this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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TikTok’s annual carbon footprint is likely bigger than Greece’s, study finds (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Hubi@feddit.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This seems to he based on a lot of hypothetical and not actual data.

The study examined the carbon footprint associated with each user per minute by incorporating the emissions associated with data centers, which made up about 99% of the footprint, and the emissions associated with charging devices after using the platforms.

TikTok’s emissions are the most opaque of the social media platforms. Tech giants such as Meta and Google release detailed reports to the Carbon Disclosure Project every year, even posting their findings to their respective websites. TikTok has no publicly available emissions data.

It's just the theoretical output of emissions needed to run a Data Centre based off viewers and average time spent. While these are all rough numbers it could also very well be that the Data Centre's are powered at least in part by renewables.

So it would make sense that Tiktok would use up a lot of electricity for its platform. We just can't be sure how much of it actually translates into more emissions.

[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

There are hypotheticals precisely because Tiktok is not transparent enough. It sounds like they're doing an estimate on the best data publically available.

At the very least, this put pressure on Tiktok to be more transparent. Tiktok could prove the study wrong by publishing more about their energy and resource use.