Its become the most popular app in the world. Rory theres fishing videos, theres cooking, comedic skits, singing, dancing. Literally, everything you can think of, tiktok have. David polgar its not an app on their phone anymore, its their livelihood. Its how they communicate with their friends. Its how they see the world. Thats a part that i dont think everybody has adjusted to yet. Dr. Niels wouters were really at risk of having generations of young people that have formed identities in response to something that a Technology Platform prescribes to be the new normal. Avani behind the shiny dance videos, the platform is leading people down dangerous paths. Lauren hemmings id like to think that i wouldnt have struggled with an eating disorder if i hadnt downloaded tiktok. Anne longfield my claim with tiktok is that they are harvesting huge amounts of data illegally without the consent of children or their parents. Jamil jaffer if you just look at tiktok in isolation, it seems innocuous. But its really, it takes place in this much larger context of data collection, Artificial Intelligence, and a real effort by the chinese to consolidate influence in the region and across the globe. Avani tonight on four corners, tiktok. In a joint investigation with hack on triple j, were going down the rabbit hole to reveal the dark side of the app. How the platform censors political content and harvests childrens data, and how the apps powerful algorithm exposes people to misinformation and dangerous content. Rory hi, my name is rory eliza, iand what . Avani and what do you do . Rory i am a fulltime tiktoker. Rory so in the morning, ill wake up maybe 8 oclock, 9 oclock, and ill check my phone, check if my videos have done well, or you know, how my followers are reacting to the content that ive just posted. Tiktok, honestly, i get so much love on there. Its so weird because thats my biggest platform, its tiktok with 5 million followers. Its crazy to think that 5 Million People, thats people, its not just a number. And if you really think about it, its 5 Million People that have tapped that follow button. Theyre all just so friendly, and theyre kind of like your family. Its just weird, like, you dont know these people, but they know so much about you that they treat you like a family member. Rory and on that note, welcome to the new rory eliza, avani rory eliza is one of millions of Young Australians recording virtually every moment of their lives to get famous on tiktok. Rory get ready with me for a date. Yo, i chose an outfit. Lets go, transition, yeah. So i think every young kids dream is to, you know, be successful online. So, i think theres definitely a group where they all justthey all want to be influencers cause its kind of like the in thing now. And i think thats because of tiktok. Avani tiktok has been downloaded more than 3 billion times around the world. Its become a cultural phenomenon. Female you know, im 21 and just learned how to do my own laundry. Female some tomatoes and some cheese. Male dude, no, youre going to go like, like, aye. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. Aye. Avani everything is about going viral. A dance started by someone in their living room and uploaded to tiktok can turn into a stadium full of people performing it in unison. Rory i like how creative you can be on it. Like, its just so fun to go on that app and just express your real self. Avani rory started posting comedic skits on tiktok, and her following snowballed. Rory no worries, ill scan that one right through for you right now. Avani this was her first viral video. It got nearly 14 million views. Rory how about some peking duck . Rory oh yeah, but we actually dont have the peking duck, but weve got the snake and goose. Rory what an odd name. Rory it is pretty normal for a book. Avani in 2019, rory decided to leave school to become a fulltime tiktoker. Rory wait, wait. Is this a library . Rory school was just one of those things i just was not good at. I decided to leave school when i was in year 11, and i was never there, you know. I was always in sydney doing meetings or presentations for tiktok, and i just wasnt there. And when i would come to school, i would have no idea what were doing cause, you know, ive been away for heaps of days. Rory no worries at all, thanks for coming to our library. Daniel school, you can go back and do it at tafe. You can go back anytime and do it if you need it, but you may never get this opportunity again. So, we just thought it was worth leaving school and pursuing all the Business Opportunities while they were there for her. Rory no worries at all, thanks for coming to our library. Avani how do you feel about the fact that 5 Million People are watching her content . Daniel oh, its incredible. Its evenwhen she goes live. There was a time she went live, and she had 22,000 people watching her in her room, and i justi, sort of, my mind goes back to elton john concert here, and she had more people watching her than we had at that elton john concert. And kind of, wow, thats happening in my daughters bedroom at the moment. It was a bit, yeah, different. Hey, baby. Avani big fashion and cosmetic brands started noticing rorys success on tiktok and wanted to tap into her growing audience. Youre so powerful. Powerful. Avani companies sponsor influencers like rory, and businesses pay tiktok to advertise on the platform. This is central to the apps lucrative Business Model. Rory in this work industry, being an influencer, you have to present yourself as a brand. You know, we arent really people anymore, were brands. Were selling products for brands. So, you kind of got to look the part. The money involved, its enough to live off. So its a pretty fair amount. Im in the medium to high range of incomes in australia, so yeah, very, very decent. Daniel its hard not to even be jealous sometimes because you look at our life and you know we get up and we go to work, and we come home, and she can earn money that can take us days to earn in minutes. Rory i found myself driving and just crying, having like a total breakdown, and i found myself having some really quite nasty thoughts. Avani rory shares her life with five Million People, even her lowest moments. Rory why am i meant to be on this earth . Like, why does no one like me . Why do i have no friends . Avani but most days, she feels very alone. Rory okay, thats rory being away from people, its definitely lonely, you know. I film four videos a day. Thats a good three hours in my day, and then ive got another eight hours, and im like, what the heck am i going to do for the rest of the day . Like i cant ring up my friends like, yall want to hang out . cause theyre at work. So it definitely gets lonely at times, and, you know, sometimes if youre reading the hate comments and the stress load, it can be so much for your body, and youre just overwhelmed, and youre lonely. So that can also creep into depression. Male catherine hasnt had a question. Im happy to return to you but lets keep it civil. Andrew. Catherine yeah, yeah, yeah. Avani with people stuck at home during lockdown desperate for entertainment, tiktok became the worlds most downloaded app in 2020. And its continued to hold that title this year. Dr. Bondy kaye tiktok in australia has seen the same kind of bump in 2020 as elsewhere in the world. In october 2020, there were an estimated 2. 5 million users on tiktok, which was about a 50 growth from earlier on in the year. Avani of the popular social media apps, tiktok is the most addictive. Leaked tiktok advertising data shows users spend an average of an hour and a half on the app each day. Rory you know its like 8 p. M. , and im watching and watching, and then ill look up at my clock, and its 2 a. M. , and im like, where the heck did those hours go . Its cause the something for you page is so addictive, and its just so spot on. Avani tiktoks algorithm is its most valuable asset. Its designed to determine your interests and send you personalized content to keep you on the app for as long as possible. Female i went and saw my mama, and i went and got my hair done as well. Bondy tiktok works by recommending content to you through your activity on the app. So, the more that you scroll through the app, the better the recommendations are tailored to your specific interests. Rather than selecting content that you want to watch, like you would on youtube or on netflix, you primarily access content through one main feed, which is called the for you page on tiktok, which is essentially just an endlessly scrolling, algorithmically curated feed of videos that refreshes each time you open the app. Avani as soon as you sign up to tiktok, the app starts collecting data about you, your location, gender and age and also your facial data to figure out who you are and what kind of videos you want to see. Niels your face is a form of biometric information, and your face can be analyzed to distinguish a range of personality and demographic traits. Avani tiktok collects your facial data every time you make a video or use a filter on the app and can even access photos and videos saved on your phone that arent being used on the platform. To understand how an app like tiktok interprets that data, scientists in melbourne have developed whats called a biometric mirror. Niels so biometric mirror, for instance, is trained by way of Artificial Intelligence to distinguish how intelligent you are, how attractive, how weird, how responsible and how emotionally unstable you are. The interesting thing there is, of course, that biometric mirror bases its assumptions on a single snapshot of your face. So all of these assumptions are generated based on the exact appearance of your face at that exact microsecond that the photo has been taken. The tiktok algorithm might read your face and think that you are dealing with a Significant Mental Health challenge. You might be presented with videos that are created by users going through a similar challenge at that time, and it might really create a very colored worldview for you, where its really hard to deal with your Mental Health challenge at that time. Avani Lauren Hemmings is studying to be a midwife. She used to spend her uni breaks scrolling through tiktok. Lauren hemmings i think it was quarantine boredom that kind of motivated me to download it. It was quite an innocent hope of just getting a good laugh, really, you know, like getting funny videos and seeing what was on it. I never had the intention of making tiktoks or sharing them. It was more just kind of from the viewpoint of, yeah, the viewer. Avani lauren started following a popular fitness influencer on the app. Lauren theres one woman who had, like, quite a similar body type to me. And shed expressed that she was unhappy with that body type. And she had started tracking calories over quarantine. She had lost a really, really significant amount of weight. Avani the algorithm then flooded her feed with content promoting unhealthy weight loss. Lauren i was no longer seeing funny dance videos or anything. It was just like this complete focus on that, like, fitness and Healthy Lifestyle goal. Avani tiktok pushed lauren toward the popular trend of meticulously tracking how many calories you eat in a day. Something researchers warn promotes disordered eating. The hashtag what i eat in a day has more than 7 billion views on tiktok. Lauren it turned into, like, this obsession, and i felt that i could not eat anything without knowing how many calories it contained and without meeting, you know, my target number of calories throughout the day. There was a few months where i didnt put anything into my mouth that i had not weighed. Avani four months after downloading tiktok, lauren admitted to her friends and family she had an eating disorder. Lauren id like to think that i wouldnt have struggled with an eating disorder if i hadnt downloaded tiktok. I think, you know, tiktok was the main contributor to the development of that. Avani young users are increasingly turning to tiktok to find and spread information on how to restrict food and hide their disordered eating from their families. Dr. Suku sukunesan what they do is they actually share content of what they go through and what they have done for the day in the fascination to become thin. So, they would share recipes, they would share diet plans, they would share how you need to be disciplined. For someone whos vulnerable and desperate, they would follow anyones advice. None of this advice is actually good because some of this advice is, oh, lick a pumpkin for your lunch, but dont eat. Drink a liter of water, and you should be fine. Claire benstead i was super hesitant to go on tiktok because id heard that it was a really bad space for people with eating disorders because the algorithm knows everything, and then it would curate your feed to be interested in that kind of stuff. Avani Claire Benstead has been in and out of hospital for anorexia for more than five years. She decided to download tiktok to find support and to promote her earrings business. Claire you want that support because its such an isolating illness, and theres so many people in my life that dont get it and dont understand it. Avani claire says the tiktok algorithm identified she had an eating disorder, and she noticed an immediate change to the types of videos on her feed. Claire so it went from being, you know, my algorithm was, you know, australian humor and Musical Theatre humor and all of that kind of stuff, to just being eating disorder content all the time. And as i got sicker and i got more obsessive, all i could do was just flick through my phone and look at this footage. I spent hours on it and just fixated on it. I wasnt recovering at all. I was actively relapsing. Avani claire was admitted to hospital. As part of her treatment, her psychologists worked with her to remove the toxic content from her tiktok feed by unfollowing accounts and reporting videos. How long did it actually take you to get rid of that eating disorder content from your algorithm . Claire ages, pretty much being in hospital, so probably took two months it took me to change the algorithm. When youre kind of scrolling through like this avani even while claire was showing me her cleaned up tiktok feed, videos about eating disorders began reappearing. Claire there we go, heres one right now, just every five or six videos, and so im in a good spot that this doesnt trigger me. Avani so even though youre saying not interested, its still coming up . Claire its still coming up. Avani if you report tiktok videos, the company says its moderators then decide whether to ban them, which in turn is supposed to teach the algorithm to stop featuring them. Claire yeah, i just say that im not interested in it. Avani tiktoks policies say, the app bans content promoting, normalizing, or glorifying eating disorders. Claire and you can say that its offensive. Avani but when users like claire have reported those videos, they were told they dont breach any guidelines. Claire you would think that, you know, something this serious, and its got the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, you would think that that would be something that you could report because it is promoting those behaviors and its making it worse. Avani tiktok also says it bans proeating disorder hashtags, so users cant search for those videos. And if they try to, a number for eating Disorder Support Service the Butterfly Foundation automatically pops up. But users find ways around it. Claire but the issue is now that its everevolving. Like theres a hashtag now that people with eating disorders use, and you would never guess that it was an eating disorder hashtag. Like its after a famous singer. Theyre just changing them to be completely irrelevant from what an eating disorder is, and so its so hard to escape now, and i think its really hard for tiktok to keep up with it all. Bondy there are mechanisms in place to screen some of that content, but a lot of it is also reliant on human moderation. And when you consider the amount of videos and the volume that is being uploaded to tiktok, its a very difficult task to imagine human moderators can catch everything. Avani last year, tiktok established a council of outside experts to advise the company about content moderation. David polgar is one of them. David as we know, with great power comes great responsibility. Theres a lot of power in tiktoks algorithm. Therefore you have to constantly be aware of how its impacting other individuals and other communities. I think comparably speaking, tiktok has, has done a pretty decent job with being more reflective on rabbit holes and how that can affect individuals. But at the same time, youre dealing with human behavior. Youre dealing with bad actors. Youre dealing with major differences of how people define appropriate versus inappropriate, and we have this tricky kind of balancing act thats constantly happening. Avani tiktoks Business Model is built on creating a fun, glossy, and glamorous version of the world. And the company has been found to strictly control content that doesnt fit with that image. In march last year, tiktok policy documents were leaked showing content moderators were instructed to suppress posts by creators considered ugly, poor, or disabled. The documents said videos including people who are chubby or obese, with ugly facial looks like too many wrinkles or facial deformities, and other disabilities should be excluded. Tiktok has said it no longer engages in these practices. Rory i dont want to admit it, but looks have a lot to do with it, and, you know, were all secretly a bit vain as much as you dont want to admit it, you go for looks over no looks, you know. So, i think looks definitely have a lot to do with it. And if you look at all the really bigtime influencers, theyre all beautiful. Like, if you look at all these influencers, theyre all stunning, like nothing wrong with them. So, i think looks definitely have a lot to do with it. Like this. Like this. Avani much of tiktoks popularity is driven by dance trends choreographed by black creators and then copied by white influencers. But black content makers say that the platform actively discriminates against them. Female think its high time we let black women on this app also be famous for doing the bare minimum. Like i should be able to just sit here in silence and let yall look at me. And the next thing you know, i have a million followers. Female petition for black people for the rest of april to stop talking. Bondy there have been instances of blackcreatorled mass walkoffs from the platform, called blackouts, where, on a certain day, black creators will stop using the platform or will urge other creators to leave the platform because of tiktoks inaction and failure to respond to or engage with some of the criticisms and the discourse that black creators have raised. So, if the Company Continues to be reactive and responsive rather than proactive and really meaningfully engage, then these issues are going to continue to occur. Unice often, it makes me quite furious, i guess, cause its like these black creators, they got talent. Theyre out here, dancing and showing what theyre capable of. So its kind of very much disappointing and hard on us when were out here expected to have all of these in order to get the views, in order to get the likes and the shares. But no matter how much we try, were just not going to get that. Avani unice wani is an 18yearold tiktok creator from perth. Unice i like this one. Look and see. I feel like the more i go viral, the more i can basically show the Younger Generation and show more colored girls, i guess, or people out there, like, im okay in my own skin. I love myself the way i am. I dont care what social media says about me, what people on the other side of the screen says about me. You can be yourself at the end of the day. Unice let me quickly address this. Avani as her following grew, so did the hateful comments, and she decided to confront the issue on the app. Unice so a majority of you guys still feel the need to comment about my skin color and about how dark i am, and about how black, black, black, black i am. Well, guess what . Im black, and im so proud. Avani unice says often her videos are hidden or muted from the tiktok feed, meaning few people see them, a practice known as shadow banning. Unice are you stressed . Are you mad . Are you upset . Are you sad . Sorry, what . Unice i guess you tend to get a lot of shadow bans for speaking up about stuff such as racism and stuff. You could mention one words, black, say all of this, and your video could get shadow banned. When you post a video, the video just, its on the app. Its just, youre not going to get any views for it. So you can see it, its just other people cant see it when they go onto your account as well. So its up there, its just its not going to gain you views. Avani last year, tiktok creators noticed the algorithm was suppressing posts with the hashtag black lives matter or george floyd. Male so, word on the street is that tiktok has banned the black lives matter hashtag. Avani one of those creators was sydney man, paniora nukunuku, who had created a video using a pool table to explain the black lives matter issue to australians. Paniora nukunuku this is a white australia table, and they pretty much had a 200year head start, and they established everything in the country, so their break looks like this. Bro, can you get homeownership in and business . Paniora beautiful. Paniora that was spicy. That blew up bigger than i thought it would. Paniora i just need to put this here. Male wait, what the . Paniora dont worry. Its trauma, injustice, and discrimination, but i said sorry, so it should be fine, just go for it, bro. Paniora it was the biggest video at the time that ive done. I dont know why. Oh, i do know why, because it was good. I shouldnt look at the camera, but im just really proud right now. Paniora using these two cueballs, ill explain to you paniora that resulted in my account getting banned for, like, seven days, i dont know why. They claimed that my video breached community guidelines, which is extremely vague because there is no swearing. There is no explicit language. Theres no nudity or explicit, like, sexual stuff, none of that, and my account got banned. Female the black lives matter is trending on tiktok, which is ironic considering how much time tiktok spends silencing the voices of black creators. Avani tiktok apologized for suppressing hashtags referring to black lives matter, blaming a glitch in the algorithm. Female lets take a moment of silence for this man. Bondy the company responded with a new initiative for black creators called the tiktok black creator program. Ive spoken to creators who had been approached for that program, who felt that it was lip service. It wasnt really a wellmeaning effort to engage with black voices and engage with discourse that is important to black communities. Avani paniora has more than 180 thousand followers on tiktok. He often posts about living with a disability. Paniora so, growing up with a fake leg, i always got in trouble every time i parked in my disabled spot. Paniora the first video i did was me going up to a pool and telling my friend to record me dip my fake leg in the water to test the water out. It was a really dumb idea, but for some reason, people loved it, and in the space of eight hours, it hit about 780,000 views. Paniora if you have this many followers and that many likes, its cause youre pretty. If you have this many followers and the same amount of likes, youre just funny. Avani paniora ran into trouble with the tiktok censors when he posted a video of a confrontation with someone who was telling him he shouldnt have a disability permit. Paniora so this old lady had the nerve to ask me if this is my disability card. This. I wonder if this is enough . Avani the video was taken down. Tiktok said it breached the Apps Community guidelines. Paniora appealed, and it was put back up, but hes had other videos about his disability removed as well. Paniora the video got taken down, and i didnt even know it until i looked back at the hashtags and sites to see which videos that ive done have, like, made it to the top, and that wasnt there. I appealed it, and i dont know why that was taken down. Paniora dont ever do that again. Paniora do i feel like tiktoks being racist . I dont know. Has tiktok been hit up in the past around their moderators being told to limit the exposure of disabled people and ugly people . Yes. Theyve been called out on that. Is this happening again . I hope not, but it definitely feels like it has. Female we know that to decolonize palestine means also to decolonize paniora ill follow you, if you move, i can get some shots. Avani in may this year, paniora posted a video from a propalestine rally, but tiktoks algorithm flagged it, and it was instantly taken down. Other creators posting tiktoks about palestine have said theyve experienced the same thing. Weight on the shoulder. Paniora when tiktok started removing my videos about the protest in regards to the palestine situation, i was furious. I was like, why . There is nothing in these videos that will justify, like, a removal, there really isnt. Fergus ryan one of the big problems with tiktok and the unique nature of its opaque algorithm is that its very difficult to understand or to recognize when censorship is taking place. Female people came together. Fergus so, it is possible for content on the app to be promoted or demoted without anyone knowing. Female im so sick and tired of every social media platform silencing palestinian voices. Fergus but we also see evidence of how content moderation that takes place in china, how that type of thinking is still applied to tiktok outside of china. Avani tiktok is owned by a chinese startup, bytedance, which is believed to be worth more than 250 billion dollars. Its heavily regulated by the chinese government, and theres a communist Party Internal committee in bytedance, which ensures the partys Political Goals are pursued alongside the companys. Fergus we have to be extra concerned about how apps like tiktok can be used as a vector for censorship and surveillance
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.