#134: From Russia With Love
Social Media Superspreaders
Hi.
You are reading Understanding TikTok. My name is Marcus. I spent the nights harmonizing Good luck babe and the days researching, teaching and discussing TikTok. In recent weeks that included presenting at a German security agency, in front of a cardinal and some suffragans, working with dutch and belgian journalists and discussing my research with a bunch of disinformation and war studies researchers. Today we talk about:
⚖️ To ban or not to ban
⚡⚡Nazi Sound Propaganda
🤩 Terminally Online
🪆Russian Propaganda – 2024 Edition
⚖️ To ban or not to ban
Is TikTok really going to be banned in the US? Nobody’s sure (Washington Post). TikTok argued against its U.S. ban in court, September 16 (NPR). TikTok says it's not spreading Chinese propaganda. The U.S. says there's a real risk (NBC). But is the hypothetical risk of Chinese spying through TikTok enough of a national security threat that it justifies a federal law that may infringe on Americans’ constitutional free-speech rights (CNN)? The Justice Department has asked that the three-judge panel issue a ruling by December. Legal experts expect the case to go to the supreme court, with the losing side in the federal court process expected to appeal against the ruling (Guardian).
Meanwhile the support for a U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline, and half of adults doubt it will happen (PEW Research Center).
⚡⚡Nazi Sound Propaganda
ISD researchers were able to find white supremacist content on TikTok (sample of 108 distinct videos uploaded by 75 unique users) within seconds of beginning their research. As they continued searching, the platform recommended more racist content to their accounts. With TikTok promoting search terms that help users evade content moderation (ISD).
Another investigation by the Data and Forensics team of Sky News was able to reveal 50,023 posts using sounds incorporating speeches from Nazis including Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels.The most popular sound made using a Hitler speech viewed by Sky News has been used in over 10,300 videos.
Most of the sounds using Nazi-related audio do not have explicit titles. However, when clicked on they instantly direct users to large numbers of posts using the same soundtrack. In this way, users link extreme content easily while minimising their exposure to moderation.
This practice is applied by other extremist actors on the platform too (#133). Learn more about The Sound of Disinformation in our paper: Bösch, M., & Divon, T. (2024). The sound of disinformation: TikTok, computational propaganda, and the invasion of Ukraine. New Media & Society, 26(9), 5081-5106.
🤩 Terminally Online
The Kamala HQ is doing a good job on TikTok (#132) thanks to ‘feral 25-year-olds’ some working their first jobs - given unfettered freedom to chase whatever they think will go viral (Washington Post).
The team has been experimenting with "content sludge" type ads that show two unrelated videos at the same time. Typically these videos are made for people with attention spans fried by TikTok. Or as 404 puts it: Kamala Harris Campaign Experiments With Ads for an Audience With “Brain Rot”.
Expect to see more of this. It basically just makes sense. Each medium comes with a fluid set of specifics and techniques that need fearless experimentation and evaluation. That is basically it. And then NATO's social team is reacting to @charli_xcx ending brat summer. What can you do?
🪆Russian Propaganda – 2024 Edition
There have been a bunch of leaks, investigations (e.g. DOJ), articles and studies on Russian propaganda and information warfare in the Post-Prigozhin era (Internet Research Agency). To quote Ellul: Propaganda is total. And that encompasses target audiences, platforms, techniques, narratives and all means involved. Why not use the comments sections or memes or or or.
Obviously there has been “a shift in tactics of Russian information operations, suggesting that instead of using bot & troll accounts with limited following, they’ve started supporting social media superspreader accounts with huge reach.” (Pekka Kallioniemi).
Besides these Russian state-affiliated accounts have accelerated their use of TikTok since the start of 2024 (Brookings). And this might be a good time to check again a joint investigation by DFRLab and BBC Verify that revealed a large network of fake TikTok accounts that spanned thousands of videos and hundreds of thousands of subscribers that garnered millions of views (EU Disinfo Lab).
The target audiences of these campaigns are inside and outside Russia, strategies may vary but it is worthwhile to examine different use cases like this investigation by Josef Šlerka and team: How Russian propaganda seeps into Czech TikTok.
And here is a report on Russian TikTok disinformation in Ukraine (Bloomberg) where “Russia is dominating us on TikTok due to the scale” of its operation, Kovalenko, who leads a department under the National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview in Kyiv. “The Russians have begun working systematically on TikTok and are utilizing this platform successfully.”
To find suited answers to this threat it is foremost important to understand specifics and techniques like applying sound and multimodal memes and outsourcing the dissemination through participatory propaganda.
What else?
🎾 Where are all the Black girls on TikTok? (Sage)
🎾 The New Public Intellectuals Are All on TikTok (Cosmpolitan)
🎾 TikTok Live is a strange and dystopian place (Taylor Lorenz)
🎾 Hat TikTok zum Erfolg der Afd beigetragen (Christian Pieter Hoffmann) {in german}
🎾 Medo Halimy is dead (AP)
🎾 Countries with the largest TikTok audience as of July 2024 (Statista)
Thanks for reading. Anyone in Sheffield or Manchester end of October? I am there for AoIR 2024. Just meet me in the alley by the railway station. Ciao