Ahead of SCOTUS Hearing, Study Finds TikTok Is Likely Vehicle for Chinese Propaganda
gizmodo.com
A forthcoming paper analyzed how different social media platforms surfaced content that displayed positive and negative sentiments toward the Chinese Communist Party.

Summary

A new study from Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute claims TikTok’s algorithm limits anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) content compared to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, despite higher user engagement with such posts.

The study also suggests TikTok users express more favorable views of China after prolonged use.

TikTok criticized the findings as flawed due to the use of simulated accounts.

The study precedes a Supreme Court hearing on whether the U.S. can ban TikTok, amid national security concerns tied to its Chinese ownership and potential CCP influence.

  • yogurt@lemm.ee
    266·
    3 days ago

    Their definition of “anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) content” is dialed way up into treating “China will fall in 7 days” like good content and anything less than that is Chinese propaganda. If they search for Tienanmen Square and get “pictures of the square without mention of the massacre” they classify that as “pro-CCP”. If they get “unbiased historical content” or news coverage about bad shit China does they call that “neutral”.

    They also don’t do anything to compensate for Tiktok’s overall censorship, they went looking for massacre and genocide on the platform where people say corn and unalive, they don’t compare how Tiktok deals with China vs any other subject.

    They did a survey of how pro-China people are and how much they use Tiktok, but don’t do anything to adjust for Tiktok being publicly associated with China. They could’ve put a question in the survey about whether people were boycotting Tiktok for anti-CCP reasons but didn’t, which looks like they were fishing for a result.

    I remember NCRI from back when they did the study comparing Antifa to ISIS, and they’re still doing weird shit like that, if you like Luigi you’re “Killing with Applause”, colleges being too woke and anti-genocide is the “Corruption of the American Mind”, if you do DEI it’s your fault white people are racist.