China-Based TikTok Actively Banning The Gay Away When Not Helping Authoritarians Be More Authoritarian

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the when-your-core-users-don't-actually-use-the-app dept

TikTok is the new Vine. (I apologize if this sentence is incomprehensible. If I wasn’t raising teens, it would be pretty much incomprehensible to me too.) The social media platform that allows users to upload short video and encourages remixing via duets or reaction videos has roped in a billion users in a surprisingly short amount of time.

It’s fun for (almost) all ages. The younger you skew, the more popular it is. Fun for all ages, but not all sexualities apparently. The app was created by Chinese company ByteDance, so it’s more than receptive than most to calls to censor content based on countries’ desire to mute those who aren’t heterosexual. (h/t K’Tetch)

The Guardian has been reporting on ByteDance’s censorial efforts on behalf of governments around the world. Unsurprisingly, censorship begins at home.

The documents, revealed by the Guardian for the first time, lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app.

The revelations come amid rising suspicion that discussion of the Hong Kong protests on TikTok is being censored for political reasons: a Washington Post report earlier this month noted that a search on the site for the city-state revealed “barely a hint of unrest in sight”.

The proxy censorship is applied in two ways. ByteDance will delete content it finds unacceptable — including content it finds unacceptable on behalf of others. It also bans users for repeatedly posting content it later deletes. In other cases, the content stays up, but ByteDance severely reduces its visibility. The end result is a video-sharing platform that contains almost no videos highlighting the protests in Hong Kong.

But it’s not just political, even if TikTok’s content-burying efforts come at the behest of political parties. The follow-up report from The Guardian notes TikTok has been instrumental in excising plenty of content that fails to denigrate non-hetero relationships and lifestyles.

TikTok’s efforts to provide locally sensitive moderation have resulted in it banning any content that could be seen as positive to gay people or gay rights, down to same-sex couples holding hands, even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal, the Guardian can reveal.

[…]

[An] entire section of the rules was devoted to censoring depictions of homosexuality. “Intimate activities (holding hands, touching, kissing) between homosexual lovers” were censored, as were “reports of homosexual groups, including news, characters, music, tv show, pictures”. Similarly blocked was content about “protecting rights of homosexuals (parade, slogan, etc.)” and “promotion of homosexuality”. In all those guidelines, TikTok went substantially further than required by law.

TikTok’s overzealous content moderation goes further than just muting pro-gay content. It also covers a ton of content various governments find somewhat offensive, but not enough to actually outlaw it. TikTok prevents users in Turkey from mocking the ultra-mockable Recep Erdogan, as well as posting depictions of “non-Islamic gods.”

ByteDance calls its content-blocking efforts a “localised approach.” But it’s really just an extension of something that’s all too familiar to citizens of ByteDance’s home country: the elevation of governments above citizens, even though its citizens that use the app, not governments.

Weirdly, ByteDance is far more permissive than many social media apps when it comes to questionable content involving children. Sexualized content featuring children tends to avoid moderating efforts — something TikTok encourages by telling moderators to treat every video subject as over the age of 18 unless they have proof otherwise.

As a private company, TikTok is not a censorship body on its own. It can moderate content however it sees fit without trampling on people’s rights. The problem is TikTok has become an unofficial extension of multiple governments by adopting their rules for acceptable content, rather than applying its moderation consistently across the board.

This doesn’t necessarily make ByteDance worse than US-based social media platforms. The only difference is its country of origin, where broad censorship is considered normal, rather than an aberration. But US social media companies do the same thing. To avoid being blocked in more authoritarian countries, platforms aid and abet the oppression of citizens by agreeing to follow whatever censorial laws these governments have put in place, even if it means suppressing dissent and making things more dangerous (and less appealing) for their users.

Filed Under: china, content moderation, tiktok
Companies: bytedance, tiktok