Same shit happened here in Finland too, our extremist right wing party is very active on TikTok and the under 25's voted for them in droves. That generation is more conservative than Millennials or even younger Gen X, which is a bit fucked up. Especially young men and boys have gone off the deep end
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Unfortunately true for a lot of European countries. It's easy to post a 20 second video about "foreigners bad" and kids with the attention span of a gnat will eat it right up. A longer video that explains why things really are the way they are will get swallowed by the algorithm. It just amplifies populism and outrage and will be one of the great hurdles to overcome this century.
Honestly I think we're thoroughly fucked at this point
We could force control of Tik Tok's algorithm to be managed by a United States entity. You know, basically what China does to US businesses who want to sell product in China.
If they don't want that, they could let Google serve wikipedia articles about Tienanmen Square again lol.
I'm not entirely convinced putting the US in charge of it would make things any better. It's not like eg. Facebook or Twitter aren't full of reich wing bullshit on purpose
It's a fair point. Frankly, considering where I am, I think America's social media should really be forced to engage with some kind of open federation standard (doesn't have to be activity pub) as I think it better reflects how the United States itself is designed as a republic. That feels like a long shot, but it's the dream.
We could just ban personalized algorithms altogether
Is China tailoring the content to politics or are political influencers just better at pandering to people with blatant lies. Either way tiktok and other social networks should have more controls in place to filter misinformation but I'm curious if the affect is intentional or incidental.
Is China tailoring the content to politics or are political influencers just better at pandering...
It's hard to say without proof so I won't pretend to know the answer. What I do know is that, if the roles were reversed, China would 100% believe that any movement that caused chaos within the country was somehow orchestrated by the United States as that's what they've done in the past. So, until we have a hospitable relationship where the countries see eye to eye on any social issues, it really doesn't make sense for either control to have the keys to a popular social media network in the other -- if you get my drift. I will also say that promotional programs of games and movies from China, like the recent Wukong controversy, highlights that China very much believes in pushing their political narrative to the degree that it would be hard to imagine them not using it with a widely popular social media network like Tik Tok.
This is where federation is smart though -- the content is dispersed enough that the idea of removing a server is less daunting and there are fewer entities that are too big to fail.
If it's any consolation
But that battle is a tough one for Republicans, given Gen Z voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats over Republicans in the midterms by 27 points — and prioritized protecting abortion access by a higher amount than any other generation, according to SocialSphere's survey data.
I suspect the kids, as a whole, are alright. Not that we shouldn't take this seriously, but we don't have to start planning our funerals yet.
Hmm, I wonder if Gen Z's politics are different over there compared to here, because at least in Finland the 2. most popular parties they voted for were a right wing extremist party and a "fiscally conservative" party that is essentially indistinguishable from the extremist one (the joke is that the way to tell them apart is that the "fiscal conservatives" wear more expensive suits.) Sure, many do also vote for eg. the Left Alliance who are democratic socialists, but on the whole the generation is more conservative than the older ones
Not sure, but I can say from personal experience here that, while right-wing parties are less popular amongst Gen Z, the right-wingers that are in Gen Z tend to be very political, not just casually political, and more extreme than your average Joe Schmoe conservative. Might be a contributor.
Yeah it's the same here, they and the younger gens have apparently gotten very polarized; the ones who are "good eggs" are really decent folks, and the shitty ones are really shitty.
So while the extremist reich wing party PS (Perussuomalaiset or "Finns Party", because naturally only a nationalist wank is a real Finn) was their most popular party, as a proportion of their cohorts more young people voted for the Left Alliance than older ones did. Here's a handy table from our 2023 parliamentary elections (source):
- KOK: National Coalition Party, fiscally conservative
- PS: Finns Party, extremist right wing
- SDP: Social Democrat, liberal / marginally left
- KESK: Centre Party, what it says on the tin
- VAS: Left Alliance, democratic socialists
- VIHR: Green League, liberal & green
- SFP: Swedish People's Party, right wing
- KD: Christian Democrats, nearly as bad as PS
- LIIK: Movement Now, nominally center right but about as right wing as KOK
Actually based on that study the claim that gen Z is more conservative than older gens doesn't seem to hold up. Seems like they're about as conservative, but also more likely to vote Left
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For a couple of generations at the very least, yeah.
we were before. we have reached the part: "divide and rule".
thats the same for adults. makes no difference.
It's the same everywhere because the far right are actively trying to manipulate people and get then into "the pipeline" while the left don't have a coordinated propaganda campaign.
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No shit. Social media is spreading ruzzian propaganda like the plague.
And the people in power don’t seem to give a shit.
They might care more, if they understood any of it.
Yeah, here in Germany, most politicians don't really like to engage with digital topics at all and flat out refuse to use the internet. Which explains why my country has the worst internet in Western Europe by far.
What could there even be on the internet? They have much better things to do. Do y’all have exclusive clubs over there for rich white men to schmooze, and sit around in leather chairs smoking cigars?
It's quite logical even. Right-wing answers are short, simple and spoken with certainty. That's great for a half-minute clip. Answers grounded in reality are complex, require proof and have some uncertainty. That's not gonna fit in there, or, at the very least, you need an outstanding communicator.
No matter the age, most people stick just with what they hear most often.
Right-wing answers are short, simple and spoken with certainty.
"Every problem out there has a very simple, but equally wrong solution"
Do Flat Earth and/or religious apologetics do well on TikTok?
Kind of? I remember a statistic about pseudo-science being more popular with younger generations. Energy healing, healing stones and all that other homeopathic bullshit. Assuming that is indeed correct, Flat Earth is likely more popular too.
It probably does okay simply by virtue of being so stupid, there aren't many people in their right mind producing videos about the earth being round to drown them out.
It's good that some refute their points just for fun.
Of course younger generations are more likely to believe in pseudo science, they haven't yet learned that they are bullshit. Once they get older and have more experience with detecting bullshit, it's popularity should decline.
Maybe, but I think it will remain more popular than before. Let's say there are 10% of people in any given group who would theoretically believe bullshit - the number is chosen randomly. Thanks to stuff like TikTok they are way more likely to come into contact with lots of different bullshit to believe in than ever before.
Kind of like how Republicans would be more popular if everyone would watch Fox News every day.
Wait, a Chinese government tool is spreading anti democracry propaganda?!?! SHOCKING!!
Bad headline. Should have titled as 'AfD is better at promotion on tiktok' or something of that sort
Many first timers on Tiktok report that the first thing they see is this nazi crap right after registration. This is not normal.
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exactly. even i can make videos in tik tok for my "ritalin is better than alcohol " party. takes 5 minutes.
One reason could be that a network of well-connected right-wing influencers on TikTok share AfD content and help amplify it, according to Verwiebe. Another could be that the majority of AfD candidates, more than any other party, are themselves active on the platform.
I have another: It's in the financial interest of Tiktok to promote an extremist party with extreme neoliberal views in order to make more profit.
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I live over there, so :
young people are not the voting demographic, give me a break.
as if all those village inbreds aged 30 - 90 would go on tik tok.
and IF all these people ware watching nazi ads on tik took:
so what? they certainly don't read the newspapers, and the democratic partys won't try to make them better offerings anyway. because all these convincing offerings would consist of more infrastructure, more public transport, more wages, better future prospects. and what have you.
but thats far to expensive, and is not at all what the democartic centrist parties are doing right know. so they CAN'T bring the voter better arguments and offerings.
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If only it was limited to TikTok. YouTube always recommends me those right shit videos, just because I'm german. (And no, it's not personalization. I've turned that off, and it seems to work, YouTube doesn't recommend me anything similar to the stuff that I actually watch.)
And if I didn't know that and how those right populists want to manipulate me, I would have long been radicalized already. There are just too many gullible people. Ads work for them, classical populism works for them, they give nigerian princes their money, they believe in superstition, why would anyone think voters were suddenly at least borderline resistent against populism?
i am also german, i didnt get those right wing contents. which content are we talking about, by the way`?
have you examples?
Sorry for the late answer. Somehow I got a bad case of demo effect.
For example, under this video I'm getting recommendations such as:
Spoiler
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Not that I needed another reason to dislike TikTok but...
The chairwoman for the AfD, Alice Weidel, worked for the Bank of China. It would not surprise me if she used her connections with the CCP and TikTok to persuade the fucking idiots in Thüringen.
So… wait. Everyone is back to hating TikTok again?
Was it ever any different? People who use it like it and people who don't, hate it.
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