TikTok algorithm leads users to subconsciously surf videos until they are exhausted

It is worth mentioning that after nearly 20 minutes of surfing the videos suggested by TikTok for the “13-year-old” account of VTC News , no videos suitable for the user’s age appeared. Instead, they are all videos with malicious content, provocative dancing or “dirty” content that is rampant on TikTok.

Meanwhile, in the “Search” and “For You” sections, when performing a search for some keywords and content, you are warned whether or not the age restriction is blocked. TikTok results are still visible and produce search results corresponding to keywords.

Violence, gambling, and pornography do not appear to be among the content that TikTok considers inappropriate for minors, even proactively recommended to young accounts by TikTok.

Even VTC News reporter, even though he tried to create many different accounts on computers and smartphones, the results are still the same, even if the user is not logged in, the first video suggested is still the same. pornographic content.

As early as 2022, TikTok said it had implemented a content rating system to prevent adult content from reaching younger users. Accordingly, for users aged 13-17, some TikTok videos will only show a black screen with the messages “Posts not available” and “Posts blocked by age”.

“Accurate birthdate information helps ensure community members have an age-appropriate experience,” the TikTok parent and guardian page instructs. However, TikTok does not specify what content is considered inappropriate for children.

According to a survey by the Center against Digital Hate (CCDH) conducted on 13-year-old accounts in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, TikTok suggests younger users are flooded with harmful content. , can have a significant impact on understanding of the world around us, physical and mental health.

The survey also found that when teen accounts often had names that included keywords that signaled low self-esteem, TikTok suggested more content about eating disorders and self-harm. compared to a regular named account.

Being engrossed in following trends and trends on TikTok makes many young users seek satisfaction on this social network, gradually delusional about themselves and despite everything, even health. , life to “fish” view, increase interaction. This situation has been warned by many experts since TikTok officially encroached into the top attraction platform for young people.

TikTok’s rapid spread is like a double-edged sword for many users. Although social networks have content regulations and censor millions of videos, malicious trends or information that incites violence, pornography, self-harm, etc., are still rampant. lan that TikTok cannot control.

Some dangerous trends that have appeared on TikTok can be mentioned as Veneer Vlog (sharpening teeth), Benadryl Challenge (taking allergy drugs to create hallucinations). Many young people think that Benadryl is harmless, but these drugs also have many other side effects, which can be dangerous for users. Or more dangerous is Penny Challenge – plug the phone charger into an electrical outlet, drop a coin into the gap to create a spark…

According to the New York Post , in 2021, TikTok had to remove content containing the hashtag #milkcratechallenge. The challenge asks users to stack plastic milk cartons in a pyramid shape and try to balance as they climb to the top, then step down without falling. In fact, most of the participants fell and many were injured in the process.

Trends on TikTok in Vietnam are just as toxic as in the world, and they can completely get users into trouble such as “pretending to be loved ones to tease children”, “career guidance, choosing majors”. , “hunting clouds on the plane”, “right and wrong”, “a meal of 5 thousand” and hundreds of other offensive movements.

It can be seen that the audience of TikTok social network users are mostly young people and teenagers who are in the process of developing and perfecting their awareness, easily attracted to new, strange, and unique content. monstrous, objectionable, contrary to fine customs and moral standards. With TikTok’s algorithm, the more viewers a video attracts, the more these content are recommended, trended, and then automatically become a trend.

From here, young people absorb and follow, blindly following trends, giving innocuous and even toxic trends a chance to become more popular. As a result, many children are passively “poisoned” victims of toxic trends on TikTok.

Currently, TikTok as well as most social networks today stipulate that users must be at least 13 years old to register and open an account. However, these platforms do not have a strong enough measure to determine the actual age of a user. Therefore, children under 13 years old can easily register an account to use.

In the interim, a TikTok representative said, they have added new privacy and safety measures to protect underage users such as turning off notification features at night or removing direct messaging with children.

The key to TikTok’s success is not short videos, but in fact the content recommendation algorithm developed by Bytedance – TikTok’s parent company.

With TikTok’s “magical” recommendation algorithm, users subconsciously scroll through video after video without being able to stop, it even has the ability to “train” our brain to perform this action. Not everyone has a strong enough sense to get out of this loop.

TikTok’s algorithm makes you unable to take your eyes off the phone screen and let the time pass meaninglessly.

The content displayed on the “For You” section of TikTok is also very different from the content displayed on other social networking platforms. No need to log in, follow or make friends, users can still surf TikTok all day without running out of content. Only when there is a need to interact more with videos, does TikTok require users to register for an account.

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is now so smart that it not only knows what you’re looking to watch, but it also knows you’ll want to search and see what’s next. This is similar to playing chess with TikTok and the app predicts about your next 10 moves.

Why is the Tiktok algorithm able to understand users so deeply, but it is harder for other platforms to do the same? One of the important factors that can be mentioned is the orientation from the beginning of the platform. When the average length of a YouTube video is around 11-12 minutes, the ideal length of a TikTok video is around 21-34 seconds. That is, when you watch all of 1 Youtube video, in the same time you have gone through 25 TikTok videos.

Most users have commented that when using TikTok they can’t take their eyes off it and time goes by. At some point, users will stop when the videos are no longer attractive enough as if TikTok wants you to rest after a few hours of “work” too hard.

In a scientific report published in September 2022, a ByteDance research team said that the algorithm they created on TikTok is based on real-time user behavior. And yet, they show how the system works and why it’s fast, accurate, and up-to-date with user-specific changes.

A study on the app Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) looked at how short videos affect the brains of college students in China. The results show that videos that match viewers’ interests can activate the brain’s reward system center.

The reward system plays an extremely important role in shaping emotions and directing human actions, and functions to create feelings of pleasure and desire.

“We’re pretty much influenced by these apps to modify our behavior for instant gratification,” said Dr Justin Shleifer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Bradley Hospital.

“While instant gratification sounds great, it can affect your brain hours after you exit the app,” added Mr. Shleifer.

With this decision, Australia will become the last member of the Five Eyes intelligence security alliance (including the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand) to implement a ban on TikTok on official devices.

Previously, since November 2022, more than 20 states in the US have banned TikTok on government-issued devices, and many universities have also blocked TikTok from campus wifi. The app has also been banned on US government devices used by the US military.

Explaining the ban, Washington expressed suspicion that this application was related to US user data in the hands of the Chinese government.

Now, TikTok is even at risk of being completely blocked in the US if ByteDance refuses to sell its shares. Although there was an opportunity to remove the threat through the hearings, CEO Shou Chew’s performance did not appear to satisfy US officials.

For nearly 5 hours, US congressmen continuously questioned the TikTok CEO about national security and other issues of this application in the US. However, Mr. Chew was only able to refute allegations that TikTok shared data at Beijing’s request, but was unable to give a clear answer to address the concerns of lawmakers.

Speaking to ABC News, Chairman of the US House of Representatives China Committee Mike Gallagher said: “Rather than allay the concerns of lawmakers, Mr. Chew’s presence before Congress increases the likelihood ban TikTok app”.

Previously, in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia or India, TikTok was also banned on the grounds of illegal information collection, malicious and deadly content.

Specifically, in early July 2018, the Indonesian government issued a ban on this short video sharing application because it contains a lot of pornographic and inappropriate content. In mid-February 2019, TikTok was again banned in Bangladesh for illegally collecting information from users who are children.

In 2020, TikTok was removed from the Google Play and App Store platforms in India because it was not suitable for the culture of the country as well as the cause of a number of tragic deaths.