I witnessed a pretty alarming situation on TikTok surrounding the story about the Dalai Lama asking a young boy to "suck his tongue." Traditional news outlets ran the initial story, and then followed up shortly after to provide important cultural context, as well as the Dalai Lama's apology.
My girlfriend's TikTok For You Page, on the other hand, only showed her stuff about the initial story and then she never heard anything else about it. We both walked away from this news story with completely different views of reality.
Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.
> Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.
My SO who is of Vietnamese origin noticed a similar issue.
VN and China have a very acrimonious relationship, and there definitely is a push in Vietnamese language TikTok to both rehabilitate China's image which has been perilously bad since the 2014 standoff [0], as well as to rehabilitate Trump's image.
It's hard to ascertain how much of it is manipulated via the algorithm, but either way there is a lot of content that is generated and posted on TikTok with a pro-Russia or pro-China slant and to a level incomparable to other platforms.
My girlfriend's TikTok For You Page, on the other hand, only showed her stuff about the initial story and then she never heard anything else about it. We both walked away from this news story with completely different views of reality.
Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.