TikTok Played a Key Role in MAGA Radicalization

[Nevilledog]

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Cameron Hickey
@cameronhickey
I've been tracking problematic content on TIkTok for the last 2 years. I watched the slow simmer of anger boil over into the violence we witnessed on January 6th. I love sea shanties and dance memes, but TikTok is also home to something much worse:

TikTok Played a Key Role in MAGA Radicalization
The platform's absorbing endless scroll and karaoke features have built an overlooked disinformation machine.
wired.com
8:17 AM · Mar 4, 2021

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-tiktok-played-a-key-role-in-maga-radicalization/

Two months into trying to understand why a mob of angry protesters violently stormed the US Capitol, a significant influence remains overlooked: TikTok.

In the search for accountability, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—the perennial havens for disinformation and radicalization—were joined on center stage by a younger fringe platform: Parler. At its apex, the temporarily deprovisioned Parler had fewer than 20 million accounts and peaked at just under 3 million daily active users. TikTok has more than 800 million active users across the world and 50 million in the US who log in every single day.

Our team at the National Conference on Citizenship has been monitoring content on Parler continuously for the past few months, and what we saw generally mirrors what others have reported: The platform was a hotbed of misinformation, conspiracy theories, hate, and incitements to violence. There was also a lot of spam and junk. Parler was, and is, a dirty, disgusting place, but in terms of volume and reach, it was just a drop in the ocean.

We’ve also been monitoring TikTok for the past two years, as it grew from an entertaining novelty into a significant player capturing online attention share. Practical jokes and dance memes might be the dominant content, but just below the surface lurks a darker current infused with violence and hate that mirrors what we see on Parler, except here it has a much wider committed following. While Parler prided itself on having little to no moderation, TikTok has moved aggressively to enforce community guidelines and take down content. Still, a large and growing segment of the platform creates and shares problematic messages that risk radicalizing users. Many of these videos fall into a gray area that makes them difficult for moderation to address.

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[BannonsLiver]

1. My impression of TikTok is that just about anything goes

I was mystified when it says they’ve moved aggressively to take down certain content. It’s been my experience that they take down very little even when content is in direct violation of their alleged rules. I’ve alerted on all manner of bullying, fat shaming, homophobia, spreading fake info and the like, and it rarely gets taken down.