A new academic study released by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) indicates that the TikTok social media platform, owned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled company ByteDance, is used to promote pro-CCP propaganda among American youth. The study, an update to a preliminary report published by NCRI last August, reveals a bevy of evidence that TikTok routinely downplays negative content regarding the Chinese state, Communist Party, and their history of repression when searched even by U.S. audiences.
Using several dummy accounts, researchers could gauge the types of content users encounter through TikTok’s algorithm when searching for content that should explicitly expose controversies regarding the CCP’s historical actions. A comparative analysis by the researchers found that negative CCP content was generated over 80 percent of the time when searching the subject of “Uyghurs” on Instagram. The same search on TikTok generated negative CCP content just 11 percent of the time.
