As part of its ongoing effort to show US regulators that it’s totally transparent and completely willing to work with them on compromises to stay operational in the region, TikTok has recently announced that it’ll now allow more researchers to access and analyze its dataset to provide more insight into how the platforms work.
“We’re expanding access to our research API to US researchers affiliated with non-profit academic institutions. In addition to bringing more transparency to content on our platform, we’re eager to learn from the findings of researchers.”
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This expanded access will enable more research teams to dig into TikTok usage data, potentially uncovering key trends and user behaviors, that could help highlight the potentially harmful impacts of recommendations based on AI detection in the app. TikTok can undoubtedly take users down dangerous rabbit holes based on their usage.
The Wall Street Journalconducted a study that found how TikTok can quickly inundate users with potentially dangerous content based on their viewing behaviors, including making it likelier for them to see depressing clips or get into conspiracy theories. Simultaneously, it can also highlight more positive content, so it will be interesting to see if this expanded access provides more insight into the pros and cons of platform use.
It could also be used to potentially uncover political bias and, in particular, Pro-China sentiment that has often been rumored but never proven definitively. That’s a potential risk of TikTok opening up its API for additional research. Then again, the algorithm is so personalized that it’s hard to imagine that generic API access would return enough insight as to what each user sees.
Another interesting conspiracy theory concerning TikTok is that it’s not so much a propaganda or surveillance tool for the CCP, but more of a self-destruction push from West China through more subversive means. Basically, the theory suggests that in China, TikTok’s local sister app, Douyin is being used by the Chinese government to hold tight control over trending topics, ensuring that more positive and inspirational topics get extra promotion and reach. The idea is that this will inspire youth to pursue more beneficial and important careers, via Douyin trends. Whereas in the West, no such attempt to ‘direct’ future career paths exists. Either way, it’s another far-fetched theory.
The Wrap
Perhaps through more extensive analyses of TikTok’s algorithms, we will be able to glean more insight and get a better understanding of the full extent of the app’s impact. The expanded API access marks another step on this front, while TikTok also has its transparency center in LA, which it also looks to open to more people. TikTok says that it’ll continue to iterate on its API to better meet the needs of various research communities while also looking to expand access to more regions over the next few months.
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