How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-sex-drugs-minors-11631052944?mod=hp_lead_pos5

This article talks about the dark side of the TikTok algorithm. The Wall Street Journal created a dozen automated TikTok accounts to test the algorithm to see what a minor might see. The ages of these bots were 13 to 15 years old. The objective of this research was to see how easy it would be for a minor to be exposed to drugs and sex. The findings showed that it did not take much for these accounts to be flooded with videos like this. You only have to be 13 to have an account and TikTok claims that they don’t have any programs to limit what minors are seeing. No matter what age, any user can see the same videos.

This article was very informative and went into great detail about the Wall Street Journal’s research. Besides this, I did think that the article was slightly bias. They talked about how with the TikTok algorithm, the longer you linger on a certain video, the more likely similar content will show up again. The thing that I found to be slightly bias is that these “automated” accounts went searching for hashtags and videos relating to sex and drugs. Then of course, these accounts would be shown more videos like this. Not every minor on TikTok is engaging or searching for videos like this.