TikTok and Race

TikTok is a social media app that allows users to share, like, repost, comment on, or create short videos. Its extremely powerful algorithm may pose ethical issues. https://www.tiktok.com/

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media apps in which users can share, like, repost, comment on, or create short videos. TikTok’s algorithm is known for how fast it can identify a user's interests to reproduce similar content on a users' For You Page - a constant stream of customized content - to capture attention. TikTok's search page, on the other hand, is organized by popularity. With about 1 billion active users, TikTok has the incredible ability to both impact and be impacted by culture. While TikTok's algorithm is used to keep users' attention, the algorithm also echoes and encourages racial power dynamics in the US. TikTok allows for the continuation of valuing White standards through encouraging popular posts on search pages, allowing for the fast spread and mass manipulation of trends/videos made by Black Creators, the use of users' interests to promote similar content, and reproducing biases.

History of TikTok

The TikTok app is a social media platform in which small video clips are presented to the user in a constant stream of entertainment. The app has three main pages - the For You page, the Following page, and the Search page. The Following page is a continuous stream of content from the creators that the user follows. The For You Page is an endless page of these videos specifically tailored to the interest of the user - how this is done is not exactly known. The Search page allows users to search creators, hashtags, audio etc. While not gaining its popularity until COVID-19, the TikTok app started as an amalgamation of three different apps previously launched, one of which was Musical.ly created in 2014. Chinese tech giant ByteDance also launched a similar platform called Douyin. In 2018, ByteDance bought Musica.ly and wanted to expand and rebrand itself under the name TikTok. The TikTok application is known for its powerful algorithm that seems to learn user's preferences faster than other social media platforms before.

TikTok's Recommendation Algorithm

TikTok’s algorithm is known for its ability to capture a users’ interest fast and its ability to continually suggest new content based on those interests. While TikTok has never completely shared their algorithm to the public, they have shared some information. Meanwhile many algorithm professionals and users alike have created their own theories and studies about how the TikTok algorithm promotes content.

TikTok's Algorithm

TikTok’s algorithm thrives off of the recommendation For You Page in order to personalize each user's content. The algorithm uses TikTok's features such as likes and comments to analyze a TikTok video based on features like video title, audio, and hashtags in order to pinpoint a user's interests. According to the WSJ video, a TikTok representative has confirmed that shares, likes, and follows influence how TikTok learns about you, not by listening through your device. While this may be true, based on a study conducted by the Wall Street Journal, how long a user engages with a video or if the user pauses on a video gives TikTok the indication to use this like hashtags, video titles, or audios to promote similar content. A new user's For You Page starts as stream of a wide variety of popular videos. Based on the interaction with the videos, the TikTok algorithm starts to understand the user’s preferences, and starts to suggest more content that aligns with those preferences. From here, the algorithm will push the user into more and more specific, and less vetted, videos based on their interests. Using IP addresses, TikTok also takes into account your location to suggest videos; however, the user's engagement with those videos determines how much more of that content they will see.

For You Page

TikTok’s For You Page is a recommendation page that feeds the user endless content of both celebrities and “normal people” based on popularity at first, and eventually also based on your interests. The data collected from engaging in the post is used by the algorithm to isolate interests and show users content that they are likely to enjoy. Multiple factors are used for the algorithm to determine the content on a users’ For You Page. These factors include interactions with videos (liking/sharing/commenting), following new accounts, video information (hashtags, sounds, and captions), and device settings (language, location). An overwhelming majority of content (90-95%) consumed on TikTok comes from the apps recommendation For You Page.

TikTok's Search Page

On TikTok’s search page users can search for anything and find results based on hashtags, captions, audios, users etc. The search page is not ordered chronologically, but rather by popularity. TikTok has acknowledged that interactions with videos on the search page will be used in the algorithm to expand the videos shown on a users’ For You Page .

Ethical Concerns of TikTok Reinforcing and Encouraging Racial Power Dynamics

"The D'Amelio Effect" and "Algorithmic Privilege"

TikTok has the incredible ability to impact US culture. And Charli D’Amelio, with her 149.6 million followers has the incredible ability to impact TikTok. Along with Charli TikTok stars like Addison Rae, Loren Gray, Dixie D’Amelio, Lil Huddy, Noah Beck, and Bryce Hall set the culture on TikTok with their millions of followers. As many scholars have pointed out, many TikTok stars have one thing in common - they are White. Academics believe that these stars were able to gain such popularity from fitting "typical beauty standards", White beauty standards, and appealing to the majority population, the White population. TikTok stars that embody White beauty standards work to influence others, and thus unconsciously or consciously reinforce the value of White beauty standards. This concerns many, as it echoes pre-existing racial hierarchies that affords White creators privilege. . “Algorithmic privilege” refers to the privilege people have when their identity allows them to reap the benefits of the algorithm . In the search feature of the app, TikToks do not show up chronologically, but rather by popularity. Thus, the algorithm encourages users in search of a new dance to learn it from a popular creator such as Charli D’Amelio. One Black teacher recalled a time when her Black students wanted to teach her a dance from TikTok. She reported that the only videos to teach her the dance from the search page was from creators who look like Charli D'Amelio - White, female presenting, and skinny. By promoting already popular creators, TikTok encourages that user to engage with such content, indicating to the algorithm that the user will want more similar content. Therefore, by learning a dance from Charli D'Amelio, the algorithm will continue to promote similar content in attempts to capitalize on a users’ interests. This creates a cycle of White-created content and makes TikTok a mostly White space. Many of the dances Charli and similar White creators perform are created by a Black creator such as the #SavageChallenge. With the algorithm pushing popular videos and recording users' interests, creators like Charli often receive drastically more attention than the creator herself. The algorithm allows for White creators to maintain popularity while making it harder for Black creators to rise to the top - earning many or most White creators “algorithmic privilege”. The algorithm encourages users to engage with popular videos and creators (many who happen to be White) from the start, giving many White creators "algorithmic privilege" and more visibility on TikTok. In this way, TikTok mirrors harmful racial dynamics.

Digital Appropriation

Keara Wilson is a young Black creator on TikTok, who invented the viral dance to “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion. Although not previously famous, Wilson performed her dance only five times on TikTok until Charli D’Amelio recreated it on her own account - making the dance viral. The #SavageChallenge blew up from Charli D’Amelio, resulting in more fame for both D’Amelio and Megan Thee Stallion, translating into more profit for both celebrities. While Wilson enjoyed her time briefly in the spotlight, she did not reap many benefits from creating the viral challenge. When this dance was recreated by a popular White creator, the algorithm naturally pushes popular videos and creators allowing Charli's likes and views to skyrocket while Wilson received substantially less attention. Experts have suggested that this has an effect in which a user is likely to assume that a popular TikTok dance was created by the popular TikTok star performing it. Like Wilson’s #Savage Challenge, Many of the biggest dance trends were started by Black creators; however, they did not receive nearly the amount of success as their White imitators. In 2021, this drove some Black content creators to go on a content strike. Historically, dances created by Black especially female creators are often a form of expression - of race, gender, sexuality etc. The identity of the creator is co-opted when a White creator performs an expression of identity that is not her own. Yet, the algorithm will continue to elevate these videos based on success and following. Not only does this create a lack of representation on people’s For You Pages, but this also has real economic consequences. When creators like Charli perform a dance made by a Black creator, it contributes to her engagement rate and fandom. This engagement and massive amounts of followers gives Charli extreme economic value - to the point where she could make millions of dollars off of one sponsored post. Additionally, by recreating dances made by Black creators, White creators are using “Black femme” rhythms, movements, and gestures to increase their fame, thus increasing their economic value while Black creators simply get “dc” (dance credits) or no credit at all. As suggested by experts, many of these viral TikTok dances made by Black creators are tied to the stereotypical hyper-sexualization of Black females and are ways for them to reclaim their sexuality. TikTok allows for the rapid spread of videos, and thus rapid manipulation, recreation, and edits of those videos making it easy for the original creators to get lost in the trail of virality. When trends and dances are tied to one’s culture and identity, they are often “digitally appropriated” or recreated digitally without context or cultural significance on their way to being viral. Charli D’Amelio performing to Megan Thee Stallion's "Savage" with moves tying to Black culture is (most likely unintentionally) using someone else’s culture for profit and encouraging others to do the same. Her fame and the way in which TikTok allows users to share or recreate trends encourages a dance like the #SavageChallenge to be digitally appropriated by other White creators, making it a trend. While Black creator made this trend, White creators often reap the benefits of its virality.

TikTok as an Echo Chamber

The TikTok algorithm uses data such as engagement with videos, followers, likes, hashtags etc. to quickly identify a user’s interest to target both regular content and advertisements alike. This creates a type of rabbit hole effect, as TikTok shows you content you are highly likely to want to engage with based on past activity. As TikTok learns more about your interests, it pushes the user into deeper and more extreme versions of content that are less moderated than some of the mainstream popular videos. The TikTok's algorithm thus allows people to get caught in an echo chamber of their own interests and ideas, with a somewhat limited diversity of content. Forbes reported that when a user followed a White woman with blond hair, he started to see many more White women with blond hair on his For You Page. While this is not a dangerous idea or bias necessarily, this does reduce the diversity of people and ideas that that user is exposed to. As the algorithm uses people’s interests, this can push content that confirms or reproduces people’s pre-existing biases. In an academic study on hate speech and extremist views on TikTok it was found in a sample of 1,030 videos posted on TikTok (about 8 hours of content) that 30% of those videos promoted white supremacy. People who engage with these videos tell their algorithm to further promote this type of content - continuing to encourage videos that reflect a similar way of thinking. The most viewed video in this study reached 2 million views about anti-Asian hatred due to Covid-19. One of the top ten most-viewed videos in the sample was a video of a White supremacist who is currently in jail. Although TikTok removes hateful content, it happens very inconsistently. These videos spreading harmful racist ideas are being fed by the algorithm to users who most likely already believe in those values. The algorithm lends itself to pinpointing people's interests to increase engagement; however, by blindly encouraging content based on data TikTok can encourage and reinforce people's racist beliefs. This type of content is getting serious attention from a lot of TikTok users - pushing those users with harmful views on race further into an echo chamber of their own ideas, which has extreme consequences in the real world.

TikTok's Response

In the wake of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement, many Black TikTok creators complained of their content being suppressed as videos with #GeorgeFloyd or #BlackLivesMatter received zero views. In June 2020, TikTok issued a statement addressing these concerns. While they did take responsibility, they also pointed to the fact that many "powerful videos" with the #BlackLivesMatter still received large amounts of attention. In their response, TikTok reported that they have a plan of action to improve. That plan included investing in technology and moderation strategies to improve the regulation of content, creating a "creator diversity council and impact-driven programs", improving internal diversity, and developing a "creator portal" in effort to create more opportunities for creators. It is not know whether these efforts improves the TikTok platform; however, a year later Black TikTok creators went on a content strike in response to inequality on TikTok.

References

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