Chinese company bytedance tries to fragilise western democracies episode 1937392
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
512 points (95.6% liked)
Technology
59219 readers
3980 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
~~Chinese~~ company ~~bytedance~~ tries to fragilise ~~western~~ democracies episode 1937392
Logically the number should be higher than the previous comments (just sayin').
No no, this is a parallel show running right after the one before.
American company meta tries to fragilise western democracies and personal freedoms episode 1937392
It's not China actively manipulating things. It's the algorithm that was getting gamed by the right wing. It's not like the Cambridge Analytica scandal where Facebook was working directly with companies that were trying to get Trump elected. It's more like the pipeline on YouTube, where it's just algorithms funneling people into what's popular ends up being gamed by conservative people. In the US, Tik Tok was known for helping the "woke left", so obviously it's not the same big conspiracy controlling both.
The thing is, it can also be used for good in that it can show people things like what's happening in Palestine without being censored by the US, like other US controlled social media has been.
Did anyone actually read the whole article? These comments sorta read like the answer is no.
The researchers say that their findings prove no active collaboration between TikTok and far-right parties like the AfD but that the platform’s structure gives bad actors an opportunity to flourish. “TikTok's built-in features such as the ‘Others Searched For’ suggestions provides a poorly moderated space where the far-right, especially the AfD, is able to take advantage,” Miazia Schüler, a researcher with AI Forensics, tells WIRED.
A better headline might have been "TikTok algorithm gamed by far-right AfD party in Germany", but I doubt that would drive as many clicks.
For more info, check out this article: Germany's AfD on TikTok: The political battle for the youth
It doesn't matter if it is intentional or not, only the result matters: TikTok gave them boost in the visibility. Whether it was "an algorithm" or any other aspect of the company is irrelevant.
Also knowing how scummy these social media companies are and how they operate inside, there could be some internal memo to the moderators to let the AfD reign free (happened with Twitter and Libs of Tiktok).
load more comments
(2 replies)
Ideas spread between humans. On systems designed to facilitate communications between people, these ideas will likewise spread. Did AfD exploit TikTok's algorithm or is right wing populism seeing a large growth worldwide?
When the printing press come out and certain news agencies starting "Yellow Journalism" were they exploiting that system of communication for profit?
Did JFK and Nixon exploit TV for their own political purposes?
I believe wholeheartedly that every social media algorithm should be open source and transparent so the public can analyze what funny business is going on under the hood.
But is it any different from how TV channels pick what shows to play or what ads to run? Which articles get printed and the choice of words for a newspaper?
I think people are quick to jump on TikTok because of some unusual socially acceptable jingoism but I don't see how at its core is fundamentally different from other forms of media, let alone other popular social media platforms.
load more comments
(3 replies)
2004: The Internet will lead to a utopian society without gatekeepers, without censorship, where we get our information from each other and primary sources, not media companies!
2024: The Internet is based on algorithmic attention. Those who control the algorithms control what parts of the immeasurably large pile of data will get attention and which not. Yet they are protected by the same intermediary liability laws as if they were traditional web forums, blog hosters, wikis with no personalized algorithm (for which those laws are very good and necessary).
load more comments
(4 replies)
The children will defend tiktok with their lives, crying about how it doesn't matter non-allied foreign powers can manipulate the algos and narratives.
I don't see this as a China problem. It's a lack of regulations and oversight problem. Allied foreign powers (or one specific power to be precise) push far right via social media onto Europe as well.
It’s both.
The companies who do this shit absolutely need to be regulated way more aggressively.
TikTok (ByteDance), being a Chinese company based in the PRC, is compelled to operate in partnership with the CCP by law, which gives the CCP an insane degree of visibility and control into their systems. I would be absolutely unsurprised to find that the CCP is compelling them to tweak their algorithms and push specific content to specific audiences, in addition to the data gathering they’re surely engaged in. Source: I work for an oncology biotech, and we halted our Chinese efforts because there was apparently no legal way to square the circle with regard to data privacy/HIPAA considerations.
He doesn't see that specific allied power interfering with European politics because he is from the US.
I'm neither a child nor defending tiktok but it doesn't mater who manipulates it. No country," allied" or otherwise, should interfere in the democratic process of another country.
The same happened with the Finnish equivalent of the AfD, the Finns Party. Under 25's are now more conservative than Millennials or iirc even Gen X which is pretty fucking wild
In my experience Tiktok isn't pushing it, YouTube shorts however very much is. For me at least
𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉
Auf reddit hats besser funktioniert
tja
kann man nix machen...
Und da fragt man sich, ja woran es jelegen hat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bin ich
hä wieso
They push whoever uses more bots and pay better advertisement.
Da
Terrible headline.
god i can't imagine getting politics on tiktok i thank goddess every day i'm well in the confines of booktok, piratetok, hazbintok, and cattok.
view more: next ›