TikTok influencers have become so important in the US now that at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, US President Joe Biden invited TikTok influencers to the White House and sought their support to push the US agenda online.

By Anurag, July 25, 2022

TikTok, a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is one of the most popular apps across the world. It allows the users to publish short videos on their platform. A lot of content creators have become ‘social media stars’ through this app. However, there is a dark side of this app that, instead of being talked about extensively, gets ignored most of the time.

Tik Tok’s algorithm in China promotes education, innovative crafts, “morally” positive feel good videos while holding back twerking, crime culture, sexualization- but they push all of that nonsense over to the west, so our children are raised on nonsense.

Brilliant strategy.

— Lin Mei (@linmeitalks) July 19, 2022

Fox News journalist and anchor Tucker Carlson recently talked about the content that is being promoted by the app’s algorithm in homeland China and compared it to the content in western countries. Carlson explained how the content differs at an extensive level and shows completely different genres to the users based on the location. It is a well-known fact that TikTok is quite famous for videos that do not make any sense most of the time.

TikTok in China is different

TikTok runs by the name of Douyin in China. It is owned by the same Chinese company ByteDance. Compared to the content that the users in the West see on TikTok, what it promotes in China is completely on the other side of the spectrum. 

Keeping that in mind, the majority of the content that Douyin promotes in China is related to technology, architecture, music and similar interests that increase the creativity in the users and help improve their skill set. As no such policy is in place in other countries, TikTok promotes content that can go viral quickly and generates revenue for the company. Also, there are some theories that are often discussed on Reddit that China is intentionally using inappropriate content generated in the West to “corrupt the minds” of the young generation.

‘TikTok is making you dumb’

During a podcast, comedian Andrew Schulz discussed the TikTok algorithm. He talked about how the algorithm promotes useless content in the West but shows extremely useful content in China. He said China does not want applications created by other countries to influence their future generation. Schulz raised the point that the app rewards people in China for creating useful content, for example on architecture, science, or math. However, in other countries, it promotes content like stupid dances etc.

In a podcast, Crowder and Crew discussed how TikTok was making people dumb. They mentioned different studies that proved that TikTok could manipulate user behavior and has the potential to take over the user content on any device by bypassing the privacy policies and terms set by Google and Apple.

How does the app influence users?

The basic idea behind TikTok is to promote content that can go viral in an instant and push content creators to create similar content. When TikTok was not banned in India, it was common to see content creators creating similar content if one video of the idea went viral. Generally, it is not possible to go viral by uploading a copied idea. However, it was different on TikTok. Those who uploaded copied ideas of a viral video got their video reaching millions of users quickly.

The more such videos went viral, the more content creators saw it as an easy opportunity to gain traction on the platform. Once users started creating similar content, TikTok started promoting content that they wanted to propagate in a particular area. For example, if they wanted the children of the US to get gender-altering surgery on a mass scale, they would promote content that would promote it as a cool, modern, easy and rewarding step to take. Shockingly, it is happening in the US, and no sane parent has been able to control the menace.

In fact, TikTok influencers have become so important in the US now that at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, US President Joe Biden invited TikTok influencers to the White House and sought their support to push the US agenda online.

From selling a useless product, to changing voting patterns, a platform like TikTok is capable of doing a lot of damage unless governments come up with a strict policy to counter TikTok’s algorithm. 

Source: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-other-countries-porn-twerking/