#86: Birds are real
...and now get me that Pigeon Clutch Bag
Hello.
This is Understanding TikTok. Your TikTok resource. My name is Marcus. I am still on vacation but here are some curated summer news for you. Next newsletter around August 5.
Today we talk about:
🤺 Fighting Conspiracy Theories
🚴 TikTok: Dominance, News and Search
🤸 I feel too young
🤺 Fighting Conspiracy Theories
Let’s shortly agree that birds are real. Thanks. Because Birds Aren't Real is a satirical conspiracy theory claiming that birds are mechanized surveillance drones disguised as living organisms. Here is the merch. And here is the fashion industry trying to turn momentum into $890.
Conspiracy theories have always existed, but the era of social media has taken the spread of disinformation (intentional) and misinformation (unintentional) to another level. There are endless variations from creepy conspiracy theories (Bebop and Bebe) to crazy and dangerous ones (Covid conspiracy). You will find most of them on Abbie Richardson’s Conspiracy Chart.
Richardson together with Professor Karen Douglas and others has now helped to set up a publication as the outcome of an “Anti-conspiracy theories on TikTok” project, implemented within the framework of the Bosch Alumni Network and the Green European Foundation. You can find the PDF here, including a helpful resources toolbox with a bunch of links.
🚴 TikTok: Dominance, News and Search
TikTok’s dominance is now expanding into news and search (Social Media Today). Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, noted that younger users were now often turning to Instagram and TikTok, instead of Google’s apps, for discovery purposes: In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.
TikTok is the fastest growing news source for UK adults, according to Ofcom’s annual report on news consumption in the UK (Guardian): Nearly half of people using it for current affairs turn to fellow TikTokers rather than conventional news organisations for their updates.
Despite TikTok’s growth in the UK as a news source, it appears to lag the US. A quarter of US adults say they always use TikTok to get the news, with nearly half of US millennial and Gen Z adults – under-41s and under-25s respectively – indicating the same, according to the analysis firm Forrester Research. And: Kids and teens are now spending more time watching videos on TikTok than on YouTube (Techcrunch).
TikTok will surpass Meta Platforms’ Facebook when it comes to the amount of money advertisers spend on influencer marketing in the U.S. by the end of this year and will beat out YouTube by 2024 according to a new forecast from Insider Intelligence (The Information).
🤸I feel too young
Beyonce is here (The Verge). Victoria Beckham is here (Vogue). Justin Timberlake is here now too (We got this covered). They probably did not get the memo: Influencers over the age of 30 are warned to 'stay off TikTok' because they're TOO OLD and the users are 'absolutely brutal' (Daily Mail)
Well. What can you do. Maybe you check out Unbothered Kev. Or wave your hands in the air like you don't care (Cameo). I will further consult with Drew Barrymore, Anthony Hopkins and Madonna.
Quote of the week
The problem with TikTok is not its aggressive data collection – or, if it is, it’s not a problem unique to TikTok. Surveillance capitalism is almost a cliche at this point, but download any random game from the Android App Store and you’ll find a similar level of data being harvested in order to enable the targeted advertising that monetises the service.
Alex Hern (Guardian) – after the publication of a very thin report with a lot of not that alarming findings concerning TikTok.
What else?
🐦 Soft propaganda. I learned about the term in this thread about a new TikTok account from a North Korean tour guide turned-influencer. Quote:” an employee of a Chinese North Korean state-sponsored tour company is pretending to be an independent influencer while producing propaganda videos that are being viewed millions of times by Western youth, just in the past week.”
🐦 Gifts for strangers. There are thousands of “random acts of kindness” videos on the social media platform, with billions of views globally. Dr Crystal Abidin, a digital anthropologist at Curtin University, says viewers of these viral videos benefit “at the expense of the receiver”, who is usually positioned in a less positive light.
🐦 TikTok is big on natural birth control. What could go wrong, asks Mel Magazine (right before the entire staff was layed off): “The platform obliterates all differences of credentials or expertise, so that it’s rarely clear if you’re listening to, say, a registered nurse or a holistic guru.”
🐦 Prominent tourist and religious sites in Nepal are putting up “No TikTok” signs to keep creators from shooting at the premises (rest of world). Of course they do. “TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in Nepal. A nationwide 2022 survey showed a dramatic rise in the number of TikTok users in the country: the number of respondents with internet access who reported using TikTok jumped from 3% to over 55% in just two years”
🐦 Christian Fascist Propaganda Is All Over TikTok, writes Vice: TikTok has a growing online subculture that’s propping up surging Christian nationalist and Christo-fascist ideology in the United States and beyond.
🐦 “I was ADDICTED to TikTok tarot and relied on it for every PROBLEM.” Well not me. But Input has a story on The dark side of TikTok tarot. I am basically posting this here because i saw some beautiful Tarot cards in a museums shop and just did not buy them because a friend of mine said: Do not do it. Sounded rather mysterious.
🐦 Pink Sauce (Techcrunch). You do not necessarily need to know about that, do you?!
15 months after having read and having – again and again – recommended Kyle Chayka’s New Yorker article TikTok and the vibes revival i finally managed to read A theory of vibe by Peli Grietzer. Understood probably half of it. But enjoyed reading it a lot.
NPC means Non-Player Character e.g. in video games.
