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If you’re getting your news from TikTok you’re as fucked in the head as any lead-addled boomer.
No one should get their news from any one source. You could replace “TikTok” in your sentence with almost any single mass/social media outlet and be correct. I wouldn’t advise anyone to get their news from just Fox, or just X/Twitter, or just MSNBC. Edit: Also, multiple major news organizations have TikTok accounts, and a lot of politicians including Biden. Even if you say, “I’d rather get my news from CNN”, well CNN has a TikTok account, but it exists alongside several other journalists, politicians, news outlets etc. TikTok actually has an advantage of being more diverse than many other single-outlet sites.
The blind spots created by funnelling news through a single filter is a big, often desirable feature of mass media conglomerates. Doesn’t matter if it’s CNN, Fox, TikTok, or Facebook - no one source is going to give you the full picture or be completely true all the time. TikTok has value as part of a diverse media in that it bypasses the need for corporate/government approval of discussion. Here’s Bernie Sanders talking about how a handful of corporations control what news makes it to people: “It is the limits of discussion, the kinds of issues that we are allowed to talk about. So I never get asked about income and wealth inequality.”
The meme is as much about hypocrisy as anything. Folks will accept misinformation/bias so long as it’s their brand of it. I mention Facebook for a reason - there are staunch conservatives among my family who post about vaccine hazards, LGBTQ+ agendas, how white Christians are persecuted in North America, God’s laws must be our laws, etc. Lawmakers will allow (and in the worst cases support) misinformation on many platforms, but figuring out why and which ones is a different discussion. People seem to accept that bad posts on say, X/Twitter, are something to be worked around without the need for a ban even though there’s vile stuff on there. I’m not arguing for censorship of them (which almost never works out). I’m talking about the clear dissonance in opinion where “this is ok here but needs to be banned here”.
Except tik tok isn’t a news source. It’s a short form video app.
Edit: if anyone wants, I list just a few of the MANY news organizations/journalists on TikTok just below this comment. The idea that TikTok isn’t a platform for news is provably false and I give specific examples.
It’s odd to be told that I’ll get the wrong news from TikTok, then be told it’s not a source of news (albeit by different people). Especially when one of the big arguments against TikTok is that China is using TikTok to put particular news in front of people. A 2-to-3 minute video can contain a lot of news info.
Sure. NPR segments are roughly 4 minutes long.
But how many people on tik tok giving you news are actually journalists and who is funding it? Tik tok is not paying them for their investigations so I assume what you are watching is not actual news but rather commentary on news that was done by journalists.
Top Ten TikTok Journalism Accounts To Follow in 2022 Some of them:
- Winner of the British Journalism Awards Innovation of the Year 2021, Sophia Smith Galer shares on her profile breaking news and fun facts on a wide variety of topics. Her work on TikTok has been highly successful since 2020: she has almost 400.000 followers on the platform.
- Reporters from all over the world share their experience through breathtaking content on nature, science and people on the National Geographic TikTok account. This profile offers some of the most visually appealing videos on the platform.
- One of the most popular news accounts on TikTok remains The Washington Post. The profile offers engaging and creative videos that attracted more than 1.2 Million followers – and will likely keep growing in 2022.
- CNN journalist Max Foster is very active on the platform, where he posts first-hand insights on hot topics – and shows his reporter life behind the scenes. His profile shows one of the best sides of information on TikTok, where he creates a strong connection with his public.
Biden is still campaigning on TikTok. CNN has a TikTok account. I can go on much longer if you aren’t convinced by those many examples of serious journalism on the platform.
Would you say you are more or less informed than the people who read those sources rather than watching what the algorithm says will be most easily monetized for short form video?
I get it. There is too much news and its too expensive to consume all the news you actually need, but I think we can agree that getting the scraps from tik tok is not a long term solution.
I’m not going to agree with your original assertion that TikTok is not a news platform, and I notice you’ve switched from “it isn’t” to “it isn’t ideal”. I know I might eat downvotes the same way I am in all of this thread, but I care more about the excellent examples I’ve provided that prove it is than opinion. I care more about the fact that people ARE using TikTok as a news source to find out about world events and news. I care that organizations like the ACLU are condemning the TikTok ban as closing off avenues of free speech even if it appears some of the folks voting here don’t agree.
While true, I think your statement is misleading. No one should get all their news from one source, but Facebook is particularly bad, and TikTok is many times worse than that again. Facebook will show you the misinformation of the highest bidder. TikTok will do that but also be beholden to the Chinese government. Not sure if the content is worse than that of Fox News or the Daily Mail (that’s a low bar to squeeze in under), but they’re at least sneakier.
With regards to Chinese control/manipulation, I’d like to add that in the course of debate with another person I’ve discovered just today that:
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I can’t locate actual evidence from journalists that shows that TikTok skews results at the behest of China or otherwise. “There is no concrete evidence supporting the idea that political ideas shared on TikTok are more progressive or pro-Palestine than what you find on other platforms or that it skews more progressive than the overall population — with nearly 70 percent of voters now supporting a cease-fire in Gaza. It’s unclear how TikTok’s algorithm handles political content. But one of lawmakers’ greatest concerns is that the platform has offered a new avenue for people to virally spread political messages outside of traditional media.”
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Topics that China REALLY wants censored are freely available on TikTok. Here’s #uyghur on TikTok - the first result at the top is a video about how the world said “never again” after the Holocaust yet now we let it happen to Uyghurs in China. Here’s a video from an account with 1.5 million followers that tests Chinese censorship by going through all of China’s dirty laundry, including Uyghurs, Tibet and political suppression. It has been up since March 13th, has 187,500 likes, and shows up in the first 10 results (so right near the top). There are 42,700 posts that come up with #uyghur and top results are condemnations of China’s genocide.
Saying China doesn’t commit cyberwarfare or propaganda would be a ridiculous position. We should definitely be paying attention to what stands between the public and facts, although that applies to many more platforms than just TikTok. However, people should know the facts of censorship or skewing (China-mandated or otherwise). Burden of proof is on the accusers, and I can’t find said proof. In the case of censorship, what I can easily find first-hand on TikTok itself is evidence that contradicts the claims about banning Uyghurs, Tibet, etc.
Edit: To those downvoting, why? I’m not asking because I need you to justify disagreeing with me. I want to see the evidence I couldn’t find after spending all afternoon looking for actual proof that China maliciously censors TikTok or disproportionately skews results as is being alleged. I stepped up with evidence, please do the same.
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TikTok content is, right now, showing people the truth of how Palestinians are suffering at a time when respected outlets like the New York Times are specifically telling their staff to avoid words like “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and occupied territory". TikTok content is showing the truth of ceasefire/pro-Palestine marches, and Jewish participation in those events, at a time when officials and media outlets are calling them violent and anti-Semitic. Videos on TikTok are providing unfiltered on-site coverage and interviews of the campus protests.
I don’t use TikTok because I hate the format. But I see value in a platform where the general population can share news without it having to get approval from an editor. It’s the same reason I’ve never said Facebook, Twitter/X, etc. should be banned, even when I see there are lots of posts I know are harmful.
It’s an issue of freedom of press/speech in modern times and organizations like the ACLU agree. “We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”
