I’ve been on social media for quite some time, but new to TikTok. The first thing I noticed is that the majority of the content is misleading if not completely false. Everything from financial advice, science, politics, etc.
In: Technology
Because popularity and facts have nothing to do with each other. It’s an exercise in rhetoric…. and whatever nonsense the Chinese are pumping into The Algorithm.
It’s like that everywhere on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram. No matter where you go there’s tons of misinformation.
It’s propaganda. Same as any other time throughout history. The avenue for which propaganda is published has just changed.
If people didn’t have smartphones or the internet didn’t exist, it would be posters on the street corner or speeches on radio.
Short videos on mobile = short attention span = You can lie for attention and hardly anyone’s gonna factcheck you or read the comments because it would break the video scrolling dopamine loop.
And once people start doing that, it’s a race to become the most attention catching by any means necessary. Truth and measured thought are buried in a sea of LOOK AT ME, ISN’T THIS CRAZY/HOT/OUTRAGEOUS
The way social media algorithms work is that they show you content similar to other content you’ve paid attention to (watched the whole video, liked, followed the creator, shared the content, etc). For TikTok in particular, it shows the video to ten people, and if enough people in that group pay attention to it, it shows the video to a hundred people, and if it does well, it shows it to a thousand people, and so on.
The information that people pay attention to and that people share tend to be easy to understand, provocative or unexpected, and/or provide a simple solution to a complicated problem. The problem is that information that is verifiably true is nuanced and complicated. It requires the user to sit with the video for a longer amount of time, consider complicated concepts that may be new to them, and consider how that fits in with their existing world view. It may make them uncomfortable because it doesn’t fit with what they think they know or because it asks them to change their habits.
Basically, information that’s true is long, complicated, and boring. People don’t generally watch videos like that because they’re not fun, and social media is supposed to be fun. I’m sure some people are taking advantage of this setup for propaganda purposes, and it’s possible that China is altering the algorithm to influence what viewers see, but I think the larger problem is just that people like misinformation more than they like the truth.
We’re in a time period now where if you combine short attention spans with enough laziness to not fact check anything, you get more clicks and views. The more outlandish claims make it to the algorithm, the more engagement they get, and it repeats.
When you have too much outlandish claims and too little attention spans to sift through all the garbage, you get proliferation of social media like Tik Tok.
Most Gen Z get their news through social media. While traditional news sites and channels have their biases and lenses to which they proclaim their view of “truth”, they’re at least bound by some regulation (although you could make a case that the regulation is piss poor).
Nonetheless, social media like Tik Tok has virtually no regulation, and more importantly, no accountability.
Creators on these platforms can routinely make up shit, and within a few days people either forget it or eat it up. News channels on the other hand have had to cultivate a fan base over time, and do get spurned when they’re factually incorrect (although the most vigilant of their supporters are cognitively dissonant).
Any forum of communication open to the public will be filled with options stated as fact, reddit, tiktock, 4chan….all the same issue
Because TikTok is an online media platform. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Facebook or Reddit aren’t full of misinformation.
Tiktok is run by a hostile foreign government. It’s in their best interest that Americans are confused, angry, and unsure of what’s real and what’s fake.
Things that matters are usually a bit complicated with nuances and context depending language and approach: such as intelligence, diagnosis, civil rights and events such as Israel and Palestine. Knowlede doesn’t give quick and confident answers, quite the opposite – so there is a different form of reward.
Sad truth is, you don’t look for knowledge when you already have the truth.
Latest Answers