This time, this situation came to the agenda due to the issue between Israel and Palestine. The increasing support for Palestine on TikTok, a social media platform generally used by young people, surprised many Israel supporters.
More than surprise, all kinds of criticisms have been made, including that this perception is carried out by China and is nothing more than a platform that confuses the minds of young people. So how true is it that American youth, especially, support Palestine on TikTok?
According to a poll conducted by Harvard University and Harris University, 51% of Americans aged 18-24 support Palestine.
We came across an article in which US House of Representatives Member Mike Gallagher discussed this issue, vomiting blood and drinking cranberry sherbet. At the very beginning of the article, he publicly states that he supports Israel. On top of this, he also targets the TikTok algorithm, which he thinks has brainwashed Generation Z, who supports Palestine.
“How did the majority of Americans adopt such a morally bankrupt worldview?” When asking the question, he emphasizes the increasing use of TikTok by young people. Today, TikTok is the most used social media platform for more than half of Generation Z and is also quite common in America. Gallagher attributes this algorithm to being controlled by America’s most important enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
(Editor’s comment: What he means by “a morally bankrupt view” is Hamas. However, we see that he equates this with supporting the Palestinian people.)
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is a Chinese company and there is no concept of a private company in China.
To emphasize this point, ByteDance’s editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping is also known to be the leader of the Communist Party community within the company. Gallagher stated that young people in the USA are completely addicted to this application, 69.7% of individuals between the ages of 12-17, 76.2% of those between the ages of 18-24 and 54% of those between the ages of 25-34 use TikTok. says.
What he really means is that by adjusting the TikTok algorithm to create a campaign in support of Palestine, the CCP is censoring information and can influence Americans of all ages on various issues.
He says that he is spying on journalists who make negative news about TikTok, stating that this application is making propaganda and states that this application is a “digital drug”. The reports expressed in his article also include that TikTok censors and suppresses content on Xinjiang, Tibet, Tiananmen Square and other issues sensitive to the CCP.
Does the collapse of a regime always begin in the realm of ideas?
Gallagher, who has produced many reports on the subject; He states that American young people are brainwashed by the TikTok algorithm, and that the only reason for support for Palestine, other than Generations X and Y, is a simple social media application.
CIA Director William J. Burns, FBI Director Christopher Wray and other intelligence members; While warning about the national security threat posed by TikTok, he reiterated that widespread pro-Hamas propaganda on the app should be a wake-up call for Americans.
Some people on the subject may think, “Then TikTok should be banned in America!” The thought may come.
It is argued that the use of TikTok is a constitutional right and banning it would violate the legal rights of Americans. However, allowing social media applications controlled by foreign competitors to dominate the US market is not advocated.
Neither banning TikTok nor putting a block on it restricts Americans’ opinions. So all that is being said is that the opinions of American teenagers are being played by TikTok’s algorithm. But at this point, a strange situation occurred: TikTok shared an article about its algorithm.
TikTok has stated many times that its recommendation algorithm and content rules are not influenced by the Chinese government.
Critics of TikTok have not provided any evidence other than noting that the pro-Palestinian hashtag is found in more videos than the pro-Israel hashtag, based on the app’s support hashtags used.
In a blog post published following the criticism, TikTok said it had faced criticism based on “misinformation and mischaracterization”, arguing that explicitly comparing video hashtag counts was a “seriously flawed” way of evaluating the app’s content. The statement said, “Our recommendation algorithm does not take sides.”
By focusing only on the hashtags #standwithisrael and #freepalestine, many videos that used other hashtags or were not used at all may have been overlooked.
Videos containing the hashtags #Israel and #Palestine have been viewed nearly 2 billion times in the United States in the last 30 days. During the same period, #freepalestine appeared in 233,000 posts on TikTok in the US; That’s 38 times more than videos tagged #standwithisrael.
The #Palestine hashtag tagged 237,000 posts during this time. That’s nearly 50,000 more than #Israel, but the similarity in total views suggests that the average #Israel video is watched more often, further weakening TikTok critics’ arguments. In its article, TikTok also revealed that the average #standwithisrael video is watched more in the US than the average #freepalestine video.
In addition, a new study on the subject showed that, unlike the older generations in America, the new generations’ sympathy for Israel is gradually decreasing. It may be among the new agendas that TikTok may be banned in America. You can access the blog post published by TikTok from the following sources.
Our other content about Israel-Palestine tension:
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