Earlier this month, researcher Cameron Hickey found he could not expand his flock of TikTok bots, because his method for logging into newly spawned accounts was blocked by the platform. “This research is fraught,” says Hickey, director of the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, a research project at nonprofit the National Conference on Citizenship. “But it’s critical…
Tag: TikTok
YouTube, TikTok And Snap Go To Congress Tuesday. Here’s Why Their Fates May Vary
TikTok videos are shorter than a typical one on YouTube, usually a minute or less. This lets users see more TikTok videos more quickly, a rate of increased consumption that then carries an increased risk of landing on sludgy content, says Cameron Hickey, the project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship.…
Vaccine Misinformation Is Spreading Among Kids, Too — Especially On Social Media
TikTok is, in some ways, primed to take advantage of that peer influence, said Cameron Hickey, director of the Algorithmic Transparency Institute at the National Conference on Citizenship, who studies and writes about TikTok. “The messages that are the most potent and the most impactful when we are at that age are the ones coming from the…
Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators
Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, studies the spread of disinformation on TikTok and other social media platforms and believes all of these sites do some sort of algorithmic downgrading. Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have also been accused of shadow bans. “Are they shadow-banning? I’m sure of it,” Hickey said. “How…
TikTok Played a Key Role in MAGA Radicalization
Our team at the National Conference on Citizenship has been monitoring content on Parler continuously for the past few months, and what we saw generally mirrors what others have reported: The platform was a hotbed of misinformation, conspiracy theories, hate, and incitements to violence. There was also a lot of spam and junk. Parler was,…