The AfD was twice as effective at reaching first-time voters on the app than all other parties combined, according to an analysis of platform data. This may explain why the party performed so well among young voters.
The AfD was twice as effective at reaching first-time voters on the app than all other parties combined, according to an analysis of platform data. This may explain why the party performed so well among young voters.
Unfortunately true for a lot of European countries. It’s easy to post a 20 second video about “foreigners bad” and kids with the attention span of a gnat will eat it right up. A longer video that explains why things really are the way they are will get swallowed by the algorithm. It just amplifies populism and outrage and will be one of the great hurdles to overcome this century.
Honestly I think we’re thoroughly fucked at this point
For a couple of generations at the very least, yeah.
We could force control of Tik Tok’s algorithm to be managed by a United States entity. You know, basically what China does to US businesses who want to sell product in China.
If they don’t want that, they could let Google serve wikipedia articles about Tienanmen Square again lol.
I’m not entirely convinced putting the US in charge of it would make things any better. It’s not like eg. Facebook isn’t full of reich wing bullshit on purpose
It’s a fair point. Frankly, considering where I am, I think America’s social media should really be forced to engage with some kind of open federation standard (doesn’t have to be activity pub) as I think it better reflects how the United States itself is designed as a republic. That feels like a long shot, but it’s the dream.
We could just ban personalized algorithms altogether
Is China tailoring the content to politics or are political influencers just better at pandering to people with blatant lies. Either way tiktok and other social networks should have more controls in place to filter misinformation but I’m curious if the affect is intentional or incidental.
It’s hard to say without proof so I won’t pretend to know the answer. What I do know is that, if the roles were reversed, China would 100% believe that any movement that caused chaos within the country was somehow orchestrated by the United States as that’s what they’ve done in the past. So, until we have a hospitable relationship where the countries see eye to eye on any social issues, it really doesn’t make sense for either control to have the keys to a popular social media network in the other – if you get my drift. I will also say that promotional programs of games and movies from China, like the recent Wukong controversy, highlights that China very much believes in pushing their political narrative to the degree that it would be hard to imagine them not using it with a widely popular social media network like Tik Tok.
This is where federation is smart though – the content is dispersed enough that the idea of removing a server is less daunting and there are fewer entities that are too big to fail.
If it’s any consolation
I suspect the kids, as a whole, are alright. Not that we shouldn’t take this seriously, but we don’t have to start planning our funerals yet.
Hmm, I wonder if Gen Z’s politics are different over there compared to here, because at least in Finland the 2. most popular parties they voted for were a right wing extremist party and a “fiscally conservative” party that is essentially indistinguishable from the extremist one (the joke is that the way to tell them apart is that the “fiscal conservatives” wear more expensive suits.) Sure, many do also vote for eg. the Left Alliance who are democratic socialists, but on the whole the generation is more conservative than the older ones
Not sure, but I can say from personal experience here that, while right-wing parties are less popular amongst Gen Z, the right-wingers that are in Gen Z tend to be very political, not just casually political, and more extreme than your average Joe Schmoe conservative. Might be a contributor.
Yeah it’s the same here, they and the younger gens have apparently gotten very polarized; the ones who are “good eggs” are really decent folks, and the shitty ones are really shitty.
So while the extremist reich wing party PS (Perussuomalaiset or “Finns Party”, because naturally only a nationalist wank is a real Finn) was their most popular party, as a proportion of their cohorts more young people voted for the Left Alliance than older ones did. Here’s a handy table from our 2023 parliamentary elections (source):
Actually based on that study the claims that gen Z is more conservative than older gens doesn’t seem to hold up. Seems like they’re about as conservative, but more polarized