I'm not aware of any experiments, formal or informal that tries to seek if negative content is promoted more. The article states one experiment with bots saw how quickly the feed would become saturated with majority negative content. But what about the opposite? How quickly does positive content fill the feed if a bot were to engage with inspiring or educational videos? I suspect it'll be slower, though maybe not because of the algorithm itself but because video makers have less incentives to make positive videos, and so there's simply less "good" content to recommend.
TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
131–140 of 204 posts
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#132Although TikTok should do better to demote these kinds of videos, I can't buy the conspiracy theory that this is done intentionally. Anyone who knows a bit about recommendation systems can understand that watching depressing videos will get you more in your feed. Collaborative filtering with i.e watch time as a signal will lead someone who watches them to more.
Allowing it on your platform, (and it applies to Everyone not just tiktok) Isn't right.
Negligently letting it be pushed onto people is much worse.
Imagine if facebook were doing the same thing now, there would me massive uproar.
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#133> When she opened the TikTok app on his iPad, she found a library of more than 3,000 videos her son had bookmarked, liked, saved or tagged as a favorite. She could see the terms he’d searched for: Batman, basketball, weightlifting, motivational speeches. And she could see what the algorithm had brought him: many videos about depression, hopelessness and death. Horrific.
It's definitely all the batman searches that got him tthere /s
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#134> When she opened the TikTok app on his iPad, she found a library of more than 3,000 videos her son had bookmarked, liked, saved or tagged as a favorite. She could see the terms he’d searched for: Batman, basketball, weightlifting, motivational speeches. And she could see what the algorithm had brought him: many videos about depression, hopelessness and death. Horrific.
The algorithm doesn’t work only on searches. Or even mostly. It is largely based on engagement. Which videos do you actually watch and comment on. Almost nothing I search for is on my FYP. My FYP is almost all pranks, basketball, dancing in public, and Harry Mack. I have noticed that if I watch a video all the way through I will get more of those videos pretty quickly. If this kid watched a depression video all the w…
Regardless, 'Motivational speeches' shows he was trying to help himself and I find that horrific.
(didn't downvote you though, I understand your point)
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> while in the western world it promotes debauchery and stupidity. Isn't the narrative "that's what the western world consumers more of/wants" versus "China values achievements and education more than debauchery and stupidity"?
I don't trust narratives about what people are seeing on social media without empirical data. The news media are naturally going to report the worst cases, but we don't know anything about the average case. It doesn't get as many clicks if you report on how many cool science videos kids are watching.
> I don't trust narratives about what people are seeing on social media without empirical data.
I mean, I can speak from my own personal use case (I think I average 30-60 minutes of TikTok screen time a day per week... yeah... I know, not great). I would agree with you. The only reason somebody's feed would show "low grade" content is if they curated it to be that way for themselves.
Now, is it easier to curate a feed of garbage West vs East? Not sure...
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't keep them off it. If you don't provide them access, they can get access on their friend's devices. The key is education, you have to explain to your kids how these services works, how they are optimized for content engagement to show ads, how they mine your data, and what kinds of things they should look out for and avoid (like misinformation, catfishing, grooming, viral stupidity etc)
As if an 11-year-old will absorb any of that...
I first got the internet at in 1995.
I had the internet for a while when I turned 11.
My parents were pretty clear about what was good/bad. "you can see all sorts of stuff on the internet. But first things first, never use your real name or address. Second, we can totally see what youre looking at."
For me that worked.
For my older sister, she still tried to run off with a bloke she met off a chat room.
so you cant win them all.
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#137Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
CNN America shows the most ridiculous rage-bait every hour, on the hour. But CNN International (airing in non-American markets) is significantly more toned down because it tries to compete with BBC News, France24 and NHK. Maybe Tiktok is just trying to give the market what it wants? Idiotic stunts were going viral years before TikTok existed.
This is perfectly compatible with parent's theory.
I don't think so. CNN America isn't a Chinese product as far as I'm aware. Therefore I think /u/chaud is trying to say that TikTok is just giving the people what they want.
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#139Seriously though, why haven't we banned TikTok yet? There is no legitimate reason to allow them to keep pushing disinfo here. There are already tons of replacements lined up ready to replace it, it would not hurt anyone in the US at all to ban it.
but then the US would have to ban twitter and FB/Insta.
IT would be better to have an enforceable set of licensing. But that wont happen because 1st amendment noises (rightly or wrongly. I'm not sure that corporations should really be treated as humans in this instance, but US case law thinks it should since the 70s.)
Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids
#140Although TikTok should do better to demote these kinds of videos, I can't buy the conspiracy theory that this is done intentionally. Anyone who knows a bit about recommendation systems can understand that watching depressing videos will get you more in your feed. Collaborative filtering with i.e watch time as a signal will lead someone who watches them to more.
Literally nobody's suggesting this is done intentionally. Not the article, and not in any comments here.
So why even bring it up? It's completely disingenuous imho.