Video-sharing giant TikTok promotes and demotes videos based on the preferences of the Chinese government, study finds

TikTok promotes and demeans certain topics based on Chinese government preferences, a new study claims.

Researchers from Rutgers University's Network Contagion Research Institute analyzed the number of posts with politically charged hashtags on TikTok versus Instagram.

TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance and critics have long questioned its ties to the communist government and security concerns.

The researchers suspect that TikTok manipulates discourse not only on topics specific to China, but also on strategically important topics such as the wars in it Ukraine and Israel.

“We consider there is a strong possibility that content on TikTok will be amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government,” the report said.

The tech giant has faced extensive criticism in the United States due to its proximity to the Chinese Communist Party (Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping)

In their analysis, the researchers first examined the performance of hashtags related to pop culture, including #TaylorSwift and #CristianoRonaldo.

They found that for every post on TikTok, there were 2.2 posts on Instagram with a top pop culture hashtag.

They justified the difference by taking into account Instagram's user base of over 2 billion, which is about twice the number of TikTok users.

However, when examining political hashtags, the researchers found significant differences.

For every TikTok post with a hashtag supporting Ukraine, there were 8.5 such posts on Instagram, coinciding with China's support for Russia, the researchers said.

But the inconsistencies became even more dramatic when we looked at hashtags that more closely align with China's political strategies.

For the hashtag #HongKongProtests, referring to the city's pro-democracy demonstrations, there were 206 posts on Instagram for everyone on TikTok.

Researchers added that the dynamics were reversed for hashtags aligned with China's political strategy, such as #StandWithKashmir, dwarfing the number of tagged posts on Instagram by a ratio of 661 to 1.

In the study, researchers compared the number of posts with politically charged hashtags on TikTok with those on Instagram.

“It is challenging to imagine that activity of such magnitude could occur organically on a platform, and without the knowledge and consent of the platform itself,” the researchers wrote.

The report noted that hashtags about domestic U.S. politics generally showed no deviations.

For example, for every post on TikTok with the hashtag #Trump, there were 2.2 posts under the same hashtag on Instagram.

In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for the tech giant called the claims of suppression of the report “baseless.”

“It does not take into account the fundamental fact that hashtags are created by users, not TikTok,” the statement said.

“Most importantly, anyone familiar with the workings of the platform itself can see that the content they are linking to is publicly available and that claims of oppression are unfounded.”

However, the researchers insisted that the patterns could not be explained by organic factors.

They said their methodology was a copy of that used by TikTok last month in addressing claims that its recommendation algorithm is biased in favor of Palestine.

The investigation found that some discrepancies were so large that they could not occur 'without the knowledge and consent of the platform itself'

TikTok has faced extensive U.S. criticism over its proximity to the Chinese Communist Party and whether it poses a threat to national security.

The company is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, but its headquarters are in Singapore and LA.

The app is almost completely banned on US government devices, under the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden last December.

But the platform has resisted criticism and says it is willing to make adjustments to user privacy by storing data on US servers.

A statement on the company's website reads: “Starting July 2022, all new US user data will be automatically stored in Oracle's US cloud infrastructure, and access will be managed exclusively by the TikTok US Data Security team.”

Just last month, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that sought to ban TikTok across the state, arguing that it “exceeds state power” and “likely violates the First Amendment.”