{"id":63083,"date":"2021-03-12T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=63083"},"modified":"2021-03-12T07:27:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T20:27:58","slug":"why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

There\u2019s one thing we\u2019re all getting wrong about TikTok: it\u2019s not really <\/em>a social media app. As TikTok Australia\u2019s general manager told<\/a> the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September last year, the app is \u2018less about social connection and more about broadcasting creativity and expression\u2019.<\/p>\n

Put another way, think of TikTok more as the modern incarnation of a media publisher\u2014like a newspaper or a TV network\u2014than as a social forum like Facebook or Twitter. That\u2019s because TikTok is much more assertively curatorial than its competitors. It\u2019s not a forum, it\u2019s an editor. Its algorithm decides what each user sees, and it\u2019s the opacity of that algorithm that presents the most worrying national security risk.<\/p>\n

It may sound like an insignificant distinction, but TikTok\u2019s emphasis on an \u2018interest graph<\/a>\u2019 instead of a \u2018social graph<\/a>\u2019 took the app\u2019s competitors completely by surprise, and has largely gone over the heads of most lawmakers. The app, owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance, hit 2.3 billion all-time downloads in August 2020, so it\u2019s high time policymakers understood exactly what makes TikTok tick.<\/p>\n

An essay by Eugene Wei should be at the top of their reading list. A San Francisco\u2013based start-up investor and former Amazon and Facebook employee, Wei dissects TikTok\u2019s strategy and shows how its recommendation engine keeps users glued to their screens. It does it not by connecting them with friends or family, but by closely analysing their behaviour on the app and serving them more of what they\u2019re interested in.<\/p>\n

Wei\u2019s opus<\/a>, which approaches 20,000 words and is only the first in a three-part<\/a> series<\/a>, explains how TikTok is not the same as the major social media platforms we\u2019re more familiar with. Put simply, on Facebook and Twitter, the content that users see is largely decided by who they follow. On TikTok, however, the user doesn\u2019t have to follow anyone. Instead, the algorithm very quickly learns from how users interact with the content they\u2019re served in the app\u2019s \u2018For You\u2019 feed to decide what it should deliver to them next.<\/p>\n

The approach is similar to that of Spotify and Netflix, whose recommendation algorithms take note of which songs and movies you listen to or watch in full and which you skip to decide what new content to suggest. As Wei puts it<\/a>, \u2018TikTok\u2019s algorithm is so effective that it doesn\u2019t feel like work for viewers. Just by watching stuff and reacting, the app learns your tastes quickly. It feels like passive personalization.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strategy, Wei argues, that allowed a team of Chinese engineers\u2014who didn\u2019t necessarily have a good understanding of the cultures in the places where the app is available\u2014to take the world by storm.<\/p>\n

TikTok didn\u2019t just break out in America. It became unbelievably popular in India and in the Middle East, more countries whose cultures and language were foreign to the Chinese Bytedance product teams. Imagine an algorithm so clever it enables its builders to treat another market and culture as a complete black box. What do people in that country like? No, even better, what does each individual person in each of those foreign countries like? You don\u2019t have to figure it out. The algorithm will handle that. The algorithm knows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that\u2019s not the only thing the algorithm knows. In a recent Protocol China<\/a><\/em> expos\u00e9, a former censor at ByteDance said the company\u2019s \u2018powerful algorithms not only can make precise predictions and recommend content to users\u2014one of the things it\u2019s best known for in the rest of the world\u2014but can also assist content moderators with swift censorship\u2019.<\/p>\n

The former employee, who described working at ByteDance as like being \u2018a tiny cog in a vast, evil machine\u2019, said that even live-streamed shows on the company\u2019s apps are \u2018automatically transcribed into text, allowing algorithms to compare the notes with a long and constantly-updated list of sensitive words, dates and names, as well as Natural Language Processing models. Algorithms would then analyze whether the content was risky enough to require individual monitoring.\u2019<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that TikTok and its parent company have these abilities to monitor and censor. The question is, will they continue to use it? Certainly, the blunt censorship that typified TikTok\u2019s earlier approach to content moderation and is par for the course on ByteDance\u2019s domestic apps is unlikely to continue, especially after the public scrutiny over TikTok\u2019s censoring of content related to the Tiananmen Square massacre<\/a>, Black Lives Matter protests<\/a> and Beijing\u2019s persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s ample room for ByteDance to covertly tweak users\u2019 feeds, subtly nudging them towards content favoured by governments and ruling parties\u2014including the Chinese Communist Party. After all, it\u2019s an approach that would be in line with the strategy that China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state media are already deploying.<\/p>\n

Beijing is exploiting<\/a> pre-existing grievance narratives and amplifying pro-CCP Western influencers in the knowledge that Western voices are more likely to penetrate target online networks than official CCP spokespeople. The strategy, referred to as \u2018Borrowing mouths to speak\u2019 (\u501f\u5634\u8bf4\u8bdd), is reminiscent of the Kremlin\u2019s approach and is perfectly suited to being covertly deployed on Chinese-owned and -operated social media apps.<\/p>\n

Just as experiments have shown<\/a> that TikTok\u2019s algorithm can hurtle users from a politically neutral feed into a far-right firehose of content, so too can it easily be used to send users down any extreme rabbit hole. By design, the app groups people into \u2018clusters\u2019<\/a> (otherwise known as filter bubbles<\/a>) based on their preferences. TikTok\u2019s executives stress that they have measures in place to ensure people don\u2019t become trapped in those filter bubbles. TikTok\u2019s recommendation system \u2018works to intersperse diverse types of content along with those you already know you love\u2019, the company claims<\/a>. The goal, they say, is to ensure that users are exposed to \u2018new perspectives and ideas\u2019, but who decides which new perspectives and ideas?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s to stop Beijing from pressuring TikTok to encourage communities of Xinjiang denialists to flourish on the platform, for instance? As our report revealed<\/a>, there\u2019s already evidence that this is happening. Our analysis of the hashtag #Xinjiang showed a depiction of the region that glosses over the human-rights tragedy unfolding there and instead provides a more politically convenient version for the CCP, replete with smiling and dancing Uyghurs.<\/p>\n

The power of social media apps has been underestimated before. When Facebook started as a \u2018hot or not\u2019 website<\/a> in a Harvard dorm room at the turn of the millennium, who would have expected it would go on to play a role in inciting violence<\/a> 13,000 kilometres away?<\/p>\n

So how do policymakers deal with a Chinese-owned social media app that isn\u2019t really<\/em> a social media app but a modern-day interactive TV station, whose editorial decisions are made by an opaque algorithm developed and maintained in Beijing?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s past time governments realised the unique problem TikTok presents and they must now tailor solutions to deal with it properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one thing we\u2019re all getting wrong about TikTok: it\u2019s not really a social media app. As TikTok Australia\u2019s general manager told the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September last …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":714,"featured_media":63086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,224,2545],"class_list":["post-63083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-social-media","tag-tiktok"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s one thing we\u2019re all getting wrong about TikTok: it\u2019s not really a social media app. As TikTok Australia\u2019s general manager told the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September last ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-03-11T19:00:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-03-11T20:27:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fergus Ryan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fergus Ryan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"The TikTok application is seen on an iPhone 11 Pro max in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on September 29, 2020. The TikTok app will be banned from US app stores from Sunday unless president Donald Trump approves a last-minute deal between US tech firm Oracle and TikTok owner ByteDance. US authorities say the Chinese video sharing app threaten national security and could pass on user data to China. (Photo by Jaap Arriens\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/\",\"name\":\"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-03-11T19:00:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-03-11T20:27:58+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/8bd81e05e28cba72a1c28b5c93a28a3a\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/8bd81e05e28cba72a1c28b5c93a28a3a\",\"name\":\"Fergus Ryan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d846158f606f0855031acc99bfcd8df?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d846158f606f0855031acc99bfcd8df?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Fergus Ryan\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/fergus-ryan\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist","og_description":"There\u2019s one thing we\u2019re all getting wrong about TikTok: it\u2019s not really a social media app. As TikTok Australia\u2019s general manager told the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media in September last ...","og_url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/","og_site_name":"The Strategist","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org","article_published_time":"2021-03-11T19:00:14+00:00","article_modified_time":"2021-03-11T20:27:58+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":683,"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Fergus Ryan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ASPI_org","twitter_site":"@ASPI_org","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fergus Ryan","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/","name":"The Strategist","description":"ASPI's analysis and commentary site","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-AU"},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/GettyImages-1228783318.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"caption":"The TikTok application is seen on an iPhone 11 Pro max in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on September 29, 2020. The TikTok app will be banned from US app stores from Sunday unless president Donald Trump approves a last-minute deal between US tech firm Oracle and TikTok owner ByteDance. US authorities say the Chinese video sharing app threaten national security and could pass on user data to China. (Photo by Jaap Arriens\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/","name":"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app | The Strategist","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2021-03-11T19:00:14+00:00","dateModified":"2021-03-11T20:27:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/8bd81e05e28cba72a1c28b5c93a28a3a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-AU","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why TikTok isn\u2019t really a social media app"}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/8bd81e05e28cba72a1c28b5c93a28a3a","name":"Fergus Ryan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d846158f606f0855031acc99bfcd8df?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d846158f606f0855031acc99bfcd8df?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Fergus Ryan"},"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/fergus-ryan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63083"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63106,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63083\/revisions\/63106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}