Related: anyone been on TikTok lately? I know misinformation is all over social media in general, but holy fuck is it bad on TikTok. Even after using custom filters to try and avoid election stuff altogether, it seems like every other post is some ridiculous MAGA BS without sources making some outrageous claim about Democrats.
Case in point: according to multiple posts I saw earlier today, both Kamala and Tim Walz have dropped out of the race.
I see no MAGA stuff there. I’m in the other echo chamber, must be (and happily so).
I see no politics whatsoever (other than stupid life challenges), algorithm shows what you want to see.
Algorithms show what the company wants you to see, not what you choose to see.
I mean kind of but not really? Most of my algo isn’t identifyably political, but the bit that is, is all left of liberal.
Tiktok shows you stuff you interact with, you’ve trained the algo to show you right-wing misinformation.
I’ve never interacted with a single post, nor is the account tied to an email which is used for anything else.
Watch time is a type of interaction.
I’m aware of that. I actively try and skip political stuff as quickly as possible. I understand how the algorithm is supposed to work, but in my experience, it isn’t working that way. On a fresh account, the first video it ever served me was a MAGA post.
Edit: I also considered that maybe it was location based. My TikTok has no overt permissions (unneeded if you never post), no contact sharing, and I always access through a VPN. Does not seem to matter which VPN server/location I select.
Oh yeah, it is location based, when I first started they kept trying to give me local, South Carolinian right-wing “comedy”.
It was the cringiest shit I have ever seen in my life, and as a furry, that is not a low bar.
That’s just basic political instincts. Dems implement an unpopular policy? Say you’ll reverse it.
I can’t understand how the democrats thought it was a good idea to ban Tiktok on an election year.
You think voters care? I’m not so sure, haven’t heard it brought up in a political context until now. Can you imagine TikTok coming up in the debates?
Are there single-issue tiktok voters? Probably not. But democrats doing a thing that we all agreed was dumb under Trump does contribute to the sense that the democrats do not represent them, which decreases voter turnout.
Similar to Biden escalating the trade war against China; there’s probably not “buy a chinese EV” single-issue voters, but making EVs unaffordable to the vast majority of Americans decreases voter turnout among people who didn’t want a trade war with China.
Every time the democrats try to out-flank the republicans from the right, they’re effectively campaigning for the republicans.
