#117: No, TikTok will not make you 17% more antisemitic every 30 minutes
Data, charts and collective campaigning
Hi!
You are reading Understanding TikTok. My name is Marcus. I am an Internet researcher at HAW Hamburg, investigating TikTok. Thanks for a lot of great feedback in recent days. Very much appreciated. This is yet another monothematic edition. Hope you have a great weekend. I’ll be back with TikTok Trends 2023 and more.
Antisemitism and Agenda Setting
Yes, there is antisemitism on TikTok. I have written about it (#60, #64, #68, #107, #109). And in a recent report researchers at the ADL Center for Tech and Society have found that bad actors appear to be sidestepping TikTok’s moderation policies to spread antisemitic content through slideshows (Photo Mode) and hashtags.
But watching TikTok is not “making people ‘17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas’ every 30 minutes” as Republican presidential contender and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley claimed during a recent Republican presidential primary debate (Guardian). If what Haley described was accurate a TikTok user’s antisemitism would double in just 6.5 hours, visualized by Marketwatch in a chart called Haley’s rule on TikTok usage and antisemitism.
Haley is referring to a recent survey that has gained traction due to a tweet (3.7 M views) by investor and CEO of data scientist community Kaggle Anthony Goldbloom. Apart from her misstating the survey’s results the survey is very limited and does not allow to come to such bold conclusions.
Unfortunately most journalists have cited this “study” without checking the data provided on Github. While the provided charts may look and feel scientific at first glance (charts!) the data is pretty limited as it is based on one (!) survey. If you want to identify a change in opinions you at least need to have two surveys on a timeline to compare the before and the after.
🚨 UPDATE
“When you go question by question in the raw data, TikTok users are actually *less* likely to hold antisemitic or anti-Israel views” tweets journalist J.D. Capelouto who was among the very few who checked the raw data and wrote about it for Semafor.
Generation Lab (who conducted the survey) told Semafor (Is TikTok driving antisemitism? Firm that ran viral survey didn’t reach that conclusion) that it didn’t conduct the analysis that went viral in the last week, create the graphic, or reach the widely shared conclusion about TikTok — it only conducted the interviews and turned over the raw survey data to Goldbloom…. Goldbloom confirmed he did the analysis himself, by comparing how non-users of TikTok, Instagram, and the combined audience of X and Threads answered questions about Israel and Jewish people. 🚨
Goldbloom’s tweet and the chart appear to be part of a broader US based campaign against TikTok (compare #112) utilizing anti-semitism accusations in the already heated discourse around Israel-Hamas reinforcing societal divide (e.g. Hollywood). Goldbloom afterwards re-tweeted Libs of TikTok a far-right and anti-LGBT social-media account operated by Chaya Raichik. And it is striking that his tweet quickly became a talking point for a Republican presidential primary debate.
From Jewish celebrities like Sacha Baron Cohen accusing TikTok of “Creating {the} Biggest Antisemitic Movement Since the Nazis” to former Australian security adviser John Garnaut claiming that China can use TikTok to ‘radically reshape’ global opinion and conservative media declaring that TikTok is 'creating a radical young movement' in the US – the public debate is loud, shrill and not well informed. Just like most debates on the platform that are criticized all the time.
More
🕯️ Judge Halts TikTok Ban in Montana (New York Times) – “Montana’s Legislature and attorney general were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers”
🕯️ Alibaba's 'Animate Anyone' Is Trained on Scraped Videos of Famous TikTokers (404 Media)
🕯️ Gaza and the Future of Information Warfare (Foreign Affairs)
🕯️ Israel-Palestine on TikTok Livestreams (New Yorker)
🕯️ TikTok Struggles to Take Down Deepfake Videos of Hamas’ Victims (Bloomberg)
🕯️ Using TikTok to drive young people to the news (ijnet)
🕯️ TikTok’s biggest hits are videos you’ve probably never seen (The Verge)
🕯️ TikTok parent ByteDance is launching an AI development platform (TubeFilter)
🕯️ Why TikTok is dangerously good at making you spend money (La Times)
🕯️ Millennial Core (Business Insider)
🕯️ An Epic TikTok Love Story Is Revolutionizing the Rom-Com (Daily Beast)
Speak soon. Ciao…