This appeared a few days ago:
TikTok made me write this – and it’s time for it to go
Tiktok’s influence on young Australians goes beyond free speech and into sinister realms of undue influence.
The Parrhesian Columnist
This week the US House of Representatives voted in favour of a bill banning TikTok in the US unless Chinese parent company ByteDance divests the app.
India banned TikTok in 2020. TikTok is also inaccessible in China, along with Facebook, Instagram and Google.
It’s time for Australia to join the bans, too. Every month, there are 8.5 million Australians active on TikTok, who spend an average 58 minutes per day on the platform, which is higher than for any other country.
This skews towards young people who use it as a source of entertainment, news, advice, and commercial recommendations. It is designed to be addictive, with algorithms that feed people more and more of what they crave.
#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt is a trend where young people justify purchases – from the latest haircare products to trips to Bali – based on the influence of TikTok.
The app’s powerful algorithm identifies the most compelling and sensational content, and surfaces it with a frequency and reach that make its recommendations very hard to resist. TikTok says four in 10 users buy a product after seeing it on TikTok, boasting that “investment can be instant with 41 per cent of users immediately purchasing a product after discovering it on TikTok.
Skews viewers to a Communist Party agenda
“The user shopping experience doesn’t stop at purchase with 79 per cent of users creating videos ... This triggers more users to shop with 92 per cent saying they take action after watching a TikTok video.”
Those numbers are staggering if you compare them with any other form of promotional content whose response, recall, let alone action rates are much lower and 2 per cent to 5 per cent would be considered outperformance.
More than a third, or 34 per cent, of Gen Z also say they get their news from TikTok (it’s unclear if the other 66 per cent get it elsewhere or just do not care to read news at all).
With this level of pervasiveness and persuasiveness, are we doing enough to understand the real influence this platform and its algorithms have on young Australians?
Anthony Goldbloom is an Australian data scientist living in Silicon Valley who founded Kaggle and sold it to Google, and who formerly represented Australia in sailing and worked for the Reserve Bank of Australia.
TikTok is not available in China
He has written an analysis of TikTok’s algorithms that proves the app does not reflect prevailing attitudes of its users but skews viewership to suit what he argues is a Communist Party agenda.
The analysis shows that content consistent with Chinese geopolitical goals, for example #StandWithKashmir, which could undermine stability in India, is amplified relative to other platforms, while content unfriendly to the Chinese agenda, for example #FreeTibet, #FreeUighurs and #FreeHongKong, is disproportionately suppressed.
Another example is that despite an evenly split opinion on the Israel-Hamas war in the US, #FreePalestine content outweighs Israel-supportive content by 80 to 1.
Goldbloom has also exposed how many posts and comments are generated by bots that originate in other countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which begs the question whether our children are being unknowingly influenced by an imported worldview or hidden agenda.
It is telling that the TikTok we see in the West is not available in China itself, so one could argue the Chinese are serving Western kids addictive, digital heroin they wouldn’t serve up to their own children.
In the US, with the experience of Russian Facebook influence in a prior election, and an impending one, this topic is the subject of urgent debate.
In Australia, are we just too happy that our kids are safe in their rooms spending hours scrolling what, we believe, are harmless dance videos to pay attention to the real data and demand action?
Even if you set aside the arguments about China dictating content about how our young people engage and what they buy as mere conspiracy theories, it is still problematic that silent bot armies with unknown foreign agendas produce content that normalises ideas in ways that go far beyond free speech.
This is moving into undue influence. And how much concentration of power should one platform have when it commandeers so much time and has demonstrated much higher levels of addictiveness and persuasion than other forms of media and influence that have preceded it?
According to the eSafety Commission, a high proportion of young people in Australia have encountered inappropriate or hateful content online, 57 per cent have seen real disturbing violence, and 33 per cent have seen images or videos promoting terrorism.
There are big questions to be considered. How does a country protect its sovereignty when it comes to values, ideals and culture? And what about safeguarding our children?
We have strict regulations about how sensitive topics, such as violence and death, are depicted and referenced in traditional media, and codes of conduct governing news reporting accuracy and truth in advertising, but none of those seem to apply to the 8 million hours a day Australians are on TikTok.
The fine lines between truth and propaganda, influence and credibility, reality and deep-fakes blur more each day. And the algorithms determining what to serve up are opaque, designed for addiction, and controlled by a non-Australian organisation, possibly influenced by foreign entities who aren’t even willing to consume that content themselves. That doesn’t sound like a recipe that bodes well for Australia’s future.
Are we in the Orwellian fog of 1984 where we are so mollified by the screens that entertain us and tell us how wonderful life is with just one more product and one more like-minded opinion, that we are happy to ignore a future reality where the opinions that form the basis of our social fabric, and the values and ideals of future generations may look very different from what we anticipate?
Or like Winston’s act of rebellion in the book, must we be compelled to say “DOWN WITH TIKTOK”?
Australia cannot ignore the data that has emerged, especially when we spend more time on the platform per person than any other country.
We may not have an immediate election to protect, but we do have our children and our future to consider, and for them TikTok may be a ticking time bomb.
So tick-tock, tick-tock, it’s time for real debate on calling time on TikTok.
The full article is here:
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/tiktok-made-me-write-this-and-it-s-time-for-it-to-go-20240312-p5fbnv
All this makes me feel we would all be better off without this particular app in our lives, but then I would say that given my dislike of the present array of social media which all seem way too exploitative for my liking. The days of simplicity have really passed with the current generation of social media all working hard to exploit us all. As has often been said if the product is free it is you who are the price being paid!
David.
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