The Chinese-owned video app has galvanised a new wave of activism while making a few people’s fortunes. Four TikTokkers tell Io Dodds what a ban would mean for them and their causes

On 25 October 2023, two and a half weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel and amid brutal reprisals by the Israeli government, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist gave his stark verdict on TikTok’s impact.

“Israel is losing the TikTok war by a long shot,” said former Tinder executive Jeff Morris Jr, in a viral thread on X.

Morris’s thread prompted several other politicians and business leaders to call for TikTok to be banned. Republican senator Josh Hawley called it “a purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies”, while prominent tech investor Sam Lessin said it was spreading “terrorist propaganda”.

It’s not actually clear whether pro-Palestinian content has outperformed pro-Israel content on TikTok overall. If it did, that might simply be due to the app’s popularity with Generation Z, which is far more sympathetic than its elders to the Palestinian cause.

Whereas rival apps such as X and Instagram are built around the idea of choosing who to follow, TikTok does not require new users to follow anyone and largely relies on its famously capricious recommendation algorithm to serve up an endless, hyper-personalised stream of videos from all across its network.

That, Rose says, makes it much easier for minority perspectives, both radical and reactionary, to spread outside their bubble. Viewers who exhibit curiosity about a given topic will quickly be bombarded with more of it, sometimes before they even realise their own interest.

“He’s literally handing the youth vote away,” says Vara. "He’s basically telling young people: we don’t care about you when it comes to immigration, we don’t care about you when it comes to Palestine… and now it’s like, we don’t care that this is the app you use.

“I don’t think people are gonna go out and vote for Trump. But I do think that he is running the risk of losing a lot of people that would [otherwise] go out and vote for him.”

  • @aubeynarf
    1•4 months ago

    it might simply be due to the app’s popularity with Generation Z

    they seem to exclude the possibility that content critical of US policy (whatever it may be) and which gets Americans angry at their own country’s alliances and foreign relations may be artificially amplified by TikTok.

    • @[email protected]OP
      2•4 months ago

      Or TikTok actually shows the reality of public opinion instead of the censored social media American have.

      • @aubeynarf
        2•4 months ago

        There have been several Russian and Chinese efforts documented to use social media to divide America. Other than removing ToS violations and misinformation about election outcomes and covid, has there been any documented “censoring” of American social media?

        In 8 days you have posted 17 specifically anti-US or anti-Israel articles - so I know you care about it. But if you don’t see a reflection of your fervent online persona everywhere, it might not be a conspiracy.