Best platform fr.
TikTok has come under GOP fire in recent weeks after the app showed an apparent spike in pro-Palestine content after the IDF began its bombing campaign of Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Republican politicians have publicly claimed that the company is intentionally promoting pro-Palestine content with the goal of “brainwashing our [American] youth” into supporting Hamas. In an essay penned for the Free Press, Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin wrote that TikTok was “controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” and that the “rampant pro-Hamas propaganda on the app should serve as a wake-up call to Americans” to ban it. Gallagher wrote that promoting “pro-Hamas” content is something the CCP would do, because two Chinese web platforms that have mapping capabilities do not label Israel on their maps, and that this form of censorship should come as “no surprise.”
But the proliferation of pro-Palestine content on TikTok isn’t due to the app’s algorithm, the company stated in a press release on Monday. Rather, it claimed that teenagers simply tend to support Palestine more. “Attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed,” the release stated. “Support for Israel (as compared to sympathy for Palestine) has been lower among younger Americans for some time. This is evidenced by looking at Gallup polling data of millennials dating as far back as 2010, long before TikTok even existed.” The data linked by the release states that sympathy toward Israel is “solidly positive” among older generations, but that millennials were “evenly divided,” with 42 percent sympathizing more with Palestine and 40 percent sympathizing more with Israel.
The company wrote in the release that its algorithm does not “take sides,” but operates in a positive feedback loop—the more of a certain type of content a user interacts with, the more of that type of content they will be shown. “TikTok does not ‘promote’ one side of an issue over another,” the release read. “In the U.S., we have given our third-party Trusted Technology Provider access to TikTok source code to understand if the system is acting as TikTok intends…On TikTok, the videos people view, like, and share inform the recommendation algorithm about content they might find relevant. Using these signals, the recommendation algorithm creates a prediction score to rank videos to potentially recommend.” The effective thrust of TikTok’s blog post, then, is that young people are seeing more pro-Palestine content on the app because that’s what they’re engaging with.
The post also denied allegations that the company was intentionally boosting pro-Palestine hashtags to get more views. “Blunt comparisons of hashtags is severely flawed and misrepresentative of the activity on TikTok,” the release stated. “Hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok. Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags. Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views. It is easy to cherry pick hashtags to support a false narrative about the platform.”
The release also noted that simply counting the number of videos associated with a hashtag was not “sufficient context” for understanding the platform. Though the #standwithIsrael tag is associated with fewer videos than #freePalestine, the release said, it has 68 percent more views per video in the U.S. Additionally, the release states, the #freePalestine tag is much older than #standwithIsrael. “Some hashtags are newer (e.g. #standwithIsrael) while others are more established (e.g. #freePalestine),” the release stated. “The vast majority (9 in 10) of videos tagged #standwithIsrael were posted in the last 30 days in the US. A difference in views and posts is expected.”
At time of writing, the #freepalestine tag has 25.5 billion views, and #standwithisrael has 440.4 million views.
Brutal, yes. Unacceptable, I’m not sure. The issue is we only get a glimpse into what is actually going on in the area. For example, Israel stated originally that Oct. 7th was a massive terrorist attack that killed a thousand people. Then the story comes out that maybe the IDF pilots might have whoopsied and killed a bunch of their own civilians before realizing they should try to not just blow up anything that moves.
When asked why someone supported Israel in their continued bombing of civilian targets in Gaza, someone replied “war is hell”. So wait, flip the sides. Hamas’ attack was not “unprovoked”, it was a response to the oppression and constant murder of their people for decades. If you can handwave the absolute destruction of the Palestinian population simply because “war is hell”, then you should also be able to handwave the attack Hamas conducted.
No shit, peace would be awesome. Unfortunately it’s hard for peace to exist when one side has cornered the other and routinely fucks their shit up (very watered down description of the treatment of Palestinians). Eventually, revolution has to happen for them to break free. That’s not exactly “unacceptable”.
War absolutely is hell, but that is not enough to hand wave away either side’s actions. Neither Hamas nor the IDF are exclusively targeting government, infrastructure, and combatants. I decry both sides’ lack of restraint and focus, but it is also not lost on me that Israel’s blockade has directly impacted Hamas’ ability to surgically respond. Israel, however, does not lack the means for a surgical response–they have the ability to take out specific involved people without leveling a city block. They just choose not too because they want to kill all the Palestinians from the river to the sea.
I’m inclined to agree that a revolution is inevitable and even acceptable, but I don’t think that uninvolved Israelis are valid targets in the revolution, and I’m not disillusioned enough to mirror the IDF’s justification in saying that all Israelis are culpable animals who should have staged a coup and thrown out Netanyahu years ago. Citizens are not universally responsible for the actions of their government.
uninvolved Israelis
No such thing in a settler-colonial state. They are occupiers with their bodies. Uncritical support to Hamas and Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance to wipe out the state of Israel and cause enough terror to the settlers for them to flee back to their homelands en masse. If the settlers don’t want to die they can simply leave and not be there.
I’m just saying it’s pretty one-sided and Hamas’ attack on Israel is not at all comparable to the current operations underway by the IDF in Gaza.
Obviously loss of civilian lives is horrid. I would be willing to bet money on the IDF being responsible for a majority of Israeli civilian casualties though. Whether it be their pilots gunning down fleeing civilians because they are indiscriminately shooting, or literally bombing the locations of hostages rather than trying to save them.
Meanwhile they get to paint a picture to the rest of the world showing Hamas as evil “animals”, and everyone just agrees. It’s bullshit all around, and I want their fucking government dismantled and destroyed. They don’t deserve the power of governance, nor do they deserve the stolen fucking land they stand on while murdering innocent people in a strip of land they put the original land holders into. Fuck Israel, fuck the IDF, fuck everyone claiming they have a “right to defend themselves”, and I hope that the Palestinians get their freedom and peace. It will probably cost them greatly, but blood is the price of uprising against fascism.
