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TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

bloomberg.com

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Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#151

Post by owisd »

Jochim wrote: post #67
owisd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they pushing suicide videos to find out which kids are interested in them in the first place?

They aren't pushing suicide videos specifically. Like most feed driven social media platforms, a video gets some engagement and it appears in the feeds of some users as a result. If it gets flagged or reported they take it down. TikTok does actively take down content that violates their guidelines. Children are much more likely to come across nudity or porn on Twitter/Instagram.

It's clearly doing some categorisation to curate individual recommendations rather than simply showing the same trending videos to everyone.

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#152

Post by BrianGragg »

fdsaklvjalkj1 wrote: post #140
yellow_lead wrote: post #106

Although 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.

Maybe you skipped / filtered all the comments out blaming TikTok and that they should be punished for doing this?

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#153

Post by ilyt »

harvey9 wrote: post #49
biohax2015 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if an 11-year-old will absorb any of that...

There was no internet when I was 11 and we still managed to think of stupid and dangerous things to do.

We sneaked into local military training compound to look for bullet casings (coz guns and cool) at that age. We'd be far fucking safer if we played online games instead lmao.

We also hitch-hiked to save bus money parents gave us to get some ice cream

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#154

Post by timmytokyo »

BrianGragg wrote: post #152
fdsaklvjalkj1 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you skipped / filtered all the comments out blaming TikTok and that they should be punished for doing this?

This is a nonsequitur. TikTok can be both negligent and responsible for the consequences of that negligence.

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#155

Post by ilyt »

noirdujour wrote: post #131

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 bec…

Honestly ? That wouldn't matter that much, purely because the negative one will get engaged much more in the first place. Just look on how bad/controversial news sell vs good news.

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#156

Post by DubiousPusher »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #120
CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost every political party in western democracies are “liberal” in the classical sense. There is an interesting case made[1] that while this used to be true, it is actually not the case any more and that things are starting to become rather anti-liberal on both sides of the political spectrum. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102146148-what-s-our-pro...

I’m not sure I buy that argument. When I was a kid I remember we had the PMRC, panic over violence in video games, and endless debates over a different flavour of “political correctness”. They purveyors of moral panic has a different cast today (on both sides of the political spectrum), but I don’t really buy into this “everything is worse than it used to be” idea. I guess government encroachment on civil liberties t…

I think the biggest change is that a lot of people just came out of an era where there was a national media narrative that was highly agreed upon and very New England, classically "liberal". Except around sex and drugs of course.

This narrative dominated TV, print and to a lesser extent radio. It really created the notion in people's heads that this narrow band was really what people thought about. What people are reacting to in large part is the newly visible presence of alternative perspectives. They were always there. They were just strategically locked out by people who decided what was "fringe". Basically anything that didn't support institutions was ignored or disparaged.

Waco and Cuba are two prime examples. Waco was written off in the national media because the people in the compound were so "weird". And for years the national media has underwritten the American foreign policy blob's almost neurotic fixation with Cuba.

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#157

Post by mikey_p »

ilyt wrote: post #147
AraceliHarker wrote: post #28

Recently, a group of high school girls jumped to their deaths in Matsudo, Japan, and the video trended on Twitter, and it showed up at the top of relevant searches for 'suicide'. To be honest, I think the priority display of this kind of shocking content is a problem not only for TikTok, but for social media in general.

The old school news media outlets would plaster that story on front page, it's not something new to social media

No, actually most of the traditional news media (print, TV, radio) declines to report on suicide due to documented risks to increase in suicide rates following news about a suicide:

https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m575

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#158

Post by mikey_p »

rchaud wrote: post #98
greenhearth wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's famous "The Tipping Point" that deals with waves of teenage suicides. He describes that a single suicide acts as a subliminal permission for this behavior to be mimicked. This permission is sent out as a beacon and susceptible agents replicate this behavior. I forget the details of it, but the point was that this could be extended to other behavior as well, possibly all behavio…

Gladwell's a good writer, but almost never backs up his positions with empirical evidence. I don't mind too much because I like his writing, but I wouldn't really trust his theories too much because he is a storyteller first.

This is something that has been documented and analyzed in meta studies as well: https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m575

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#159

Post by timmytokyo »

BrianGragg wrote: post #25

Tiktok pushes what you interact with the most. If you comment, if you heart, if you watch it and content like it all the way through it assumes its the content that you like and will give you more like it. If you see something you don't like keep scrolling. It learns and stops showing that content.

This argument assumes social media algorithms are passive agents, which only give users what they're looking for. What's missing is the fact that human minds are malleable, reactive, and adaptive through reinforcement. By providing what they think you're looking for, the algorithms subtly shift your psychology, leading you to seek more of what you're already seeing.

This is not a novel insight. It's why advertising works. AI-based Skinner-box algorithms are like traditional advertising techniques on steroids. They inevitably profilerate the kind of content that optimizes for the most engagement, and due to the way our lizard brains work, this happens to be content that generates emotional manipulation and outrage. The consequence? A population-wide mental health catastrophe.

Re: TikTok’s algorithm keeps pushing suicide to vulnerable kids

#160

Post by MandieD »

cloudking wrote: post #41
lnsru wrote: post #21

The question is how to keep kids off social media. I am very thankful neighbor mom, who bought her son a smart watch and not a cheap android phone. Good example for other kids. It’s clear, that departments with lots of clever people are doing to lock young kids in the phones. And only parents can protect them.

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)

Getting access on their friends’ devices at least limits the amount of time they spend sucked into it alone - maybe my mother-in-law had some similar reasons for not allowing a TV in the house, but not particularly fretting over her kids watching TV at friends’ and relatives’ houses.
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