KQED and Hany Farid Analyze Study Claiming TikTok Stacks Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor

TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor, Study Claims

By Rachael Myrow

A study published on Thursday asserts TikTok’s algorithms promote Chinese Communist Party narratives and suppress content critical of those narratives, a claim the embattled company forcefully denied to KQED.

Titled “The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive,” the study by the Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute argues that much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities. ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns TikTok...

Trying to understand how social media works from the outside is difficult and getting more difficult because social media is tightening their grip on access,” said Hany Farid of UC Berkeley’s School of Information...