TikTok Says It's Not the Algorithm, Teens Are Just Pro-Palestine
TikTok Says It's Not the Algorithm, Teens Are Just Pro-Palestine
In a blog post, the company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion.
Best platform fr.
TikTok has come under GOP fire in recent weeks after the app showed an apparent spike in pro-Palestine content after the IDF began its bombing campaign of Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Republican politicians have publicly claimed that the company is intentionally promoting pro-Palestine content with the goal of “brainwashing our [American] youth” into supporting Hamas. In an essay penned for the Free Press, Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin wrote that TikTok was “controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” and that the “rampant pro-Hamas propaganda on the app should serve as a wake-up call to Americans” to ban it. Gallagher wrote that promoting “pro-Hamas” content is something the CCP would do, because two Chinese web platforms that have mapping capabilities do not label Israel on their maps, and that this form of censorship should come as “no surprise.”
But the proliferation of pro-Palestine content on TikTok isn’t due to the app’s algorithm, the company stated in a press release on Monday. Rather, it claimed that teenagers simply tend to support Palestine more. “Attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed,” the release stated. “Support for Israel (as compared to sympathy for Palestine) has been lower among younger Americans for some time. This is evidenced by looking at Gallup polling data of millennials dating as far back as 2010, long before TikTok even existed.” The data linked by the release states that sympathy toward Israel is “solidly positive” among older generations, but that millennials were “evenly divided,” with 42 percent sympathizing more with Palestine and 40 percent sympathizing more with Israel.
The company wrote in the release that its algorithm does not “take sides,” but operates in a positive feedback loop—the more of a certain type of content a user interacts with, the more of that type of content they will be shown. “TikTok does not ‘promote’ one side of an issue over another,” the release read. “In the U.S., we have given our third-party Trusted Technology Provider access to TikTok source code to understand if the system is acting as TikTok intends…On TikTok, the videos people view, like, and share inform the recommendation algorithm about content they might find relevant. Using these signals, the recommendation algorithm creates a prediction score to rank videos to potentially recommend.” The effective thrust of TikTok’s blog post, then, is that young people are seeing more pro-Palestine content on the app because that’s what they’re engaging with.
The post also denied allegations that the company was intentionally boosting pro-Palestine hashtags to get more views. “Blunt comparisons of hashtags is severely flawed and misrepresentative of the activity on TikTok,” the release stated. “Hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok. Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags. Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views. It is easy to cherry pick hashtags to support a false narrative about the platform.”
The release also noted that simply counting the number of videos associated with a hashtag was not “sufficient context” for understanding the platform. Though the #standwithIsrael tag is associated with fewer videos than #freePalestine, the release said, it has 68 percent more views per video in the U.S. Additionally, the release states, the #freePalestine tag is much older than #standwithIsrael. “Some hashtags are newer (e.g. #standwithIsrael) while others are more established (e.g. #freePalestine),” the release stated. “The vast majority (9 in 10) of videos tagged #standwithIsrael were posted in the last 30 days in the US. A difference in views and posts is expected.”
At time of writing, the #freepalestine tag has 25.5 billion views, and #standwithisrael has 440.4 million views.
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It's funny that these freaks are pulling their hair out that they can't just carpet bomb a civilian population and expect the "Israel has a right to defend itself" and "It's antisemitic to criticize Israel" excuses to work. Like it's to the point where even people I know who are pretty disconnected from politics are just like "What the fuck are they doing?"
Like of course it's not Tiktok or
pulling the strings, it's a trend based on what people are seeing and opinions, like mistrust in the media and American foreign policy, that people already had.All these old fossils in charge can't comprehend that the style of propaganda that worked 50 years ago is no longer effective. They're running the same media play book from the Gulf War and when they see it isn't working they need some external factor to blame instead of themselves.
Like, some officials make some statements, the president gives an address, cable news pundits and major newspapers solemnly agree, and that's it, the issue is settled. Except that a) none of those people have any credibility anymore and b) no one even watches any of sources anymore. If it wasn't for people debunking the mainstream news I would never even see what their message was to begin with.
Here’s my issue with this though. The propaganda worked really well with Russia/Ukraine (“Russia is imperialist, we need to critically support Ukrainian Nazis as they ethnically cleanse the Donbass.”). I think Israel/Palestine is a turd that’s much harder to polish since the two sides aren’t evenly matched at all. If and when Hamas makes major gains, support from the American populace might cool. Americans maybe just prefer the underdog. This is also perhaps one reason why they are so desperate to start WW3 with China over Taiwan.
Yeah that's a good point. I think also with Ukraine the official narrative is very simple: "Russia invaded", and the counter-narrative is more complex and takes explaining some (recent) history. You don't want to be the side saying "yes, but...". There was a brief period after Oct 7 when Israel could have had that same advantage, but they blew that up at the first opportunity.
Americans also care more about it. So they do a bit more research. There's also the shear scale of it, the whole Russia/Ukraine thing also has a crazy complex history, not quite as simple as maybe don't support genocide.
It is actually as simple as don’t support genocide, because that’s what the Nazis in Ukraine have been up to since 2014. Libs also pretend that Israel/Palestine is super complex even though it really is as simple as “don’t support genocide.”
I know that, you know that. It was absolutely disgusting.
However most people didn't really seem to care, and the language was a bit less genocidal.
Fewer people took a closer look because they just don't care about Ukraine. Americans are much more interested in Israel.
Most Americans who support Ukraine don't know shit about Donbas and neo-nazis. Most Americans who support Palestine are aware Israel is a genocidal, settler colonial apartheid state.
I remember a coworker who, upon breakout of the war when I said I didn't have a dog in the fight (rather than courageously expressing my desire for an end of the conflict for the people of the Donbass region), said "c'mon WDYMP, it's just the right thing to support Ukraine."
At least some of the leftism rubbed off on me because I asked why I hadn't heard any of that same support for people in the middle east.