TikTok manipulates content, brainwashes users into liking China, finds research

The social media platform TikTok has gone dark in the United States.

Hours before a ban on TikTok would have come into effect on Sunday, users were informed on Saturday that the platform was no longer available. While critics of the ban have slammed it as a violation of free speech rights, the supporters have flagged national security risks of the platform.

There is now evidence that TikTok is a tool of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to peddle propaganda and indoctrinate people across the world. Peer-reviewed research by Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) at Rutgers University has found that TikTok manipulates content that it shows to users to brainwash them into developing a favourable view of China and the CPC.

Last year, the US Congress passed a bipartisan bill that required ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to either sell the US operations of the platform to an appropriate non-Chinese company by Jan. 19 or see it get banned. While outgoing President Joe Biden supported it and signed the bill into law, incoming President Donald Trump has vowed to save TikTok .

In a ruling that came as a surprise as the US Supreme Court is essentially in Trump’s pocket, the judges unanimously ruled to uphold the law banning if it’s not sold. The ruling paved the way for TikTok to be banned on Sunday (January 19).

The peer-reviewed research, which is to be published in journal Frontiers in Social Psychology, reenforces the long-held belief that TikTok is part of the influence-peddling and propaganda operation of CPC as it promotes pro-China, anti-West content. Moreover, the Chinese ownership of TikTok means all users’ data is accessible to the CPC, allowing it to gain deep insights into users’ behaviour and use those insights to hone its influence-peddling and propaganda operations.

The research found that TikTok’s efforts have been successful. The findings showed that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more favourable perception of China they had.

TikTok manipulates content to brainwash users, finds research

The NCRI’s research comprised three studies to understand three aspects of TikTok-China relationship: the nature and prevalence of content sensitive to CPC, whether the prevalence of pro- and anti-CPC content was in line with users’ engagement patterns, and whether users had a favourable view of China.

In the first study, the researchers assessed the prevalence of TikTok showing content on topics sensitive to the CPC compared to Instagram and YouTube.

The sensitive topics picked for the study were Uyghurs, the ethnic minority essentially enslaved by the CPC in their native Xinjiang in concentration camps; Tibet, the ancient region bordering India native to Buddhists that the CPC invaded and occupied in 1950-51 and where it has systematically eroded the native culture and heritage; and Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 when CPC’s forces killed thousands of pro-democracy activists.

The findings showed that TikTok showed much more pro-CPC content and much less anti-CPC content than Instagram and YouTube.

Not only were TikTok’s results biased for pro-CPC content, the platform also showed lots of irrelevant content when these sensitive topics were searched. The irrelevant content was a tool to distract the users from finding content critical of the CPC and confuse them into turning to pro-CPC content.

The study “provided ample evidence that TikTok produces less anti-CCP and more irrelevant (distracting) content than other platforms”, noted the researchers.

They further noted, “The clearest evidence for some sort of bias in TikTok search results was for anti-CCP and irrelevant content. Both results are consistent with some sort of suppression of negative information about CCP on TikTok. It is obvious why the CCP would seek to suppress negative information about the CCP. However, the distraction hypothesis specifically predicted the results for the irrelevant search results – one way to steer users away from unflattering information about CCP is by sending them to links irrelevant to searches on topics about which the CCP is sensitive.”

In the second study, TikTok produced “a vastly higher ratio of pro- to anti-CPC content (content ratio) than could be explained by user engagement (likes and
comments ratios)”.

This means that irrespective how users engaged with pro- and anti-CPC content, they were shown more pro-CPC content.

This is against how social media platforms in general function. For example, on any social media platform, whether it’s Instagram or X or even video hosting platforms like YouTube, you would be shown content based on your usage patterns. This means that if you like, comment, and share content related to dogs and cats, you would be shown more content related to dogs and cats. This is not how it is on TikTok.

In the study, despite liking and commenting on anti-CPC content four times more, the TikTok showed three times more pro-CPC content.

This is the clearest indictment of TikTok as a tool of the CPC to groom users into supporters through manipulation of content.

In the third study such manipulation was translating into CPC’s favourable perception among users, the researchers found that was indeed the case.

The study found that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more positively they viewed China’s human rights record and China as a travel destination.

‘TikTok is a vehicle for CPC propaganda’

In their conclusion, the NCRI researchers said that the findings “raise the distinct possibility that TikTok is a vehicle for CPC propaganda”.

The researchers further noted that the studies showed that the CPC has moved on to much sophisticated propaganda. From ‘hard’ propaganda that is discernible easily, they noted that the CPC has progressed to ‘soft’ propaganda, such as presentation of positive information about China and the CPC through mass and social media, making claims that are less extreme purportedly more plausible of realistic in appearance.

In an interview with The Free Press, Joel Finkelstein, the Director and Chief Science Officer at NCRI, said the research showed that the belief that China is indoctrinating masses through TikTok is not a hypothesis but a fact.

Finkelstein said, “This scaled indoctrination isn’t hypothetical. It’s real. I think that the Supreme Court hearing now isn’t about whether or not we’re dealing with a hypothetical threat. The Supreme Court hearing is about whether we’re going to allow this continued indoctrination.”