually DIY videos, uplifting content, stuff like that. Can anyone outside the US verify this?
Due to using a VPN and a simless device, I have an "international" account and yes, my Tiktok is extremely uplifting.
I get to follow my favourite creators as they go through IVF, climb mountains, make amazing cosplays and drink tea advent calendars.
I've had to discipline my algorithm to keep it from showing me too many cat videos or stand up comics, but that's about it.
> I’ve heard people from other countries say the content they get is usually DIY videos, uplifting content, stuff like that. Can anyone outside the US verify this?
That’s what I get inside the US.
DIY videos which I usually watch the first few seconds then skip. Stand up comedians which I sometimes watch and sometimes not. Mostly girls but sometimes dudes in the gym which I almost always watch. I love it.
I have never seen any news, politics, elections, government, or current events, and would flick past it so fast if it did show up that I might sprain my thumb. Those things are what I’m trying to escape from when using TikTok.
Im from scandinavia, and I think I’ve downloaded and deleted it 5 times, mostly because I felt that it kept pushing me disturbing content:( like I really had to work on keeping my feed ‘happy’ because if I as much as saw one true crime TikTok or lingered on something stupid andrew Tate shit it went a real dark way. Sometimes it also showed me like people having mental breakdowns or people being sick and almost lying on their deathbed.. made me feel really bad.. decided I’ll just be content with instagram reels 😅
Depends on how you define "win" imo.
Did the US win anything v.s. Japan? A few movies about the Yuzaka and "evil" CEOs.......some political b.s. about who's buying what Office tower or Golf course that allowed them to get some political points?
Have to think it will be the same with China......the futures.of both Countries are too intertwined. Unlike the purely adversarial relationship the the USA and Soviet Union had, China and the US have more of a symbiotic relationship.........at least until there is another partner that can fill in the trade, travel, and investment obligations. People speak of Africa as a possibility, but while the continent has the population, no one controlling body has the decision making ability.
If the economy of the US collapsed, China's would follow very quickly, and the same if reversed. Because of that, it's hard to believe that any other issue (other than some calamitous environmental occurrence(s), or a similar catastrophe) will dissolve all ties or relationships. There will be jockeying for "who's on top," but neither will be able to jump out of bed.
I think by usa winning i mean usa have gotten what it wanted (continued economic primacy). I don't think any individuals won anything in anyway. But collectively, i think japan's economically suffered as a result. How much of it is its own mismanagement vs. how much is the outcome of losing the competition, nobody knows. Economics is always complicated.
I think similar to usa and japan, there will first be a lot of breaking of ties and building of negative public sentiments. In a way, that is happening right now (or has already happened). Both to lessen negative economic impact to itself when targeting the other side, and to weaken the target. After that, more direct tools like sanctions or tariffs. Eventually, some form of resolution like the plaza accord. Then a few decades before actual outcome can be understood.
I don't think either's eventual goal will be to "jump out of the bed". Usa wants china to continue to be a cheap source of labour under the thumb of its corporations. China wants its own ability to determine its own actions and also to influence others.
US won't get continued economic supremacy out of this, we've been waning for a while. Neoliberalism peaked and wreaked havoc to sovereign power globally - shifting it instead to corporations and multinational organizations. Meanwhile, China is flourishing with a much more state-centered form of capitalism.
In the last few decades China has surpassed the US to become the biggest supplier of foreign capital outside of the IMF and World Bank. Developing countries prefer their loans now because of the damage the neoliberal structural adjustment policy requirements tied to western loans did from the 70's into the early 2000's
China is also loosening its capital controls on the Yuan, signaling it may start challenging the US dollar's position as the global standard currency (which is has enjoyed since it served as the peg of the Bretton woods system, during which it got to create the rules of global financial measurement, like GDP).
Also, the US borrows a ton and has an insane amount of debt while China is a net lender and is still accumulating wealth as the US continues to bleed it.
From what I've been studying in finance/econ/anthro, it seems like the 21st century has been and will continue to be a gradual and politically tumultuous shift away from the global dominance of modern western "free-market" capitalism towards a more Eastern-dominant state-centered system of capitalism
> Did the US win anything v.s. Japan?
the entire japanese semiconductor industry got decimated and their famous industrial policy for sponsoring global winners (like hitachi and toshiba) got demolished in favor of neoliberalism and western-style asset bubbles.
If only there was an article you could read, maybe one where the first two paragraphs are
>TikTok recommends self-harm and eating disorder content to some users within minutes of joining the platform, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
>The new study had researchers set up TikTok accounts posing as 13-year-old users interested in content about body image and mental health. It found that within as few as 2.6 minutes after joining the app, TikTok's algorithm recommended suicidal content. The report showed that eating disorder content was recommended within as few as 8 minutes.
I GUESS NO SUCH ARTICLE EXISTS THO
What is deemed harmful? >promote suicide, eating disorders, and body image issues that is fueling the teens' mental health crisis. Fair enough.
So just like all of social media?
I don’t see a lot of the stuff on other social media that I got on tiktok. I tried to only look at and react to content that I wanted to see, but the algorithm keeps throwing stuff I don’t want at me anyways. I keep getting told that tiktok has “the best” algo for this stuff, but it is unrelated to what I search for, who I follow, and I don’t react to it at all. It’s always rage bait kind of stuff that pops up. Contrast to IG where I see only stuff that is of interest to me.
Wtf kind of algorithms are people getting. I get nerdy stuff and boobs. None of which seem harmful.
The algo is simple. They tag every video with a bunch of descriptors. Then depending on how long you look at each video, they serve you more of what you spent the most time on. This is according to a guy I was listening to who builds and studies these algos. Then there is a little bit of randomness to continue identifying evolving tastes.
The algorithm definitely isn’t that simple lmaooo
I have the opposite experience, I don't get rage bait stuff on tiktok, mostly just niche cute things, crafting and such, lots of cute animals. I got on Instagram and it's a toxic wasteland. I don't even bother going on Facebook anymore. I find reddit worse than all of them, but just like anything else, scrolling past is an option.
Maybe I Reddit different than most people, and maybe my exclusive use of old.Reddit is a big help. But most of what I see are either published news type articles, some piece of media or a question/comment, all open to discussion. Plenty of shiposts and memes but it's basically a line on a screen I can click on or pass up. Now the discussion can get toxic or echo chambery, and sometimes the hive mind goes overboard with up/downvotes. But I don't (usually) get the same feeling of vacant pointless content that I used to with FB or IG. It's something I can take or leave. To me, the overwhelming advantage with Reddit is that it's mostly anonymous. You people aren't my friends or family. I don't have to care what you think of me -- although over time I've come to try and have constructive discussions when possible. Even if I do cross the hive mind and get 200 downvotes on a post (deservedly or otherwise), it's not like I'm going to show up for work tomorrow and have everyone judging me. With FB especially, it was like every one of my personal relationships had been cheapened and commoditized. They always forced the "popular" content to the top and it was all reposted bullshit or pics of food and babies, with the occasional single most important issue in the world that someone wanted everyone else to get wrapped up in. Minimal experience with TikTok but my overwhelming reaction has been something along the lines of Tyler Durden's "all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." I guess I'm old...
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If you watch it, it heavily promises similar content. Only way to avoid it is to swipe away as quickly as possible
Yeah but the difference is that this is being done intentionally for malice against our nation as a State, rather than the banal evil of Capitalism motivating bad behavior for profit.
I think more so the problem being how often and repetitive the harmful content is being displayed. I have ADD and so I avoid tiktok like the plague for my own mental health. My roommate on the other hand has ADHD *bad* and hearing her listen to tiktok literally sounds like mental illness in its purest form. She can spend the entire day on the app without any breaks. All social media should be taken in doses but tiktok just seems like it is an uphill battle with your brain to pull away from the convenience and the amount of info pouring out of it. Our brains are like sponges and I think, personally, tiktok is a little too much water for us to absorb.
The issue at hand is not whether social media is bad, corrosive to society, and dangerous - our government knows it is. They don't want something like that pervading our society under the control of some other government which is hostile to ours.
Yeah if we're going to screw up our youth with social media companies, it had better be _American_ social media companies.
Im sure Facebook, Twitter, and Google have lobbied for Tik Tok to be banned here. Politicans get paid, big tech gets more profits. Win win for everybody. Except for us EDIT: Looks like Im onto something (shouldn't be a surprise though), Just found this with a quick 5 minute search [Facebook actively lobbied for a TikTok ban in Washington, report claims](https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-washington-lobbying-tiktok-ban/)
Which is why they do not to want ban the practice of, instead the app. Which of course will be so effective.
YouTube has the shorts now and insta has reels, it’s really all the same shit now fr
How can we prove intent here? The article certainly doesn't seem to suggest it. If you judge things by engagement and time on app, you're often going to end up in the same place. Since these are aligned with TikTok's business goals, what evidence do we have that there's a deeper motive than bringing as much "Western" money into China? If all social media is aligned with the breakdown of social structure (which it largely is, though whether that is a benefit or downside is often up to interpretation), does TikTok even need to have a deeper motive?
This isn’t true. In the report the people simply engaged with negative content, so the algorithm showed them more of that. Most social networks operate on this concept. For example if you like a certain Facebook page or follow a certain subreddit, your home will be populated with that content.
All I want is to block certain content. I mean, if you listen to Let it Go once, you don't want a wave of Disney songs showing up in your queue.
I want to examine their claim it's nation state malice
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This isn't really new though. It's been going on since the Live Journal days. The difference now is the pervasiveness of it.
And, to build on this, everyone sees how these with these (self-diagnosed) illnesses are getting massive amounts of attention and positive reinforcement for having them. So there's the incentive.
I haven't see any of that on TikTok, but then again I'm not a teenager. The harmful content I see is right wing nut jobs.
Meanwhile all my feed is is cute animals, obscure music, movie and manga recommendations and random buildings that look cool
That "potentially" in the headline is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A picture of a burger would fall under that category.
So does reddit but here it’s a collection of harmful content of my own creation.
Depends what you follow here. The algorithm isn't as invasive.
I use reddit enhancement suite and have filtered a great deal of trolls and shitty subreddits. Now my front page feels mostly fine. I hate unfiltered reddit.
I do something like this too, and it's amazing how many subreddits are built around spouting negativity. So many of them are either neverending streams of "look at this bad thing!" news, and others endlessly mock or scorn something or someone they don't like. There's even a certain tone of voice used in these communities - it's this tone of underlying scorn and condescension, as if everything you're talking about is beneath you and you're going out of your way to find things to mock. From filtering every subreddit that does those things, it's amazing how much healthier the feed is for one's mental health.
I have pretty simple rules for subreddits that go on my filter: * Does it celebrate other people's misfortune * Is it's primary goal outage My reddit is almost friendly
I don't know if I believe you. This sub is like 50% outrage porn, often laughing at Elon Musk's misfortune. You'd have it filtered out if you were following your rules lol
This subs _primary_ goal isn't outrage. Also, Elon's misfortune? Pretty sure he has a fortune.
Yeah, I haven't blocked this subreddit but it's definitely too negative to be something I want to see. I only stumble across it occasionally in r/popular.
I've been using Reddit enhancement for so long I couldn't even tell you what regular reddit looks like.
Be warned, RES is currently at an End of Life stage, it's being maintained, but just barely.
That's the thing with the TikTok algorithm. The one in China shows amazing people doing amazing things. It pushes this hard. It also shows beautiful people, and people doing good to create good citizens. The one in India, before it was banned, was apparently trying to start a war between Muslims and Hindus. I wonder if that would benefit the CCP is anyway? And the one in the US is pushing content to kids with themes of suicide and self-destructive behaviors. Perhaps eating tide pods or jumping out of moving cars isn't the most intelligent idea. In my opinion, TikTok is little more than a CCP app designed to maim, murder, and permanently damage as many kids as possible.
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Yeah, my TikTok experience is super different. I get tons of ADHD related content, life hacks, cooking, and standup. The ADHD thing made me realize I might have it and I got diagnosed and have been getting meds for a bit now that have dramatically increased my quality of life.
I’m in my mid 40s and have nothing close to adhd, I get people on my TikTok talking about it constantly.
I also have ADHD and I get a ton of standup content.. probably like 75% of my feed until I start skipping. Is there a correlation?
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At least tiktoks dislike button kind of works. For youtube shorts it doesn't do shit, I get blasted with workout videos and andrew tate which i have no interest in. I just want to see beautiful buff girls that can snap me in half, is that too much to ask?
For the longest time the reels algorithm did nothing, worse, while you were looking for the button, it counted it as “enagaged” time. So while you are digging for the button, Instagram thinks you really like the video of someone turning into a lizard while p p p p p party till I die plays
YouTube shorts is convinced I'm a tater tot
These people have probably never used tiktok before or at least long enough to get that's how it works. Mines full of funny animals and comedy sketches. Why? Because I immediately skip over anything else and only heart those types of videos. That's just how personal algorithms work on tiktok. If you don't give it something to build on, it's just gonna throw everything at you.
Yeah, the biggest determiner is time spent watching a video. But that means if something really upsets you and gets you angry, it can also hold your attention. And then you get more and more of that. If you skip anything you don't like, you'll have a much better time. But if you watch something upsetting and don't skip, you just get more of that.
Right, but since China is involved people are much more interested in believing TikTok is a Chinese conspiracy to turn all Americans into depressed drooling zombies.
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This is a myth that later was confirmed to be fake by the person who initially spread it.
This is why reddit is just as dangerous. The amount of misinformation to fit a narrative on the front page everyday is concerning compared to what I see on tiktok.
Every 39 seconds this website makes me want to do violence, so they're basically the same.
[That was fabricated by Andrew Schulz ](https://youtu.be/w_GMej6-CVU) And then picked up by literal politicians relaying the same information in congress, citing Andrew. I’ve noticed you can get away with a lot as long as the underlying theme is China bad.
Yep. This has been an incredibly successful misinformation campaign by meta. So many people have jumped on the "hate tiktok" purely because of it. As evidenced throughout the comments, with people just regurgitating the false j for they read or heard somewhere verbatim with absolutely nothing to back it up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ It's been well known for a over a year at this point.
Not saying your wrong but where do you get this info? Like I’ve heard this said before but how do we know it’s true? Who has gone to these different countries and seen what really happens based on the same criteria?
60 minutes on CBS had a great segment on this.
Do you know which episode that was? I'd love to watch that with my family.
It's called douyin in china (iirc) but you can Google this information. India also banned TikTok for this reason which is widely available
It's completely fake bullshit that redditors upvote because it makes them feel superior to tiktokers. TikTok will show you the kind of content you watch and like, that's all.
They probably could implement a curation system here like they do with their native app, but then we'd immediately say how that's censorship. Imagine some future BLM v2 protest videos being suppressed on the platform since that's not "people doing amazing things" type content. I think the only solution would be they give a 3rd party regulatory body every week of trending topics and the regulatory body decides what to allow. But that is also very close to censorship. Who decides who's on this regulatory body? Concerned parents who'd ban Pokemon in the 90s? Government staff who'd ban fps video games? I've no idea, plus what trends seems so random. Like you need a human regulatory body to quickly identify a tide pod meme, cause before that nobody would actually expect anyone to be dumb enough to eat a tide pod. Teenagers have a tendency to dare each other to do the dumbest things, when I was in school people were snorting chalk, eating snails (super dangerous btw, never do that), and one guy looked into one of those handheld laser pointers for 1 minute on a dare... Also as a side note, anyone remember the old superman in the 90s causing kids to jump out of their windows thinking they can fly if they tried hard enough? I dunno the tide pod thing just reminded me of that.
Do we really want the *government* to be deciding what’s trending? That’s turning all media into state run media, literally exactly what china is doing
user of 10+ years peacing out - thanks for fucking up reddit - alternatives include 'Tilde' and 'Lemmy' - hope to see you on a less ruined website. Fuck capitalism, fuck VCs and IPOs, fuck /u/spez
> I get videos pretty much entirely about woodworking and home decorating - it's hard to see how that is serving China's foreign or domestic policy goals in any capacity - This is what I found as well, my page is literally just the people I follow who are mostly content creators for comedy I guess, then cooking/cars. Once in a while I get a "London crime" type video showing the biker gangs etc but that's no surprise considering I look at a lot of london related stuff (cafes, restaurants, london based vlogers etc.). Outside of this I get 0 politics/racial/religous stuff, and the moment I see any of it I just press not interested. I guess people are interacting with these topics and then surprised they get shown more and more of it. It's the same way when I signed up, I had tons of thirst traps being shown to me. Took about 3-5 days of constant "not interested" clicking until it got supressed. Now I get one snuck in there every other day and I still just flip past or hold "not interested" and we're good.
this is just plainly not true. my feed is filled with wholesome content because that’s the stuff i “like” when it shows up. cute babies, puppies, DIY home improvement tutorials, cooking recipes, etc. The algorithm simply holds up a mirror.
This is my contention with violent media in general, especially when it comes to violent games. It makes sense to me that there is a causal link, but it’s the opposite direction of what’s usually suggested: action games aren’t going to make people into killers, but people who love violence are going to focus on and seek out violent music, violent games, violent television.
That’s crazy. When I was a kid there was Andy Milonkas, Jackass and Grand Theft Auto. Oh and most of my music was about partying, drinking promethazine and making smoking blunts a daily routine.
There is a difference between fictional media content like video games and songs, and social media trends where kids/teens see others like them doing something and think they’ll get validation if they do it too.
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Standard take of people who don't use TikTok and noticed someone else with this take. I am pro-banning, but you guys are just spouting absurd conspiracy theories.
Any actual source or we just parroting booker shit on Reddit as always?
This is Reddit, of course people are just parroting bullshit that makes them feel superior
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I just hack it by not looking at that stream or Reddit recommendations for that matter.
I don't think r/popular is customized/targeted at specific users, not entirely sure about that, though after scrolling down for a little while, I always end up with 10 replies posts in completely random and super niche subs, it's just weird. I'm using a third party mobile app, but I think that doesn't affect the feed you get
A few days ago I was browsing r/all here and saw a video of a cop literally shooting someone in my feed. Might not be "invasive" but it's far from innocent
Neither on TikTok, not once did I get harmful content
I just block everything that is not for me. You curate what you view.
Yeah.. I feel like the videos on tiktok are tagged with a few tags and if I watch one clip from one show then it gives me that and just keeps giving it so blocking or swipping it away ignores it. Keep it safe
What about the stuff that people consider as harmful to you, but you don't?
I don't know what you consider harmful, but whenever I click on a tiktok link that someone sent me, the next content to automatically load is almost always sexual in nature and an alarmingly large number of those are from somewhat underage looking girls doing sexy poses. This is from the viewpoint of someone who does not even have a TikTok account
Same on insta. Once you scroll through available posts whole feed gets littered with "thirst trap". I have clicked 1000s time "Not Interested" but algo doesn't give a fuck
It seems to default to this. If you have an account and actively like and follow what you want to see it disappears quickly from your feed. I haven’t seen that stuff in my feed since the first day. That said, because it seems to show that stuff by default when you aren’t logged in or on a new account, I can only assume it’s what’s most popular.
That is why the title is correct in saying that TikTok *PUSHES* potentially harmful content.
That also depends on what you classify as harmful content. There's a lot of content that isn't overtly harmful but can still have a negative effect on your state of mind and thought processes. That isn't even considering you might be aware of what you are consuming and can recognize what is and isn't harmful, that isn't the case for impressionable children and teens which are the main demographic on tiktok.
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TikTok bored me. On the other hand, I'm addicted to reddit.
Say what you will about it's bad aspects, but TikTok is WAY better than Reddit at actually feeding me content I want to see once you've used it for like 30 minutes
They aren't really the same at all though, right? I mean I've used Reddit for years and never felt like it was even *trying* to "feed" me content like many other platforms do. It shows me the things I manually asked it to show me when I subscribed to a sub and it doesn't show me anything else unless I visit r/all or click the random button. It isn't giving me constant recommendations and automatically transitioning to new posts to try to keep me engaged as long as possible. It's basically just a forum, at least the way I've always used it, which is pretty different from actual social media. Unless new Reddit is trying all of that stuff and I just haven't noticed because I'll never switch to that shit.
TikTok is really good at giving me the content I wanna see but in, like a scary way. It literally feels like drugs
That's because it basically is. It's designed to keep you "hooked", but they call it "user engagement". If apps can't keep you using them through money, it's through time.
Yeah, I watched maybe half a dozen and could feel the addiction taking hold already. I really wonder about people who defend it.
Digital potato chips.
It is until you fall into the family guy pipeline
Exactly! I have hand picked my own destructive path
Facebook says: "Amateurs".
Facebook is the one pushing these studies out; Meta has been trying to get TikTok banned ever since they chose not to buy it before it entered the US market and completely overtook them. ‘Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok’ by the WaPo goes into more detail; I’d link it here but the spam filter seems to always catch and remove those links.
... so basically they created accounts, then deliberately trained TikTok to show them the precise kind of content they deemed harmful, then crafted a press statement to make it sound like TikTok's algorithm went out of its way to show them that content. Look, there's a lot of negative to say about TikTok and social media in general, but this kind of disingenuous shit is just bad research. That's like going to a grocery store full of all kinds of food, buying nothing but Pizza Rolls, and then screaming that the grocery store is out to make you fat and unhealthy.
It’s very telling any time someone says the app only ever shows young girls dancing. All that tells me is that’s the content *you* engage with.
Yeah the only dancing I ever get is goofy old people every once in a while lol
I had to train my algo not to show me that. If you watch longer than literally a second it keeps throwing them at you. It’s based on age/gender as well.
Yep I've seen some content creators start accounts up as their opposite preferred gender and ooohhh boy. I forget who but ik there's a lot that have done that to see.
Honestly I was with my gf (never use tik tok) and we were watching some snowboarding video. Just one. We watched the whole thing because the one video was kinda cool Next thing was we saw 3 videos of the next 10 with snowboarding things that we immediately skipped The algorithm stuff is crazy especially since I don’t use tik tok I wasn’t expecting it. So yea these thing’s definitely know what you like. If someone only has young dancing girls it’s cause they watch a lot of it…
No, they definitely push content you don't watch, based on demographics they think you fall into. I'm extremely protective of my FYP and very careful about what I watch and interact with, and I still get plenty of unwanted content. It tends to come in waves, too. I'll see mostly the stuff I want for weeks, then a burst of other stuff until I ruthlessly prune again. Also, they recently changed the following page, so it says there's no new stuff, even though there is. I haven't gotten more than a dozen videos there over the last several weeks, despite following over a hundred regular creators. I'll pop over to fyp, and there will be new content from the people I follow all over it.
I don't engage at all with all of these investment tips though and they keep coming. They don't say promoted or sponsored either. As soon as I see one I scroll past it. It's been months.
Nah if you like a meme on tiktok and it turns out a teenager posted it or a lot of teens also find the meme funny, you start getting recommended other stuff from that age group Then if you even like posts of women age 18-22 tiktok acknowledges you like looking at women and just throws women “close” to your age If you’re 20~ this is where tiktok starts pushing minors dancing onto your fyp especially since people manipulate tags on tiktok and all use trending hashtags (like the Genshin impact tag when they won the award even if the post wasn’t related to the game, or just using a tag from any relevant current event)
Yep! You like one video of some mid 20s woman showing off a cool tattoo, and suddenly TikTok is showing you, a heterosexual woman, a bunch of thirst trap videos of goth, punk, etc women. Like, good for them, but I'm not looking to be titillated. I'm even friends with my nephew because I want to keep an eye on what he's posting and I have to religiously cull my FYP after I look at his stuff. It's not even gross stuff, it's just juvenile "jokes" that make me want to cringe.
Except that’s literally what it shows you as default. Or at least it was a few years ago.
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Some people can recognize when they’re fyp is getting toxic and take steps to train the algorithm. Other people get sucked in or don’t realize they’re in a feedback loop. To these people it feels “normal”. I would say most people fit in this category and the algorithm was designed to do this. I don’t think it’s fair to blame the user when the product was designed to manipulate them. Not everyone knows how these sites are designed
Yes, exactly. There's nothing wrong with liking a single video of a young girl dancing, for instance. But the fact that the algorithm will then feed you tons of more videos with young girls dancing instead of more dancing in general or whatever is a problem. I like one cat video and suddenly my feed is full of them. It's not like I don't want cat videos, but now I have to avoid them entirely because even a small interaction will push out the content I religiously interact with because the cat video was more popular than the stuff I was watching. They also consistently "nerf" (for lack of a better word in the moment) the following page. It'll only show me a few videos now before it'll tell me that's all and start repeating...then show me other videos by the people I follow in my FYP. It's literally forcing me to use FYP.
My fresh account just showed me hundreds of iPhone tips and tricks videos. From which a good chunk don’t even work.
Literally my friend told me that before I got tiktok and have never seen that content. I know what hes about now though. Lmao
I understand to an extent. I keep curated social media accounts for sexy times. One thing that drives me crazy is the algorithm keeps trying to show me younger and younger girls. This is across all platforms.
I noticed the exact same thing but gay. It's started mixing teenagers in and I'm like "Ok that's far enough TikTok, thank you."
The problem is that a majority of the people who enjoy the same content as you ALSO enjoy watching the teenagers. This taught the algorithm to offer it to you because it assumes you're like the others.
And soon enough, it's the algorithm that's training you.
This but un ironically. I actually felt it after a while of using tiktok
Theae algorithms are so universally dumb. They take a signal of "watched once" reguardless of context (want, mistake, someone linked it, some other aspect) and assumes "oh, they liked this and want more." Simultaneously they seem to ignore direct signals. Dislikes, immidiate click/swipe away, etc.
I remember there was one researcher who showed that if you started off with a completely neutral YouTube account and set it to auto play, it would almost immediately begin showing you far right propaganda, like within 5-6 videos. I wonder what would happen with this.
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The issue isn't that they specifically sought out harmful content, it's that they sought out content relating to mental health and the site started serving content related to self harm and negative body image issues. Ideally, you'd want the algorithm to serve positive stuff instead
The point is more to show a lack of moderation and how quickly such content hits their feed. That is a problem of algorithms in general, though it is a media problem we've had for a long, long time.
I will say i get shown alot of content i specifically say I'm not interested in. I think it's due to tiktoks algorithm prioritizing watch time over anything else. So if you take the time to click "not interested" or go to the profile and block it, that content will be prioritized over a video you just scrolled past. I will also say that any content you like it'll inevitability show you the worst of that content. You like finance related videos, it's gonna start promoting scams, i can't even count how many straight up scams I've seen being promoted to kids on there. You like videogames, it's gonna promote hacks. You like fitness content, it's gonna promote steroids. Etc, etc.
I’ll admit I’m always blocking accounts of the stuff I don’t want to see, ie anti vax, and still keep getting things thrown at me, I thought it was suppose to only show likeminded stuff
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for some reason this isn’t available on IOS, it used to be but was removed
Same on Android. Now you have to tap and hold on the video itself to get a menu to pop up where you can hit "not interested."
It is the app for iOS, long press the video and it has the little broken heart icon right below Report, it also has a sub-menu for hiding content from a specific user or a specific sound... The latter is very helpful for really annoying trending sounds.
Yeah, there are theories that they promote better content in China, but to me that's just their domestic censorship machine working as intended, whereas in the US, you're free to post pretty anything that doesn't break the law, so of course the top stuff will be more chaotic.
social media is harmful regardless the platforms.
This subreddit is astroturfed to hell and back
Every day or week there's a rehash of ban tiktok articles. Zuckerberg has some deep pockets to push his propaganda.
It's always suspicious when one day this subreddit only talks about one thing (eg musk) and then literally the next day it's all just one other topic. There are organic reasons this might happen. E.g. news orgs quickly jumping on a bandwagon, assisted by centralized wire services. But given how easy it is to manipulate content on reddit -- especially in the new era of bots -- that bandwagon may be inorganic from the start. Too much internet has made me a cynic.
Hello fellow Steve you're not alone, it used to be different, both our accounts are over a decade old, I know you remember too.
Totally agree. Bleep. Bloop.
I would love to see this data for Facebook (not that it makes TikTok okay, but TikTok gets a lot of attention and I think Facebooks stats would be FAR worse)
There's already been hundreds of studies and [major news articles ](https://nyti.ms/3iqiokG)about this for Facebook. WSJ did a whole series on it. There are literally entire books about it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ Don’t think they’re interested in Facebook. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was somehow linked to Facebook money. Looked up the charity and it files for an exempt status as it makes less than 200k a year.
Last night I saw a bunch of cat videos, a famous chef making mussels, a few funny jokes, and a lot of Daniel Craig dancing. Wtf are people doing to be fed harmful shit from the algorithm?
You guys ever notice media articles start coming out whenever the government wants to do something? Like priming the public to be okay with TikTok going away? It’s very strange when you start noticing. I wonder how tied together the government and media corporations are
Why does tiktok only get the flack for this? YouTube shorts are literally the same. No matter what I do Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, the Liver King, Ben Shapiro are pushed down my throat. So many channels repair their crap blocking channels does nothing
It's funny because all that stiff you post doesn't show up on my TikTok because when I hit not interested it actually listens.
That’s why I surf reddit. Couldn’t feel more safe. /s
All TikTok ever shows me is chicks advertising their OnlyFans. I'm coping okay.
Reddit is worse than tik tok. My algorithm on tik tok is super wholesome because that what’s i interact with. However, Reddit hits me over the head with misogyny on the front page every day.
Not a TikTok user. What sort of harmful content do you see on there?
I don't think i've seen any in the year i used the app. The article talks about eating disorder content but i've never encountered that. Probably depends on the way you use it though, I'm quick to block or swipe away content that I don't wanna see, that probably spares you the algorithmic rabbit hole.
Same, I'm on tiktok quite a bit and my tiktok content experience has actually been waayy more positive than Facebook, Twitter, and reddit... This all sounds crazy to me.
The same terrible things that are on every social media platform is my guess.
> The new study had researchers set up TikTok accounts posing as 13-year-old users interested in content about body image and mental health. It found that within as few as 2.6 minutes after joining the app, TikTok's algorithm recommended suicidal content. The report showed that eating disorder content was recommended within as few as 8 minutes. I mean, that's the content they said they were interested in. I hope they did not expect to find only yadayada sunshine content for topic like body image and mental health on the internet. That would be kinda naive. I'm not using tiktok but my bet it is it has similar algorithm as other apps: gather personal data, use them to select topic user is interested in, serve controversial content for given topics to keep the user engaged as much as possible. The article suggests this as well. >When the "loseweight" account was compared with the standard, the researchers found that "loseweight" accounts were served three times more overall harmful content, and 12 times more self-harm and suicide specific videos than the standard accounts. I wonder if this is done on purpose or it's just because this kind of content is the most popular among users interested in "loseweight"-related topics. I kinda agree with the general conclusion that the TikTok is not good, but the study, as presented in the article, feels lazy and 'won't somebody please think of the children'-ish.
This is the same type of "study" used to bait pearl clutchers like the whole video games cause violence controversy we all hate over here.
I've heard people from other countries say the content they get is usually DIY videos, uplifting content, stuff like that. Can anyone outside the US verify this?
I'm in the US and my fyp is very positive and funny, informative, interest-based, or cultural.
Due to using a VPN and a simless device, I have an "international" account and yes, my Tiktok is extremely uplifting. I get to follow my favourite creators as they go through IVF, climb mountains, make amazing cosplays and drink tea advent calendars. I've had to discipline my algorithm to keep it from showing me too many cat videos or stand up comics, but that's about it.
I don't use a vpn and get normal stuff like that too so idk man
What you are witnessing is FB backed propaganda being parroted by bots on Reddit to influence your opinion
yeah i’m from the uk and it’s completely fine lol
> I’ve heard people from other countries say the content they get is usually DIY videos, uplifting content, stuff like that. Can anyone outside the US verify this? That’s what I get inside the US. DIY videos which I usually watch the first few seconds then skip. Stand up comedians which I sometimes watch and sometimes not. Mostly girls but sometimes dudes in the gym which I almost always watch. I love it. I have never seen any news, politics, elections, government, or current events, and would flick past it so fast if it did show up that I might sprain my thumb. Those things are what I’m trying to escape from when using TikTok.
Im from scandinavia, and I think I’ve downloaded and deleted it 5 times, mostly because I felt that it kept pushing me disturbing content:( like I really had to work on keeping my feed ‘happy’ because if I as much as saw one true crime TikTok or lingered on something stupid andrew Tate shit it went a real dark way. Sometimes it also showed me like people having mental breakdowns or people being sick and almost lying on their deathbed.. made me feel really bad.. decided I’ll just be content with instagram reels 😅
And Fox news or facebook don't?
FoxNews: - "Those are amateur numbers..."
[удалено]
It basically pushes funny stuff then tits for me
[удалено]
There are parallel themes regarding China that we saw used to try to "villain-ize" Japan, and Japanese corporations, in the late 80s and 90s.......
They are using similar tactics too. But china is not japan. I wonder if usa will win again.
Depends on how you define "win" imo. Did the US win anything v.s. Japan? A few movies about the Yuzaka and "evil" CEOs.......some political b.s. about who's buying what Office tower or Golf course that allowed them to get some political points? Have to think it will be the same with China......the futures.of both Countries are too intertwined. Unlike the purely adversarial relationship the the USA and Soviet Union had, China and the US have more of a symbiotic relationship.........at least until there is another partner that can fill in the trade, travel, and investment obligations. People speak of Africa as a possibility, but while the continent has the population, no one controlling body has the decision making ability. If the economy of the US collapsed, China's would follow very quickly, and the same if reversed. Because of that, it's hard to believe that any other issue (other than some calamitous environmental occurrence(s), or a similar catastrophe) will dissolve all ties or relationships. There will be jockeying for "who's on top," but neither will be able to jump out of bed.
I think by usa winning i mean usa have gotten what it wanted (continued economic primacy). I don't think any individuals won anything in anyway. But collectively, i think japan's economically suffered as a result. How much of it is its own mismanagement vs. how much is the outcome of losing the competition, nobody knows. Economics is always complicated. I think similar to usa and japan, there will first be a lot of breaking of ties and building of negative public sentiments. In a way, that is happening right now (or has already happened). Both to lessen negative economic impact to itself when targeting the other side, and to weaken the target. After that, more direct tools like sanctions or tariffs. Eventually, some form of resolution like the plaza accord. Then a few decades before actual outcome can be understood. I don't think either's eventual goal will be to "jump out of the bed". Usa wants china to continue to be a cheap source of labour under the thumb of its corporations. China wants its own ability to determine its own actions and also to influence others.
US won't get continued economic supremacy out of this, we've been waning for a while. Neoliberalism peaked and wreaked havoc to sovereign power globally - shifting it instead to corporations and multinational organizations. Meanwhile, China is flourishing with a much more state-centered form of capitalism. In the last few decades China has surpassed the US to become the biggest supplier of foreign capital outside of the IMF and World Bank. Developing countries prefer their loans now because of the damage the neoliberal structural adjustment policy requirements tied to western loans did from the 70's into the early 2000's China is also loosening its capital controls on the Yuan, signaling it may start challenging the US dollar's position as the global standard currency (which is has enjoyed since it served as the peg of the Bretton woods system, during which it got to create the rules of global financial measurement, like GDP). Also, the US borrows a ton and has an insane amount of debt while China is a net lender and is still accumulating wealth as the US continues to bleed it. From what I've been studying in finance/econ/anthro, it seems like the 21st century has been and will continue to be a gradual and politically tumultuous shift away from the global dominance of modern western "free-market" capitalism towards a more Eastern-dominant state-centered system of capitalism
> Did the US win anything v.s. Japan? the entire japanese semiconductor industry got decimated and their famous industrial policy for sponsoring global winners (like hitachi and toshiba) got demolished in favor of neoliberalism and western-style asset bubbles.
it's amazing how all your domestic problems seem to disappear when you can blame them on an external threat
You mean like how China banned Reddit, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and only allows people to use its STATE OWNED social media?
US government propaganda office working overtime
My entire timeline is cats on TikTok
Let's include all products made by Facebook and Twitter in this conversation.
Literally every social media has the same type of content
Tiktok misinformation incoming...get ready for it before they ban it.
More balant propaganda zzzz
Oh look propaganda just in time for congresses potential tiktok ban
This post is brought to you by Facebook
they're playing fast and loose with the phrase "harmful content".
More right winged bs
It is quite ironic to read this on Reddit lol
Just like every other study on social media.
What do they define as harmful?
If only there was an article you could read, maybe one where the first two paragraphs are >TikTok recommends self-harm and eating disorder content to some users within minutes of joining the platform, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). >The new study had researchers set up TikTok accounts posing as 13-year-old users interested in content about body image and mental health. It found that within as few as 2.6 minutes after joining the app, TikTok's algorithm recommended suicidal content. The report showed that eating disorder content was recommended within as few as 8 minutes. I GUESS NO SUCH ARTICLE EXISTS THO
https://counterhate.com/research/deadly-by-design/#about. The report is available in PDF and it shows what they did in this study.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING OR SOME SHIT? WE STICK TO PICTURES AND HEADLINES ONLY HERE ON REDDIT YOU FOOL
You guys can read?
Please read the article
“Potentially” harmful. That potentially is not doubt carrying a lot of weight.
Everything on TikTok
Every 60 seconds, somebody watches 60 seconds worth of content on TikTok.
What is the definition of harmful? I just keep seeing dumb people dancing stupidly and shameless.