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So I finally installed tiktok. While registering, I indicated I was male. I was immediately shown what I can only describe as "anti-feminist" videos, women winning arguments against feminists, jordan peterson interview clips, etc. I generally scroll past these videos quickly, but they got more and more frequent, I probably made it worse for liking a few bill-burr clips early on, but it certainly started very early on.
My wife is a frequent tiktok user, she likes videos you'd expect of women, crafting stuff, recipes, etc. She gets also gets ton of overtly political feminist videos. Neither of us have strong feelings towards feminism. If anything, she's to my right on the gender issues.
I hear a lot of anti-tiktok rhetoric along the lines that china is invading our privacy. I'm much more concerned about tiktok dividing the younger generations and pitting groups against each other. This is probably more algorithmic than intentional, but this effect is almost certainly worse than the privacy concerns. I know this isn't anything new, other social media apps have similar effects, but I think the effect is much stronger with tiktok. With facebook, you inherit the political environment of your friends. With reddit and twitter you can choose your own echo-chambers. With tiktok, the decision is made against your will and almost instantly.
Chinese Tiktok:
Well. The choice of algorithm is probably intentional.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY
TikTok the company does that, limiting access of young children, because the chinese govt mandates it - they wouldn't do it on their own! And for adults (which OP is), the algorithm isn't obviously different - from using douyin briefly, and I also got half-naked women, sports videos, animal videos, dumb social situations, all of which, like US tiktok, are stupid.
Tiktok is owned by Bytedance.
From Bytedance' wikpedia page:
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3145362/chinese-government-takes-minority-stake-board-seat-tiktok-owner
You may be missing how "the company" and "the chinese government" are pretty aligned on the issue regardless. They wouldn't do it 'on their own' except they're doing it and one should probably not ignore the incentives at play here.
Was that meant to be surprising? The chinese govt is deeply personally tied to, and exerts direct guiding power over, its economy in a way the US govt isn't.
That doesn't mean chinese tech companies aren't trying to make profit, grow, or get user attention, or that they aren't trying to get users otherwise. These limits exist, and their recent creation is newsworthy because before them, tiktok and other apps were showing 'unwholesome' content to underage users, and letting them use the app as much as they wanted to. And not by corrupting intent, but because that is what got the most views.
Aligned in the sense of taking action, yes. To a lesser extent, but similarly - tech companies in europe are aligned with the GDPR, and Apple is aligned with the chinese government in China. But absent the guiding hand of the government, they'd be happy to let people use their product more.
OP claimed "Well. The choice of algorithm is probably intentional." - as if TikTok being attention-grabby in the US was intentional by china to harm the US somehow, compared to a tiktok wholesome algorithm in the US. This is very incoherent, and very common, something I've had irl friends and internet friends tell me dozens of times total. Aside from US companies using the same algorithms, and surfacing almost identical content for adults, and OP being about content presented to adults in the US, while douyin produces similarly cute girl / stupid content for adults in China, douyin was less-filtered for chinese youth years ago before those changes were implemented! The desire to claim China is Hurting Us without much justification seems prevalent - similar are "tiktok is a chinese privacy violation operation we must ban it" - much of US social media is already public and china can get most of what it gets via owning TikTok just by scraping twitter, facebook, instagram, etc, just as you yourself can. (the only place I've seen that statement made is, funnily, a CSET report)
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