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With exactly
10 days until the presidential election, social media platforms have
been working to get their content moderation ducks in a row. The new kid
on the block, TikTok, is fighting a unique battle as it tries to stay “apolitical” in the lead-up to the election.
Is that even possible?
Yes, and no. TikTok has never
allowed political ads, and no major U.S. politician has a TikTok
account (even if a dance battle might speed up stimulus talks). The
platform has attempted to cultivate an apolitical reputation...mostly
because it has to.
- Despite the White
House’s efforts, TikTok is still owned by Chinese tech company
ByteDance, an arrangement that’s raised data privacy concerns. So it’s
“fighting this public relations campaign that other social platforms
haven’t had to in the same way,” Laura Garcia, a counter-disinformation
journalist, told the Financial Times.
But like that one uncle at Thanksgiving
TikTok’s users just won’t stay out of politics. In June, TikTokers were at the center
of a “mass false-registration drive” responsible for thousands of empty
seats at a Trump rally in Tulsa, per the NYT. And videos with political
hashtags like #Trump2020 and #Biden2020 have been attracting views
faster than people can Google “what’s a D'amelio”: #Biden2020 had only
1.9 million views in February; now it has over 3.8 billion.
TikTok’s
attempts to depoliticize itself while its users flood the platform with
political content is an issue that its competitors have been dealing
with for years.
But TikTok has taken aggressive steps to root out harmful content,
removing around 322,000 videos in the first half of the year for
violating its policies against hate speech, and banning hashtags related
to the QAnon conspiracy theory a month before Facebook took any
action.
Bottom line:
TikTok is ~special~ when it comes to conversations around election
integrity because of its connections to China, as well as its
algorithm’s uncanny ability to create viral moments.
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I AM A REPUBLICAN BORN AND BRED
IN AMERICA .I BELIEVE IN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.I SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
MAJORED IN GEOLOGY AND MUSIC AND WENT TO ANGELO STATE IN SAN ANGELO, TEXAS
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