TikTok Data Suggests Algorithms ‘Align with CCP Objectives’, According to Alarming New Study

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As if you needed any more reasons to delete or continue avoiding TikTok, new evidence suggests the CCP is more intimately involved in its algorithm than previously thought.

Released by the Network Contagion Research on Dec. 21, this study at least appears to indicate that the app, owned by Chinese company Byte Dance, is artificially boosting topics and hashtags helpful to the Chinese Communist Party’s goals, and suppressing those they find harmful or that contradict the party line.

The study examined a selection of hashtags containing sensitive topics for the CCP, topics aligned with the CCP party line, and topics on which the CCP is neutral, comparing the ratios of user engagement with those hashtags on TikTok and on Instagram.

According to the study, hashtags such as Uyghurs, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea seemed to be artificially repressed on TikTok, while more  CCP-neutral topics, like Trump, Biden or pop culture showed a more organic ratio of user engagement.

And with hashtags related to causes the CCP wants to champion, like Kashmiri independence, the ratio seemed to indicate an artificial boosting of the topic.

Specifically, according to the study’s authors, “[while] ratios for non-sensitive topics (e.g., general political and pop-culture) generally followed user ratios (~2:1), ratios for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government were much higher (>10:1).”

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