[0:00]Just weeks after a joint venture deal saved Tik Tok from being banned in the US, there are serious questions about how Tik Tok US is being run. Users and
[0:11]watchd dogs are accusing Tik Tok US of censoring content in the United States. They say posts about the deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis, as well as those relating
[0:21]to the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, are being suppressed. It was only recently that Tik Tok's new ownership structure took effect and only shortly after that when users began
[0:33]noticing something unusual on the platform. >> So this is how it should appear. The latest video under my three pinned videos is the ice shooting analysis. But this is what my page looks like according to people who message me. And
[0:45]even weirder, this is how it appears in their watch history. A blank square. The red X mark is just them pointing it out to me. Steven Cash is a former intelligence official who now manages a
[0:55]watchdog focused on democracy and who himself experienced posting difficulties. >> I can tell you that we posted one video early in the morning um and it got many
[1:05]many hits. We have something like 35,000 followers. Um a second video we just could not get it posted and then when it finally got posted it had only one view or something like that. And then we go
[1:15]on um the other social media platforms, Twitter and Blue Sky and actually Tik Tok and others and we're seeing lots of people saying we're seeing the same thing.
[1:27]>> Reports abounded of users having a hard time getting posts discussing the unrest in Minneapolis or referencing sex offender Jeffrey Epstein published. Tik Tok blamed technical glitches, referring
[1:37]to a quote infrastructure issue after a power outage at a data center. By now, the issues with posting appear to have resolved themselves, but suspicions that Tik Tok may have been suppressing
[1:48]content have not entirely gone away, but Steven Cash thinks the damage may have been done anyway. >> It doesn't really matter if it's a power outage or not.
[1:58]>> It adds to the level of fear. It adds to the dislocation of our ability to talk to each other, communicate to each other, debate issues, talk about what's
[2:09]worrying us and what we can do to protect American democracy. >> Tik Tok's US operations are now under a majority American investor group following a divevest or ban law that forced China's bite dance to surrender
[2:20]control or face being made unavailable in the country. The new ownership includes powerful figures with ties to the White House, such as Larry Ellison, who founded tech giant Oracle, but whose
[2:30]conservative media empire has also increased his political messaging power. And these changes are happening at a moment when the administration faces accusations of using the levers of
[2:41]government to pressure media companies from lawsuits and funding threats to regulatory scrutiny in ways critics say distort the information Americans receive. In fact, privatelyowned
[2:52]companies can do pretty much whatever they want to. But I'm not mad at Tik Tok. What I'm concerned about is that the privatelyowned companies are not
[3:02]functioning as privately owned companies anymore. They are starting to function as statec controlled or state influenced companies. And that's the major difference. Would Larry Ellison and that
[3:14]consortium be owning Tik Tok now if the president of the United States had not pushed that using all of the levers that
[3:22]he has? Would CBS be refusing to run the account of some of the ICE facilities?
[3:34]It's a reference to how in late December, the network giant CBS abruptly pulled a completed 60 Minutes investigation into migrants deported to El Salvador's Sikkat detention center
[3:45]with a journalist leading the investigation saying she thought the report was sidelined to quote shield the administration. In the same way the posting issues on Tik Tok appear to have
[3:55]been solved, that CBS report also did eventually air. But in both recent cases, worries remain of a tightening of boundaries in terms of what Americans
[4:04]feel they can say or expect to see. >> Well, joining me now is Paulo Jabaldo. He's a sociologist at Complent University of Madrid. He has been
[4:14]closely following platforms such as Tik Tok and their effects on politics and society. Paulo, it's good to have you with us tonight. Um, we know that
[4:24]platforms such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, they all use algorithms to >> curate our content. They push us content. So why should we be so
[4:36]concerned about what's happening over at Tik Tok US and and the takeover there? >> Yes. I mean, as you say rightly, algorithmic curation is something common
[4:46]to all these platforms and it has a functional purpose. It is about reducing the amount of content to a sizable amount mean to an amount which we can
[4:58]manage otherwise it would uh be too much all the content is there. So it is allowing us to have a manageable uh
[5:07]chunk of content as it were according to what the platform sees as our interest as our taste as our previous interactions with the platform and
[5:17]therefore it is useful. It can be socially useful and this is what recommended systems in general do. >> What is the problem with Tik Tok? The problem with Tik Tok is that this is
[5:28]clearly I mean in any case many of these platforms profit motive leads algorithms to emphasize extreme content very high intensity content sensationalistic
[5:38]content which of course is socially problematic. It can lead to various more so with Tik Tok USDs which is this
[5:48]weird joint venture kungango is not clear what it is even. >> Mhm. where there is also clear clear political agenda behind because what Trump has done was exploiting the
[6:00]moment, exploiting the opportunity to install at the control of Tik Tok a number of allies of his mean people who have donated for Trump, >> people who have declared their support
[6:11]for Trump, Netanyahu and other global right figures. So Paulo besides the normal agenda, >> you don't so you don't you don't think
[6:21]then you don't believe the the reason that Tik Tok US is giving us saying that it was a a data center losing its power that caused certain content to
[6:32]disappear. >> I mean of course to make uh certain um assessment of that you would need time and you would need data that I don't possess.
[6:43]>> Mhm. But there are allegations made by lawmakers uh made by the governor of California Newsome made by Benny users a
[6:52]number of suspicious uh behaviors and events on the platform that been reported uh which contribute to this crisis of trust around the platform which I mean
[7:04]of course will need to be verified once we have more firm data but it is not irrational as such >> but in the sense that again >> it seems too obvious.
[7:13]doesn't it seem too obvious though? I mean, if Tik Tok US really wanted to suppress and censor certain types of political content,
[7:24]>> wouldn't it be able to find a less obvious way to do it? I mean, your eye, my eye, we see it immediately. They've got to have a different way to do it, wouldn't they?
[7:34]>> I mean, actually, algorithmic censorship because it's creation that descends into censorship. Mhm. >> It's a rather subtle and invisible way
[7:45]of doing it in a certain to a certain extent in a sense that the most hard edited way would be to ban accounts would be to stop people from posting altogether and there also been episodes
[7:56]of that on Tik Tok and other platforms. So voices that are considered whatever unacceptable by the power that be with algorithmic curation it's quite invisible right because you don't see
[8:07]the algorithm. The algorithm is proprietary. The algorithm is a black box. What you see are the consequences the algorithm and they can be also very tiny but even tiny changes can change
[8:18]the landscape the climate of a platform and the fact that there are so many people on Tik Tok in the US I think it's about 130 million um the reaction in
[8:29]recent days it shows us though that there are too many eyes watching and it shows us also that the users whose content has disappeared that they will not let Tik Tok
[8:40]get away with this, right? I mean, Tik Tok may say it was a powder power outage, but the users, they're not going to let this die. Or how do you see it?
[8:51]>> I mean, a, it is a very influential platform. It is not the top one, but it is one of the top three uh more or less. I mean, it depends. It changes, but it is extremely influential, especially
[9:02]with young people, and it has been extremely influential in the last election campaign. I mean Trump himself [snorts] celebrated that according to him Tik Tok was what wanted for him
[9:13]>> and he made a great celebration of the fact that he saved Tik Tok and that now young people owe it owe him because he
[9:22]he he did that and again it's not a matter of um simply very fine things I mean there are many
[9:32]episodes many events that accumulate and that build into this crisis of trust. >> I mean when you see that that all these media are controlled by right-wing people. I mean Larry Alison is
[9:42]controlling also many old news media. >> Larry is a new >> he's the he was the creator of Oracle. That's right. He's now I guess what co-owner or part owner of Tik Tok US
[9:54]>> he's the CEO of Oracle the owner of other news media the owner of broadcasting. So what you see is a pervasive control over both old media
[10:04]and new media which means that both the information sources and the spaces of discussion are now in fewer and fewer hands and I think young people users more more broadly have very good reasons
[10:16]to be worried about what is going on. PA, before we run out of time, I just want to ask you if we if we can't get our hands on the algorithm. You say it's pro it's property anyway. It's a black
[10:26]box. How can [clears throat] how can any prosecutor, any investigator, the FBI for example, how can they then put together um a case based on a claim that
[10:37]Tik Tok or or another platform have manipulated an election? I mean if we can't access the algorithm how can we prove intent to manipulate
[10:49]>> I mean there are various digital forensics techniques that can be used uh that are generally kind of described as reverse engineering namely say you have a big account whenever you post you get
[11:01]minimum 10,000 views suddenly you get 1,000 views what is going on I mean you didn't change the content you change the style you didn't change the timing of
[11:10]the post something strange is a foods. So by uh collecting of that information, you can show with quite a good margin of
[11:20]proof that something strange is going on there. >> Okay. Well, I'm sure that this story will have long legs. Um maybe we'll be
[11:28]talking again to to see how Tik Tok deals with this. Paulo Jabaldo, it's good to have you on the show. We appreciate you sharing your insights tonight. Thank you.
[11:39]>> Thanks for having me, man. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.