Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jaigris Hodson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Royal Roads University
Until recently, you might have never heard of the TikTok competitor UpScrolled. But as of Jan. 29, the app reached No. 1 one in Apple’s app store as disgruntled TikTok users in the United States rushed to sign up.
The exodus to UpScrolled comes after a group of American investors, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, acquired a majority stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations on Jan. 22, a day before the deadline set by President Donald Trump for the app’s U.S operations to be separated from Chinese parent company ByteDance.
Trump and other American officials have long pushed for acquiring TikTok’s U.S. operations, citing concerns over China accessing the data of U.S. citizens. However, soon after the acquisition, TikTok users started complaining of shadow banning, a disputed tactic whereby people suggest social media sites will allow you to post, but will not allow anyone else to see what you post.
The acquisition comes amid civil unrest in the U.S. as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (ICE) conduct raids in cities like Minneapolis that have resulted in multiple deaths and hospitalizations. Concerned users have been uploading video documenting ICE’s actions, but began to notice their videos were not garnering any attention on TikTok, or sometimes, not uploading at all following the acquisition.
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Users posting about other topics such as Palestine have also expressed concerns about censorship. Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda’s account was banned shortly after the acquisition. It was restored following an outcry from users.
TikTok says anyone experiencing a disruption over the last couple of weeks has not been shadow banned; it was result of technical problems following a polar vortex and associated weather-related issues. But this statement from U.S. TikTok came after one million downloads of UpScrolled and reports of concerned users deleting TikTok.
Controlling the algorithm
It may indeed be a coincidence that people had trouble uploading videos critical of ICE at a time of changing ownership, but the whole incident had users talking.
As part of the acquisition, TikTok has been programmed with a new U.S.-specific content moderation algorithm that influences what people do and don’t see. Like with every other social network, the algorithm is considered proprietary information, meaning no academic nor policymaker can independently audit it.
Trump has expressed interest in controlling social media algorithms, so it’s no wonder people are connecting the outage with possible censorship. Looking at Reddit posts about the TikTok sale reveals how upset some users are.
It’s well known that China engages in censorship on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin. In fact, this practice was commented on by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who stated that children on TikTok in China receive more educational content than children in France do.
Knowing this, it’s not surprising that American users would connect the dots and suggest that any TikTok outage would be a result of government censorship.
The truth is, there’s no way to know for sure whether censorship did occur in the first week of the takeover, or whether it’s still occurring in less obvious ways now. Regardless of whether direct government interference is an issue, the algorithm still filters content in ways that often lead to misinformation spreading among a global user base.
Is time up for TikTok?
Does the rush of users from TikTok to apps like UpScrolled spell hard times ahead for TikTok U.S.? We’ve been here before, and the apps that take a temporary hit usually bounce back. After Elon Musk took over Twitter and rebranded it X in 2022, many users, including high-profile celebrities and corporations, left the platform. However, engagement is still strong among people who identify as right wing and MAGA.
Every couple of years, it seems, news outlets publish articles about reasons to leave Facebook. But Facebook and X are still going strong. The fact that these sites survive the exodus of both high-profile and regular users is likely due to network effects.
Social media platforms become more valuable the more people are on them. Not only do they become more interesting when there are more people posting content, but people also want to be on platforms where their friends, family and favourite celebrities already are.
Network effects mean that unless UpScrolled continues its explosive growth, people are unlikely to continue to choose it over the more established TikTok. At best, we might see a Twitter/X effect, which is where TikTok will host more pro-U.S. government content creators and those people who want to follow them, and UpScrolled will host more critical content creators and their followers. This is basically what happened when many left-leaning users moved to BlueSky as an alternative to X.
Because each social network engages in or facilitates different types of content filtering, each provides a different kind of echo chamber that people self-select into or out of.
These echo chambers are a problem because they reinforce beliefs, even ones grounded in mis- and disinformation, and in turn create deeper more polarized divisions between people that are hard to escape from. Since young people report getting most of their news from social media sites, people concerned about algorithms have more than just government censorship to worry about.
Jaigris Hodson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
– ref. Does the exodus to UpScrolled signify the end of TikTok? – https://theconversation.com/does-the-exodus-to-upscrolled-signify-the-end-of-tiktok-274813