Certain types of content is banned on Douyin but the idea that tiktok promotes "edu and wholesome content within China" is a myth spread by Andrew Tate a couple months ago.
TikTok promotes the content that you respond to, no different than the recommendation algos we've gotten from our homegrown social media companies. Their biggest differentiator is that the signals they use are way better. If you see alot of gender transitioning content, then it says more about the content you watch.
That said, if you think critically, if Chinese users as a whole preferred educational and wholesome content on tiktok, that says more about Chinese society and what they value not that there is some boogeyman who holds a big level on whether to show you cats or twerking.
>>the tiktok algo promoting edu and wholesome content within China, but twerking and gender transition in the west true?
>Certain types of content is banned on Douyin but the idea that tiktok promotes "edu and wholesome content within China" is a myth spread
These two comments aren't really contradictory. Tiktok might technically not be "promoting edu and wholesome content" in china, but they might have banned the content that the parent poster thinks is repugnant (ie. "twerking and gender transition"). Indeed, depending on how much stuff is banned and what you consider as "wholesome", it's very possible that the chinese censors banned everything that you don't consider wholesome.
No, I think the phrasing of the statement is misleading. It implies that TikTok (or some Chinese boogeyman) is the one making the decision to "poison" American Tiktok viewers. That isn't the case; the two cultures are different - China may ban choose to ban twerking videos on social media platforms but the US could not do something like that without infringing on free speech.
The people want twerking videos (TikTok did not invent "sex sells"), whether or not tiktok gives it to you is a function of the countries government, not some Chinese mastermind.
That said, I don't think the statement is globally true. I opened TikTok just now on "unpaired words"[1], I've never seen a video on transitioning and I get plenty of educationally curious content. This content does exist on US TikTok and is being promoted; you just have to be interested in watching it.
TikTok promotes the content that you respond to, no different than the recommendation algos we've gotten from our homegrown social media companies. Their biggest differentiator is that the signals they use are way better. If you see alot of gender transitioning content, then it says more about the content you watch.
That said, if you think critically, if Chinese users as a whole preferred educational and wholesome content on tiktok, that says more about Chinese society and what they value not that there is some boogeyman who holds a big level on whether to show you cats or twerking.