TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion
In a blog post, the company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion.
TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion::In a blog post, the company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion.
Tiktok also didn't censor the major protests in France like Facebook and Twitter did at the time.
Theres only a handful of social media outlets. Tik tok is just not suppressing the Pro Palestine content like Western owned media outlets have been.
We speak lots of " free speech " in the West, but look how quick, German, British, American, Canadian government and media spheres are united in calling Palestine protestors terrorists and supporting hamas.
Its just our lack of free speech being exposed when it goes against the powers that be.
There's a ton of support for the Palestinian people out there. It would strongly appear to be suppressed on commercial social media sites. I can't say that Tiktok isn't amplifying it, but as you poke around on open social platforms that tend to censor less, you see a lot more Pro-Palestine news and content. If you go through twitter or facebook and find specific regional bloggers, the content is out there but if doesn't seem to pass the algorithm
When the October 7 attack happened my teenagers noticed the one sided media and hamfisted pro Israel propaganda asked what's really going on. Today's kids are getting constant propaganda and advertising. They're not immune but they recognize it and bristle.
When I was a teenager and Yitzhak Rabin was murdered i bought the anti palastine rhetoric that followed for an embarrassingly long time. And we knew that it was Netanyahu. Well, I don't think we knew until later that he was aware that night of what he was doing. But we knew it was his follower who pulled the trigger.
The amount of pro Palestinian support is overwhelming everywhere. Only newspapers and Reddit bots and paid shills are still spreading IDF propaganda. The rest of the world sees israel for the Nazi's they are.
I think the Israeli government is authoritarian, and their scorched earth tactics against Palestinians are war crimes, but you're not doing the cause any favors by invoking the Nazis. Criticize their actual behavior.
In a context where we have the lies about the hospitals having tunnels under them, that 40 non-existent babies were beheaded and where some key facts about Oct 7 have somewhat unravelled, how far would you even bother policing the words of people wishing for a liberated Palestinian?
The Israelis and their supporters are also notorious liars and frequently try to claim that Muslims or brown people were responsible for the Holocaust in Europe.
They've bombed civilians before and the intelligence they send tend to be garbage according to EU after they looked through the reams of documents the Israelis sent them. As an occupier, Israel behaves like a country at war all the time, they lie, kill and cheat perpetually.
The comparisons to the Nazis are actually inescapable. I struggle to think of a centrally orchestrated and mechanized system of apartheid/oppression and now genocide that's more similar.
The Nazis forced Jews into ghettos. Gaza is a ghetto that Palestinians are forced to live in.
Zionists will not however, directly kill every Palestinian. They will indirectly try to kill every Palestinian by colonizing every last inch of land from the Palestinians. The ones that immigrate away will be too scattered to maintain a coherent ethnicity, and eventually their culture will be erased.
So, while practically speaking they're not as bad as Nazis, they are as effective as Nazis, if not more so.
Interesting, I actually know a couple conservatives that are anti globalism, which justified their anti Israel stance. However, the conservatives I know that are party aligned due to religious preferences... that's another story
Which is encouraging. It's been a relatively silent genocide for decades, and while it's good to see people waking up, it's almost too late. Kinda like climate change.
As someone who stands mostly in the middle, I rarely comment on this issue because every second poster calls anyone that has even the mildest sympathy for Israel's situation a Nazi.
You people are tiresome and it's honestly not worth 'debating' with you.
An ethno-state is based on race superiority that is committing genocide to expand their lebensraum by dehumanizing their enemies and calling for the indiscriminate slaughter of people of a certain race by locking them all up in a giant concentration camp.
Now where the fuck did I hear they one before? Oh yeah the Nazi's. It's almost comical how much israel is a copy of Nazi Germany.
You are correct that I will call every israel sympathizer a Nazi because they are Nazi's by practically everyx single definition.
I stand for the people. I support Israel, but not it's far right government that wants to kill all palestinian people and take their lands, but at the same time, I support Palestine, but not it's extremist terrorist leaders.
Wars are fought between two or more governments for their own goals and is a competition who cal kill the other side the most (including it's civilians).
You can support a country without supporting their government, however people sometimes tend to be lazy and just say "fuck Israel" instead of saying "fuck the government of Israel", or say "fuck Palestine" by being ignorant instead of saying "fuck HAMAS".
Innocent people should not be vilified for just wanting to live their lives in peace.
Almost like when you take religion out of the picture it's one country committing genocide against another which is never okay for any reason. Israel can scream "but muh anti-semitism" all they want but it's a scapegoat. Ignore Jewish/Muslim backgrounds and look at what's really going on. It's nothing but a disgusting land grab and genocide that's been going on since WW2.
The world would 100% be a better place without Israel, and that's nothing to do with their religion. The country itself is evil and corrupt. They are bigoted and hypocritical. Israel deserves no sympathy or support. Out of all the bullshit I've seen happen in the middle east the past few decades, Israel is definitely the most abhorrent and repulsive source of conflict.
Israel has allowed settlers to continuously claim land from the West Bank, enclosing its territory from the Palestinians who already lived there, preventing the Palestinian Authority from imprisoning settlers or kicking them out, and refusing to pursue legal action against settlers while illegally imprisoning Palestinians for retaliating when they see their land getting stolen without anyone defending them.
What do you think about Hamas? Why do they exist and what is their actual agenda? Is it really at the very top simply helmed by limousine-riding desert kings in Quatar?
Hamas is as bad as Isreal, but they are Isreal's own creation. Most Palestinians don't support Hamas just like most Isrealis don't support their own government. It is two governments trying to commit genocide on the others civilians. Their are no good guys here. Just thousands of innocent civilians being massacred on both sides. The main difference is the US has decided to give one of these governments committing genocide the most advanced weapons available and practically no governments are even trying to help the Palestinians anymore. Not to mention hamas is commiting genocide to take back land the palestinians had a 100 years ago while the isrealis are commiting genocide to take back land they had 2000 years ago while pretending the palestians never even existed and spouting off racist revisionist history.
do you genuinely think israel wants this tiny stretch of land, even at the cost of all of this(thousands of israelis dead, more soldiers die every day, rockets and terror attacks from lebanon, syria and yemen, and all the public backlash)
I'll tell you a hint, they truly don't
and if they did, they won't take it this slowly, and this carefully not to hurt civilians
if they truly just wanted the tiny piece of land, it would have been so kuch easier to just indiscriminately level the entire place (without the need for a ground invasion)
I know I'm not gonna change any minds here as people like you who have already decided israel is the culmination of all evil won't back down from that belief that easily, but just try to not assume every israeli born is a racist Palestinian hater, and try to think why would they go through all of this, what do they stand to gain or to lose, assuming of course they are rational human beings
btw if it's genocide for the past 56 years, they are truly really really bad at committing genocide
Yes, the leaders of Isreal want palestine removed from the map. They are not taking it carefully. They are indiscriminately leveling Gaza right now. Please ask the 4000 dead palestinian children how careful the Isrealis have been.
Wanting to commit genocide and having the political capital to get away with it are two different things. I know several isrealis that felt their country was commiting genocide and I know for fact that not all Isrealis are bad. Criticism of Isreal is not an attack on all isrealis just like criticism of Hamas is not an attack on all palestinians.
As far as I can tell, neither government here has the moral high ground...and I chose the word "government" there for a reason.
It is my understanding from very far away only able to see through Lie-O-Vision that two governments that hate each other because religion are basically taking it out on civilians who just want to live their lives. It's a tragedy that has basically nothing to do with me yet it does cast my eyes toward my own capitol city with a bit of a suspicious squint.
Here's how you actually "manipulate the algorithm."
1: take up residency in the comments, and at the same time start a few basic accts that don't say anything too controversial (day in the life kinda stuff, thirst traps, etc). Establish a basic presence
2: once you amass a following, you start with pretty basic stuff lots of young people agree with - housing/healthcare reform, work reform, etc
3: an important part a lot of people miss - have your own team troll your comments. Stir up shit. The goal is to get people riled up, not move the needle in any specific direction
4: throw out something big (it's been confirmed that Russia is behind distribution on TikTok of OBL's "Letter to America" recently). Fight on both sides, tagging in as much of the greater sphere of commenters as you can.
That's it. That's all anyone's doing. Just do this over and over and you eventually drive people crazy.
They did the exact same thing in 2016, they did it in 2020 with BLM, they did it with Ukraine. It's nothing new
Sounds pretty convincing, but you lost me in the end. Who did "exact same thing" in 2016, 2020, and 2022? Are you implying that Russia and/or China were trying to increase the harm done to the US that way? I'm quite at a loss here
Have you seen Chinese TikTok vs America TikTok? It’s wild. The Chinese TikTok has videos of scientists and musicians and engineers all tackling major problems. It’s inspirational. The American TikTok is absolutely fucked. There’s clearly heavy algorithm manipulation. At the very least, we know China could make American TikTok not terrible and they choose not to.
The Chinese TikTok has videos of scientists and musicians and engineers all tackling major problems. It’s inspirational
My TikTok FYP is various scientists/science commenters, stand up comedians, chubby goth girls dancing, Magic The Gathering card reviews, and swinger shit.
If you engage only with things you like, you'll only see things you like.
A lot of the best sci-fi is coming out of China these days. People who like to theorize about these things point to a population, much like America in the post war Baby Boom, seeing for themselves the benefits science can bring to their lives as China pretty rapidly develops, and being fascinated by what could be next.
So you might need to accept that the most popular trending American social media is venal and insipid because the average American wants to see venal and insipid, while the Chinese population might just be interested in things that interest them.
Yet we're not seeing calls for Hamas to step down and let innocent Palestinians live in some version of peace that can never be known under Islamic jihad....
Which I find very weird. The lack of conversation surrounding the admitted goals of the leaders of the Palestinian people is something that needs to be part of any conversation.
It's a false dichotomy to condition ceasing the extermination of a whole innocent population to protests towards a terrorist organization. Israel does not need to bomb several hospitals to stop Hamas. There are other ways to go about stopping terrorists.
Maybe you don't see many calls at Hamas because people are catching up with how wholesale persecution and extermination of people is often justified by pointing to a few malicious individuals that are part of that population.
Everyone's pro-palestine. They're just fucking people caught in the middle of some retarded bullshit. Every time someone gets killed, that entire family is probably radicalized, and they're right to be.
Israel has unrelentingly taken the worst possible approach to the problem, having learned nothing from their own experience. They've made the worst possible mess of it, which is no surprise considering it was made by a bunch of people trying to make the Bible come true like dipshits.
Every time someone gets killed, that entire family is probably radicalized, and they’re right to be.
This is why I say Hamas playing the entire world like a fucking puppet. Sure, the individual fighters are probably not happy they kicked a hornets nest but the people who planned the attack I'd be fucking shocked if they were anywhere near Gaza.
Israel's anger is justified, the attack from Hamas was truly heinous, but holy shit Israel's leadership acted in the most predictable manner which is horrifying the world that many who would have supported Israel earlier this year is now wondering why countries like the US is involved, especially when the fight with Russia and Ukraine is going on and having trouble getting support. I'm sure many Palestinians did not want anything to do with Hamas, but every family member killed is likely to bring another one over to the fold. The US promptly moved in behind to support Israel, and bent everything to get the US citizens in Israel home immediately, while sending over a carrier group to keep any other country from getting involved... however let US citizens who were in Gaza when all this went down remain there for a month until Egypt finally opened a corridor, citizens that probably now trust the US just a little bit less along with those that payed attention to it.
The obvious plan is to be a destabilization measure, and I fear it will certainly be that. I just hate the feeling of those that know history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
IMO there are big risks consuming news & opinion from any single source.
Whether it's the CCP manipulating the TikTok algorithm, Russia buying ad space on Facebook, or American conglomerates pushing narratives on western mainstream media, there will be implicit biases everywhere.
The only real answer is to get news from multiple sources with diverging perspectives, try to find where facts overlap, challenge your own implicit biases, and form a perspective in line w/ your values.
Seeing America blame TikTok for pushing propaganda is the pot calling the kettle black -- and honestly more of a distraction than anything else.
The real important issue is that people are dying, and the existing power structures are doing jack shit to stop it.
I think you'd be surprised how many people are pro-Palestinian liberation struggle. And for a good reason. Sometimes the liberation fight may result in war crimes which we are all against, but that doesn't discredit the liberation struggle itself. If anything, maybe the colonisers should stop oppressing and mass murdering the people if they don't want them to react so violently.
I don't think an algorithm is responsible for the fact that most sane people are generally against genocide. People being pro-Palestine in this specific situation is a humanitarian response and should not be causing any amount of concern because it is the morally correct position here.
HOWEVER, the fact that we just witnessed the fucking letter to america go viral on tiktok, wherein a soul crushing amount of people publicly stated they agree with a fucking jihadist manifesto, is cause for a massive amount of concern. Tiktok definitely needs to face consequences for letting that happen. We also can't excuse the audience for that type of behaviour. Whether it came from a deliberate propaganda campaign, or a sketchy algorithm, or just mass stupidity, audience members need to be better. If you read the letter to america and you think bin laden was right, you're a moron, and you're contributing to the problem.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. However, I can tell you from my experience as an antitheist that TikTok is heavily PRO-religion. It is ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that much of the problems in the world stem from religiosity, and this long-standing war between Israel and Palestine is the best example of this.
However, TikTok works tirelessly to suppress ANY criticism of theism of any kind. Thus, those jihadists you mention are allowed to promote their extremist ideology, yet if someone like me analyzes and critiques their baseless claims while using logic, reason, fact-based evidence, and the scientific method, I get cited for bullying and hate speech. This is one of the biggest problems facing humanity today........
I think you should pay less attention to mainstream media which propped that issue up disproportionately. It wasn't as big of a deal as many made it out to be.
But regardless of that, I don't think one should be concerned about opinions of people and I certainly don't think it is an issue at all if young people hate the US. It has done some of the most fucked up things in the world since the start of the last century to say the least. This may be expressed in stupid ways like sympathising for Bin Laden, but the broader sentiment of hate towards the US isn't wrong.
tiktok discourse is designed to create the narrative that no one could possibly be pro-palestine, and that humanity can be split into "people who see the truth and support Israel absolutely" and "people who have been fooled by propaganda". do I think there's pro-palestinian propaganda? absolutely. there's also literal commercials for israel in between the youtube videos that I watch.
an asshole loves nothing more than another asshole, so that while he's being an asshole he can point his finger and go "look at what an asshole that guy is!"
TikToc is a site that people use to share information, and at the end of the day, this is their main complaint. Their golden idea is for one or two major corporations to control the message and decide who to support.
It might be a surprise to non-Americans how many of us think so, too, despite the narratives that Zionist organizations like AIPAC and ADL spend a lot of money to push.
Though the sympathies of Democrats of all ages had tended to shift toward Palestinians over time, those aged 23-43 had the largest swing in the most recent poll and are the only group where sympathies for Palestinians now outweigh those for Israelis.
there's an increasing divide between real people and the owner class when it comes to Israel. Our government treats Israel like it has an unlimited budget and can do no wrong because the realpolitik is such that they need a client state in the middle east. Regular, everyday people OTOH are being shown a war of genocide in real time from dozens of different angles and it turns out that watching it happen live invokes vastly different feelings than watching a press conference where Israel and the US congratulate themselves on establishing a daily 4 hour window where they won't bomb civilians unless they really, really want to. It's turning out that there actually is a number of innocent lives we're not willing to trade for one guilty life, and that for a lot of us that number is 1. It's turning out that we're smart enough to realize that evacuation warnings on twitter in english are probably aren't meant for an Arabic-speaking population that lives somewhere where the internet has been cut off and are, therefore, just Israel trying to manage its reputation in the west. We're also human enough to realize that we wouldn't accept someone firebombing our entire neighborhood to rubble even if one of our neighbors was evil and they sent an evacuation warning first, and that the basics of decency demand that we don't ask Palestinians to do so either.
The thing that sunk the Vietnam war in America was embedded journalists. People who have seen war have a hard time defending it. So the war machine adapted: now you only get access to report on the war if your reporting supports the war effort itself ("winning the war") and the effort to maintain moral authority while waging the war ("winning the hearts and minds"). Thing is, now anyone can broadcast themselves to the entire world at a moment's notice. It was already hard to limit the reporting capabilities of 5 or 6 news orgs, now everyone you're trying to have a war with is their own news org. Why do you think they tried to shut down the internet in Gaza almost immediately? Why now are they targeting a platform where anyone can go live and the data is out of the hands of western governments until after it's already in the eyes and ears of western civilians? They're trying to stem the flow of information because if we know what's going one we're not gonna support it.
other than doing so being weirdly important to white voters.
Race has nothing to do with it. Christian Zealots want all that land to belong to Israel because they think it will start the rapture and then the Christian Armageddon.
And Jewish zealots want all that land to belong to Israel because they think they're the only ones who have any right to it. They literally think an invisible wizard in the sky gave it to them and that anyone who says or even suggests anything to the contrary is an antisemite.
I know we have outposts in Israel keeping an eye on - as an example - Iran and shit, but why do we have to be enemies with Iran in the first place? Our situation with Israel just seems like a pointless one-way relationship that only serves to further alienate the rest of the middle east from us.
Incorrect. For one, Israel is our key point of contact in the middle east. Also, to your point about the white voters, it stems from historical religious ideology that some fictional magic being named "yahweh" promised the land to these people called "israelites."
Because we have a large portion of our population that are huge fans of this horribly-written abrahamic sci-fi fantasy fairytale, they exude blind support for Israel in the hopes that it will "fulfill the end-times prophecy." The fact that many of these loons have positions of power and decision-making highlights the absurd kakistocracy America has become.........
Let's not gloss over your first point too much. Like yeah the average American voter probably likes Israel for religious/Zionist reasons, but the American politicians and generals that want to be friends with Israel are definitely in it for the strategic value of having an ally in the Middle East. Like, you think Biden gives a shit about Zionism? Nah. He just likes the military industrial complex
How does the US not have any strategic interest in propping up Israel? This is insane.
Israel is the biggest strategic ally of the US in the middle east, do you not know anything about the issue? They protect and fund Israel more than anyone in the world.
Yeah, the US is the only thing keeping Israel in business. They're useful to keep an eye on Iran, because we don't like Iran, because...?
Saudis need our weapons, and Qatar likes the money we spend to keep our increasing number of bases there. But these are purely transactional relationships that we can have with anyone.
I think Kuwait are still fans of the US.
Other than that, everyone hates us because we protect Israel, and they hate Israel. Why don't we just join the club, and pick up an entire region of strategic allies instead of "Israel at all costs"?
Palestine is not a country... It's an oppressed region with 0 chance of liberation, since their leaders are more focused on arming their children and raping their enemies' wives than actually developing their infrastructures and education system.
And the whole world just lets those leaders keep that power which they keep on corrupting.
Algorithm probably plays a sizeable part in that, but as an older gen Z fella I have become indifferent to both countries of this conflict. Both Israel and Palestine just race with each other who can check the most boxes in the Geneva Convention rules list. Just leave those 2 to sort this mess out for themselves, It's not like we get a Holy Site bonus effect by owning Jerusalem.
Or just put a stop on this, but this is a naive thinking.
To be fair to them, it's not as though the Israel Palestine conflict is black and white. It is pretty well known to be one of the most complex conflicts in human history.
Just about any statement that isn't very well researched and laboriously constructed is like 95% likely to be reductive to some and offensive to others.
I'm sure someone reads this post as reductive, and I am only tangentially referring to the conflict.
Edit: beyond this comment we see people continuing to try to distill a multigenerational war down to a paragraph. Brilliant. Y'all should start writing history books since y'all have such a firm grasp on it all!
Ahh yes, that's a good take, I forgot that the Gaza Strip area is extremely young compared to the average, but please educate me then. I wasn't suggesting that the Palestinians deserve this for supporting or voting for Hamas, they have their justified reason.
Of course, it's absolutely brutal observing this even more so that the Israeli minister didn't give 2 shits to the Pope's request (ironic), but what can we do? Can we really put a stop to this without escalating things further and risking creating a bigger conflict than it currently is?
Yeah. Like obviously no one thinks that what Hamas is doing is in any way right, but at the same time Palestine has been shrinking. Palestinians have been treated poorly for decades, and they have no recourse.
It’s hardly surprising that an organisation like Hamas would crop up. People are being erased and they want desperately to continue living.
I cannot truthfully say that I wouldn’t lash out in violence if my life was threatened.
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This are the bonus effects for owning it! Makes your dynasty so much more powerful if you then divert from your reign's religion. But be prepared for an holy war against you if you do so.
I think people's issue is that you (the west) is funding one side of it.
I'm pretty isolationist too though. Pull the funding to both sides. Let them figure it out themselves (Israel will probably not exist in the end of this scenario).
I think an issue that this event has really highlighted is that governments and the people who live there are not the same thing and often have conflicting beliefs
Israel is at the front of the war on the west, from Syria to Lebanon and Iran. It's in the west's interest that they exist and be strong to be a force in the middle east and defend the west from falling to jihadist rule.
Both Israel and Palestine just race with each other who can check the most boxes in the Geneva Convention rules list. Just leave those 2 to sort this mess out for themselves
Of course, I'm not stating that Israel or Palestine is doing the right thing, it's just sad (and tiring) to see another war where BOTH sides don't take civilian lives into consideration at all. What's your disagreement for me being indifferent? I would be a pretty happy person if someone could put a stop on this entire conflict, but this probably won't ever happen.