Part 1

What if the controls we see imposed on TikTok today are not a new phenomenon but a historical cycle repeating itself?

When radio first captivated the public’s imagination in the early 20th century, it wasn’t long before governments stepped in to regulate this nascent technology. 

Specifically, regulations were put in place to license broadcasters, allocate frequencies, and even censor content deemed inappropriate or politically sensitive. 

The objective was clear: to prevent the radio from becoming a tool for political dissent or from broadcasting content that could undermine societal norms and government authority.

Fast forward to the present, and we see a similar pattern with TikTok. 

Governments are scrutinizing the platform under the guise of national security and data privacy concerns. 

Just as with radio, the push to regulate — or even ban — TikTok is ostensibly about “safeguarding the public.”

However, it also reflects an underlying intent to control the platform’s influence on public discourse and to curb the proliferation of narratives that challenge established power dynamics.

This parallel underscores a recurring theme: throughout history, as new mediums of communication arise, so too do efforts to control them and the narratives they carry.

Introduction to TikTok

With over 150 million monthly American users, TikTok has cemented its place as a cultural phenomenon far beyond its initial image as a mere entertainment app for dancing teens. 

This section delves into what TikTok is, how it fundamentally operates, and the pivotal role its unique algorithm plays in shaping the digital landscape, challenging common misconceptions along the way.

What is TikTok & How Does it Work

TikTok is one of the most popular apps of all time. 

It represents a digital frontier where creativity meets technology, allowing users to share short videos that range from educational content and life hacks to social activism and beyond. 

Central to TikTok’s success and rapid growth is its sophisticated algorithm, a feature that sets it apart from other social media platforms.

The Algorithm: TikTok’s Big Differentiator

The true power of TikTok lies in its algorithm’s unparalleled ability to personalize content for each user. 

Algorithms, in the context of social media, are complex sets of rules and calculations used by platforms to determine what content we see in our feeds.

By analyzing viewing preferences and engagement metrics, TikTok crafts highly individualized feeds, ensuring that users are constantly presented with videos that resonate with their interests and ideologies. 

This personalized approach not only boosts engagement but also fosters ideologically cohesive communities within the platform. 

This algorithmic curation has significant implications for social and political activism on TikTok. 

A notable example is the platform’s role in the Kellogg’s boycott movement. 

Although many readers may not be fully aware of this boycott (we will cover this later), TikTok has been instrumental in spreading awareness and mobilizing action, demonstrating the app’s capacity to influence public discourse and affect real-world outcomes. 

The visibility of the Kellogg’s protest on TikTok has prompted discussions about corporate accountability, heavily influencing the brand’s marketing decisions.

Addressing Common Misconceptions

Despite its depth and impact, TikTok is often misunderstood as just another social media app, primarily catering to trivial, teen-centric content. 

This misconception overlooks the app’s diverse array of uses — from educational tools and platforms for political engagement to a marketplace for small businesses. 

By reducing TikTok to a “frivolous app for dancing teens,” these oversimplifications ignore the complex, multifaceted interactions that define the platform and its community.

Understanding TikTok Within the Social Media Landscape

In social media, TikTok uniquely challenges the status quo with its algorithm, starkly contrasting with the approaches of Meta and X. 

This distinction is critical in understanding why certain powers are advocating for TikTok’s regulation or outright ban.

TikTok’s Unique Algorithm and Its Impact

Unlike its counterparts, TikTok democratizes content visibility, allowing voices with minimal followings to achieve viral status. This feature disrupts traditional control mechanisms, making it difficult for corporations and governments to manage the narrative. The potential for any user to amplify dissenting perspectives or mobilize grassroots movements represents a significant shift in power dynamics, one that established interests find unsettling.

TikTok primarily generates revenue through advertising but distinguishes itself with a creator fund that directly monetizes popular content. This model encourages a diverse range of content, making it possible for any user to gain visibility based on engagement rather than established follower counts or advertiser appeal.

Meta: A Platform Tailored for Advertisers

Meta prioritizes advertiser and corporate interests, ensuring that brands can control their image/narratives and minimize controversies. Heavily reliant on targeted advertising, Meta’s platforms analyze vast amounts of user data to display personalized ads for money. Its algorithm suppresses dissenting voices by favoring content that aligns with its commercial objectives, effectively sidelining challenges to the status quo.

X: Shift Towards Corporate Favoritism

X, particularly after Elon Musk’s acquisition, has seen a notable shift. Once a bastion for real-time news and open discourse, algorithmic changes have tilted the platform towards corporate favoritism. This move away from its original ethos reduces the visibility of dissenting voices, aligning more closely with corporate narratives.

TikTok’s algorithm stands out for its ability to uplift diverse voices, making it a target for those accustomed to controlling public discourse. 

In contrast, Meta and X have adjusted their algorithms to serve corporate and established interests (which they are financially incentivized to do), ensuring a more controlled and predictable narrative landscape.

Differences in Information-Completeness

The quest for context-completeness has led to the emergence of various platforms, each with its strengths and limitations. 

However, TikTok stands out as a uniquely comprehensive medium, offering depth and nuance that text-based platforms like Reddit and X, or even other video platforms like Instagram Reels, struggle to match.

The Superiority of Video Content

TikTok’s reliance on video fundamentally enhances the richness of information conveyed. 

Unlike text, which requires interpretation and can often be ambiguous, video content delivers tone, sarcasm, mannerisms, and emotional cues directly. 

This immediacy of communication ensures that messages are not just transmitted but felt, making the platform an invaluable tool for genuine expression. 

The use of features like the green screen allows creators to embed sources and studies directly into their content, grounding discussions in verified information while maintaining the personal touch that fosters trust and credibility.

The Limitations of Text and Character Counts

Platforms like Reddit and X offer vast repositories of information and opinion but are inherently limited by their text-based nature. 

Reddit, for instance, allows anonymity that can often shield biases and misinformation. 

X, with its character limit (unless you’re a paying subscriber), restricts the complexity of thoughts that can be shared, often at the cost of context and clarity. 

While X’s introduction of threads aimed to address this, they still fall short of providing the layered understanding that video content on TikTok can offer.

Interactive and Dynamic Community Engagement

TikTok excels not only in content creation but also in fostering interactive community engagement. 

The platform enables replies to comments, allowing discussions to unfold with additional context, clarifications, and viewpoints, making it a living conversation rather than a static exchange. 

This dynamism is absent in platforms like Instagram Reels, where the algorithm can stifle the reach of information, limiting the potential for community-driven exploration of topics.

Credibility through Personal Expression

The personal nature of TikTok videos, where creators often align their identities with their opinions, provides a clearer window into their biases, allowing viewers to assess credibility more accurately. 

This personal connection, facilitated by tone and body language, fills in the traditional gaps of ambiguity present in other methods of engagement, making TikTok a more reliable source for understanding complex perspectives.

In summary, TikTok’s context-completeness, facilitated by its video-based content, interactive community features, and personalized discovery algorithm, positions it as a more comprehensive and credible source of first hand accounts and information than its counterparts. 

While platforms like Reddit, X, and Instagram Reels each have their place in the digital ecosystem, TikTok’s ability to convey nuanced information with emotional and factual depth makes it an unparalleled tool for those seeking to truly understand and engage with the world around them.

As we transition to the next section, it’s clear that TikTok’s unique position in the social media ecosystem poses a challenge to traditional power structures and corporate interests, highlighting the ongoing battle for narrative control in the digital age.

How People ACTUALLY Use TikTok

(AKA Why Governments Are Scared)

TikTok has evolved into a critical space for varied and significant activities that extend well beyond mere entertainment. 

Its diverse uses not only democratize content creation but also pose a direct challenge to traditional power structures, often making it inconvenient for the 1% who have long held control over mainstream narratives.

First-Hand Accounts: Unfiltered Narratives Shaping Perceptions

One of TikTok’s most impactful roles is as a platform for first-hand accounts, offering raw, unedited glimpses into global events, personal experiences, and social injustices. 

First-hand accounts are direct, personal testimonies or narratives shared by individuals who have experienced events, situations, or phenomena themselves, providing an immediate and authentic perspective.

This direct access to personal narratives has profoundly affected public perception, especially in how the foreign conflict is viewed among younger generations.

More recently, TikTok users have been exposed to the day-to-day realities of Palestinians & Israelis, including heart-wrenching videos of civilian struggles and the immediate aftermath of conflict events, which rarely make it to the filtered lenses of mainstream media. 

This exposure has contributed to a generational shift, where Gen Z shows increasing empathy and support for Palestinian perspectives while older generations lean more sympathetic to Israel.

Leaked Calls

In addressing the profound impact TikTok has on shaping public discourse, particularly regarding the Israel vs. Palestine conflict, it’s crucial to highlight the observations made by the Anti-Defamation League director, Jonathon Greenblatt, in a discussion with American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In a leaked call, the director explicitly stated the generational divide that has emerged in perceptions of the conflict, attributing it significantly to the influence of TikTok among younger generations. 

The director said, “I also want to point out that we have a major, major, major generational problem. All the polling I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling suggests this is not a left vs. right gap, folks. The division in the United States’ support of Israel is young and old. And the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’ actions were, you know, justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us [other innovations]… towards this. Like fast. Because again, like we’ve been chasing this left-right divide; it’s the wrong game. The real thing is the next generation, and Hamas and their accomplices, the useful idiots in the West, are falling in line in ways that are terrifying.”

You can listen to the leaked call here.

This statement underscores a critical shift in how information and narratives circulate in the digital age, particularly through platforms like TikTok. 

The “TikTok problem” as described by the ADL director, highlights how the platform has become a battleground for ideological influence, with younger users exposed to and engaging with firsthand accounts and perspectives that challenge conventional narratives. 

This exposure has led to a significant generational divide in perspectives on conflicts, illustrating TikTok’s power not just as a social media platform, but as a transformative force in political and social discourse.

This is particularly significant given that prior to the conflict escalation in October, many lacked formed opinions about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

This rarity of preconceived stances provided an opportunity for numerous individuals to impartially observe the narratives from both sides.

Consequently, people could support a cause based on its merits rather than partisan influence, leading to a more informed and nuanced understanding of the conflict.

When first-hand accounts from all sides of a conflict are presented transparently, individuals are empowered to form their own judgments without external influence, often leading to a consensus on the causes worth supporting. 

The rhetoric surrounding conflicts tends to cloud intent and meaning, but direct access to unfiltered narratives fosters a unified understanding and agreement among viewers.

Note: I could not find a source, however, this illustrates how much more young people empathize with Palestinians on the conflict after being exposed to first hand accounts of the conflict.

Political Organization & Corporate Accountability: Mobilizing the Masses

Thanks to its algorithm, TikTok has emerged as a formidable tool for political organization and holding corporations to account.

The platform played a pivotal role in the Kellogg’s boycott, sparked by the CEO’s insensitive remarks about poverty and diet, showcasing how TikTok can mobilize widespread public action. 

Learn more about it here.

This boycott, although set to officially start in April 2024, has already caused enough impact that Kellogg’s has already been forced to take action with their marketing— a testament to TikTok’s power in rallying consumer activism. 

Similarly, TikTok users sharing first-hand experiences with Boeing’s safety oversights have brought unprecedented attention to the company’s practices, showcasing the platform’s ability to amplify user-generated content irrespective of follower count. 

These cases illustrate TikTok’s unique capacity to challenge corporate narratives and push for transparency, often to the discomfort of those in power who prefer to manage public perception through traditional media channels.

Social/Political Commentary: A New Arena for Discourse

The platform’s “stitch” feature allows users to engage in dynamic social and political commentary, bridging divides across political lines. 

This feature democratizes discourse, enabling users to counter mainstream media narratives and share their perspectives, regardless of their follower base. 

In an era where rapid discourse acceleration is possible, TikTok facilitates a level of public engagement and conversation that traditional platforms cannot match, threatening established interests accustomed to controlling the pace and nature of public debate.

TikTok’s Breaking News Takeover

117 No, 17 Yes

Thanks to X’s algorithm change, TikTok stands out for somewhat unfiltered news, currently serving as the sole platform where the French Farmer protests are being prominently featured.

Despite the scale of these protests, with farmers surrounding Paris in a significant demonstration of discontent, the story remains virtually invisible on other social media platforms and mainstream media.

A personal experiment with my followers yielded astonishing results: when polled, the vast majority were oblivious to the protests from mainstream media.

Intriguingly, among the few respondents who had heard about the French Farmer protests through mainstream media, the vast majority were from Europe, specifically neighboring countries, indicating a geographical bias in coverage.

This scenario points to a broader issue—a media blackout on a potentially revolutionary movement in another country, underscoring the silent barriers erected around certain news stories.

TikTok as a Search Engine: Redefining Information Discovery

TikTok’s role as a search engine for the younger generation highlights its departure from traditional, ad-revenue-driven models like Google’s. 

By prioritizing content relevance and user engagement over advertising revenue, TikTok has become a favored platform for discovering genuine, user-generated, context-rich content. 

This shift not only challenges the economic models of tech giants but also empowers users to seek out information based on merit rather than ad-revenue manipulated search rankings, disrupting the conventional gatekeeping of information.

Engaging with Hobbies & Interests: Building Communities

Beyond its political and social impact, TikTok serves as a community for hobbies and interests, connecting users with similar passions and facilitating knowledge exchange. 

This organic community-building contrasts sharply with the algorithmic limitations of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where content is often drowned out by ad-driven priorities.

By enabling genuine connections and learning opportunities, TikTok fosters a sense of belonging and shared discovery, undermining the traditional media’s role in dictating trends and interests.

Supporting Small Businesses: A Platform for Entrepreneurs

TikTok has also become an invaluable platform for over 5 million American small businesses, leveraging its vast user base to offer unprecedented visibility and engagement. 

This grassroots approach to business growth presents a stark contrast to the controlled advertising environments on other social media platforms, where large corporations with significant advertising budgets dominate visibility. 

TikTok’s model, which elevates content based on user interaction rather than financial investment, levels the playing field for small entrepreneurs, challenging the established economic interests that prefer a marketplace controlled by the few.

TikTok’s myriad uses — from amplifying first-hand accounts that challenge mainstream narratives to fostering political activism, from redefining how information is discovered to supporting small businesses — underscore its role as a disruptive force in the digital age. 

Each of these uses represents a direct challenge to the status quo, offering a platform where the voices and narratives often sidelined by traditional power structures can flourish. 

This inclusivity and democratization of content creation and sharing make TikTok not just a social media platform but a significant cultural and political phenomenon, pushing against the interests of the 1% who have historically controlled which narratives proliferate.

This concludes Part 1 of our in-depth exploration into TikTok’s potential ban. 

Armed with an understanding of the app’s diverse use cases, we’re now equipped to peel back the layers of TikTok’s more contentious aspects. 

In the next section, we will delve into critical perspectives on TikTok, scrutinize the cybersecurity implications and political undertones of the TikTok ban, and consider the sociopolitical implications of the platform’s controversies. 

We will explore who sponsored the bill and analyze the financial motivations of their donors.

Stay tuned as we continue our deep dive into the complexities surrounding this influential platform.

Stay Curious,

Addie LaMarr

P.S. If you’re intrigued by the power dynamics behind social media’s algorithmic manipulation and want to take control of your feeds, this is a must-read: The Secret to Breaking Free from Algorithmic Manipulation