Tiktok and its hidden and not so hidden secrets

Well  heres some things that you may have not known about tiktok.Many of you probably know what tiktok is, it's the app that everyone uses, recent data shows that all the users average collectively to an hour and a half a day, here the even crazier thing, the app has over 3.5 billion downloads, that's a bit under half the population as a whole. Its usage and popularity spiked and peaked drastically during 2020, during the covid 19 pandemic.

1 )

Did you know that in America, tiktok can collect data such as biometrics and faceprints. In a revised section of it’s privacy policy, tiktok us stated that they “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information” from its users content This includes things like “faceprints and voiceprints,” this means that they may use and learn what types of videos to show on the users tiktok for you page in response to the users response, such as laughing at a funny video, meaning that they would show more of it. This went undetected by many users. The first part of the section explains that TikTok may collect information about the images and audio that are in users’ content, “such as identifying the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes, the nature of the audio, and the text of the words spoken in your User Content.”

This could mean whether the user is enjoying the video or not, to show more of that type of content, but since it was written quite vague it can be debated among.

2)

Tiktoks algorithm is crazily advanced, maybe even more than most mainstream social media sites. The algorithm is insanely advanced and takes in count tons of different trackers in order to achieve this. Having an advanced algorithm may pose no threat for the average user but watching one specific video for a single second longer can have you spiralling down the deep and dark parts of the internet. Such as a study within the UK shows that the tiktok algorithm aggressively promotes, self injurious behaviours, disordered eating and suicidal ideation.This documented ‘content rabbit hole’ brings up similar again and again within the main feed (the ‘for you page’) so that users are being continually bombarded with such footage whether wanted or not. This can affect any user, driving the new audience closer and closer towards mental illness or demolishing already suffering ones, shown by the addictive nature of tiktok.

3)In the past, intercepted conversations read that tiktok moderators where to suppress ‘ugly’,’lots of wrinkles’ and disabled people’s videos, actively enforcing a key theme through social media; censorship.There is hard evidence that was discovered in 2020 that TikTok has down weighted several topics that the chinese government may deem sensitive, such as LGBTQ+ people, disabled individuals and people with other ideations/political views that differ to the chinese government. the German website Netzpolitik.org reported that TikTok also artificially reduced the viral potential of videos its algorithm identified as being made by "fat people [and] people with facial disfigurement, autism, Down syndrome, [or] disabled people or people with some facial problems". All of these investigations show how controlling tiktok is towards what it outputs to its users. 

All of this shows how big companies change what we see, when we see and we become dependent on them. Recently tiktok underwent a lawsuit, that i would describe as failed, and not much has happened. Have these points in mind during your next visit of the app, but yet still, I think we all have and enjoy some tiktok in our spare time due to its quick and snappy nature, technology will only advance from here onwards.