I'm a Mom of four and a conservative politics 'influencer' and writer. All of my kids have Tik Tok accounts. The youngest is almost 18 so they are old enough to make their own decisions about social media. We send funny Tik Toks back and forth to each other and generally Tik Tok is not problematic in our life. We also talk about politics a lot as they are interested in what I write about or what event I am attending. When Israel was terrorized on October 7 and all of the sudden my daughter was being fed Pro 'Free Palestine' content non-stop on her 'for you' page, she came to me to talk about it. It was pretty shocking to me as a parent. Then, it started on my 'for you' page. I realized this was purposeful. (The 'for you' page is supposed to be curated content Tik Tok suggets to the user based on prior likes on other videos).
Will you condemn Hamas? pic.twitter.com/ik0k2eP0to
— Frum TikTok (@FrumTikTok) October 29, 2023
Your kids are being told the slaughter of 1400 souls and the rape and kidnap of many others was 'justified' because eventually people will 'fight back' after they are constantly aggressed. My daughter was shocked to learn Israel left Gaza in 2005. She was also surprised to learn Hamas is a terrorist organization and most of the people in Gaza support Hamas, just like the dumb Americans in this video.
The TikTok War: Why High School & College Kids Are Getting The Wrong Information about Hamas & Israel
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) October 26, 2023
I spent the weekend trying to reverse engineer the TikTok algorithm, as I am convinced this is the reason we're losing the information war with high school & college students.
A reminder that TikTok is business unit of ByteDance, which is controlled by... the Chinese Communist Party.
— A Deer In A Kevlar Vest ☦️. #DeSantis2024 (@rockisland250) October 27, 2023
Creators are taking advantage of the TikTok war narratives (while falsely representing themselves as Israelis & Palestinians) & earning money in a very strange way.@WIRED wrote about a phenomenon I observed for streamers.
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) October 27, 2023
The wild part? TikTok is making money on these… https://t.co/KgiVNv9xyc
"TikTokkers are using a little-known livestreaming feature to falsely represent Israelis and Palestinians—and the company is taking a cut of costly in-app gifts viewers give to participants. One creator plays the role of Israelis and the other that of Palestinians, while encouraging—and often shouting at—their followers to continue to donate expensive gifts. Some of these gifts cost hundreds of dollars each, and several livestreams WIRED observed in recent days have continued for multiple hours without a break. One battle had seen the creator representing Palestinians winning 72 matches in a row. In all of the battles WIRED observed, none of the participants appeared to have any link to the entities they claimed to be representing, and none of them suggested they were planning on donating any of the money earned to the people directly impacted by the current crisis."
Let me try to explain this. People are going live on Tik Tok. You can buy 'coins or 'gifts' using your credit or debit card and you get this currency in your Tik Tok account. During these live streams, you can 'gift' your coins to the people performing and then they get paid by TIk Tok (Tik Tok takes a service fee). So, instead of acting out cops and robbers, these people are acting out 'Israel and Palestine' and people give the gifts to see which side wins based on the most donations. Yes, this is really happening.
“When I engaged with one post on TikTok supporting opposing views, my entire feed became…” this is the clincher. If algorithms are optimized for grabbing attention (vs. education), then it’s easier to understand why they’re optimized for polarization. Major risk for our youth. https://t.co/fxkI9eyYM2
— scott belsky (@scottbelsky) October 26, 2023
My tik tok fyp suddenly "went back to normal" because all of the free Palestine content has been getting shadow banned. @tiktok_us you are spineless and are contributing to genocide
— Ealaph does not tolerate Zionism🇵🇸 (@EalaphT) October 26, 2023
It appears there are attempts to get control of the 'Free Palestine' content because Tik Tok knows it already walks a thin line with American politicians.We'll see if they continue to try and ensure kids aren't receiving constant propaganda. In the meantime and honestly, always, parents have to talk to their kids. There will always be some entity trying to influence your kids these days. Parents have to explain why you believe what you believe and the difference between right and wrong. There are plenty of entities out there tyring to 'out parent' you.
