I know this is not a burning issue, but while sitting in my dentist’s chair recently, I happened to overhear a conversation concerning what a waste of time their children were spending on the website TikTok. For those that are not parents and/or don’t know this website, it mainly hosts kids, young adults and adults who should know better. This triggered a vague memory of reading that this website was Chinese-controlled and they could be gathering personal information on its millions of users in the USA (yet another thing we have to worry about).
Intrigued, further research (via Google and its links to other sites) revealed that: “China remains the company’s (TicTok’s) central hub for pretty much everything, according to the current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of endangering their careers ... TikTok’s U.S. executives say they operate independently of ByteDance (a privately owned Chinese company) and are not influenced by the Chinese government, have never been pressed for data by Chinese authorities and would refuse to provide it if they were asked.”
Hmmm...it would seem that the conglomerate protesteth too much. But it is a complicated situation; if interested, take a look at tinyurl.com/264p54np.
Looking at the article “TikTok vs. Twitter: Perceptions of TikTok and Twitter users” from www.ab-lab.org/tiktok-vs-Twitter, we find some interesting analyses.
For example, if one measures ”influence” by number of users, then here are some stats: Some analysts claim that TikTok is an even more dangerous and corrosive site than Twitter in terms of shaping opinion. While the press has been currently preoccupied with Elon Musk’s takeover and restructuring of Twitter, TikTok boasts over “1 billion monthly active users compared to Twitter’s 330 million.”. So if either website influences its users’ opinions, one could argue that TikTok is 3 times more likely to be more effective than Twitter.
But there are some caveats: “A platform like Twitter specializes in written posts and caters to a broad swath of age groups, particularly Millennials, whereas a platform like TikTok specializes in short videos and caters more to Gen Z and below and its short video-based content differs quite a bit from the more text- and image-based content of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. Its content also skews toward a younger generation, with comedy, dancing, and lip-syncing the most popular types of videos uploaded.”
In case you didn’t know the age data on the Millennials vs Gen Z:
Generation: Millennial
Born: 1981 – 1996
Current Ages: 26 – 41
Generation: Gen Z
Born: 1997 – 2012
Current Ages: 10 – 25
(A more complete description can be found at: https://www.beresfordresearch.com/age-range-by-generation/🙂
Although it’s about impossible to precisely line up the age-data statistics, 32.5% of TicTok users fall into the age group 10-19, 29.5 % are 20-29 years and the remaining 38% are older. Regarding Twitter users: 17.1% are 18-24, 38.5 % are 25-34 years old and the remaining 44.4% are older, which backs up the contention that the target audiences are generally younger for TikTok and older for Twitter and also explains why political disinformation is more likely to appear on Twitter than TikTok.
Now, back to the issue of who has the most clout: TikTok or Twitter?
AB Labs has run an interesting experiment:
“We conducted an experiment with 400 people... in which participants read a hypothetical scenario about a social media user whose favorite platform is either Twitter or TikTok (randomly assigned). Participants then rated how much they like the person.”
Participants were instructed to “imagine that you and a new acquaintance are talking about social media, and they mention that their favorite social media platform is [Twitter / TikTok].”
Participants were then asked “how much do you like this person? (1 = Not at all, 7 = Extremely)” using a 1-7 scale?”
If you agree that “liking” implies “influencing” then this seems a simple way to measure which site influences their users most, Twitter or TikTok. However, since the user population overlaps and tends to be different for the two sites, it cannot cannot pick a “winner,” but it can provide a baseline for successive statistical measurements which can indicate relative success of a test strategy over time which then would be useful in deciding whether to institute change or not.
This experiment showed very little statistical difference in measurement of any influence on the respective users of each site. Perhaps stronger conclusions could be drawn if more questions were asked involving a direct comparison between the two, such as:
• I like Twitter more than TikTok
• I like Twitter about the same as TikTok
• I like Twitter less than TikTok
• I use only Twitter
• I use only TikTok
• I don’t use either TikTok or Twitter
Then ask the question: “Imagine that you and a new acquaintance are talking about social media, and they mention that their favorite social media platform is [Twitter / TikTok].”
Then ask, “How much do you like this person?” and “How much would you trust this person’s judgment?” and “ How likely (on a sale of 1-7) would you be to follow their advice?”
But all of this raises, perhaps, a more important question: “Who do we wish to influence more: the younger future generations or most everyone else right now? and who or what is “We?” Our government regulators or our private enterprises such as TikTok, Twitter and many many other social transaction sites?”
While there is no present agreed-upon solution to this problem, there is data on simpler, similar problems (which is an excellent technique because as you solve an easier but similar problem you can gain insight on how to go about solving the harder one.)
“To put it another way, solving a simpler problem is about finding the core difficulty in what you’re trying to do, trying to temporarily ignore that difficulty, and then incorporate that difficulty back into a solution you derive for the simplified problem.”
While I doubt that the FBI and CIA are easily-influenced users of TikTok and Twitter and that our national security is in danger, the worry is that misinformation is easily spread by those who wish to influence our elections, such as unfriendly nations and our own political morons who seem to believe everything their cousin just found on the Internet.
Personally, I found it rather discomfiting to find that the Chinese could be reading my emails, texts, and website visits if I chanced to open these sites.
Clearly that is something at odds with my ethical code as a columnist to never waste time and I would never do, except, of course, in the interest of doing research on the site itself to gain first-hand knowledge in enabling me to educate my many readers.
That was a joke, a joke!
— Dr. Stewart A. Denenberg is an emeritus professor of computer science at Plattsburgh State, retiring recently after 30 years there. Before that, he worked as a technical writer, programmer and consultant to the U.S. Navy and private Industry. Send comments and suggestions to his blog at www.tec-soc.blogspot.com, where there is additional text and links. He can also be reached at denenbsa@gmail.com.
Gloss