CCP Is In Control Of TikTok Algorithm, Per Damning New Study

A new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University indicates what critics have long suspected:

TikTok operates at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party.

The report details how TikTok, owned by the Chinese-based ByteDance, amplifies and suppresses content based on whether it aligns with the geopolitical interest of the CCP.

Specifically, the researchers studied the visibility of six hashtags known to be sensitive to China: Uyghurs, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.

The results were hardly surprising:

"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).

"After controlling for other variables, the study's authors concluded that the Chinese government is actively suppressing TikTok content related to these six topics, as well as pro-Ukraine content, and pro-Israel content," says the report.

By contrast, the study learned that topics of interest to the Chinese dictatorship appeared to be artificially boosted, such as posts promoting Kashmiri independence.

"The significance of the overrepresentation of #standwithkashmir specifically, with over 225 million posts, should not be understated. To contextualize the magnitude of this activity, consider that the total sum of #standwithkashmir posts outweighs the sum of all other political hashtags in our sample put together (23,176,698) by an order of magnitude.

"The BLM hashtag, one of the most widely used hashtags in politics, reached its peak on Twitter at merely ~50 million posts 31 by comparison. It is challenging to imagine that activity of such magnitude could occur on a platform organically, and without the knowledge and consent of the platform itself."

TikTok has long denied curating content in favor of the Chinese government. That was a lie. As were claims that China does not have access to the data of U.S. users. It does.

TIKTOK is facing scrutiny over its Chinese backed company ByteDance

Last year, BuzzFeed News reviewed over 80 internal TikTok meetings and uncovered a particularly ominous admission from a member of the TikTok Trust and Safety department:

“Everything is seen in China,” said the high-ranking employee.

The documents also revealed that a Beijing-based engineer known as "Master Admin" “has access to everything" pertaining to U.S. users.

Perhaps even their private DMs.

Now, no social media service is particularly moral. They all steal your data. They all spy on you. And most of them manipulate precisely what information you can and cannot view

However, Facebook, YouTube, and X do not work in conjunction with a communist regime. (At least we don't think.) We now know TikTok does.

That fact is especially concerning when you consider that a third of adults in the U.S. under the age of 30 turn to TikTok as a primary source of information, as per a  recent Pew study.

TikTok is not a news source. TikTok is a propaganda arm of the CCP.

The social media app has developed what is known in the tech industry as the most sophisticated algorithm to date, designed to prey on your weaknesses to keep you scrolling.

I likened TikTok to a "silent abuser" last year, citing how its algorithm discovers a user's weaknesses -- via hashtags such as #breakup, #sad, #depression -- around which it uses to build a customized feed.

The app preys on our vulnerabilities for profit.

TikTok is a threat to U.S. national security, future elections, mental health, and whatever other weaknesses the Chinese Communist Party hopes to exploit.

What are U.S. lawmakers going to do about it? Nothing.