Shortly after researchers utilized the feature to critique the app, the action was taken.
Over the past several days, TikTok has removed a facility that was enabling researchers and other individuals to investigate the popularity of hashtags on its app. The New York Times was the first to report on the move, which occurred not long after academics issued a report that attacked the corporation and included data from the tool.
According to The New York Times, the program was one of the few techniques that were available to the general public for tracking information regarding the popularity of particular hashtags. The social media company TikTok, much like other social media businesses, has made it difficult for third parties to monitor the dissemination of material within its app.
In this particular instance, the tool in question is a feature known as Creative Center, which offers prospective advertisers and other individuals information regarding the popularity of hashtags. Researchers from the Network Contagion Institute at Rutgers University had utilized the search function of the Creative Center in order to monitor hashtags that were deemed “sensitive” to the interests of the Chinese government. Following a comparison of the prevalence of hashtags on TikTok and Instagram, the researchers came to the conclusion that numerous “sensitive” themes were “dramatically underrepresented on TikTok” in comparison to Instagram.
Almost immediately after the report was made public, the researchers stated that the search function in Creative Center vanished without any explanation being provided. They added in an addition to the report that “Search capacity for Hashtags has now been removed from the user interface entirely.” This was something that NCRI discovered to have happened on Christmas day, which was many days after the first release of this report. In addition, they stated that TikTok had restricted direct access to a number of “sensitive” topics that they had previously tracked. These topics included hashtags that were associated with the politics of the United States of America as well as another geopolitical concern.
The modification was acknowledged by TikTok in a statement that was sent to The New York Times. A spokeswoman for the corporation stated, “Unfortunately, some individuals and organizations have misused the Center’s search function to draw inaccurate conclusions. As a result, we are changing some of the features to ensure that it is used for the purpose for which it was designed.”
The controversy is the most recent illustration of the growing conflicts that exist between social media corporations and researchers who are attempting to investigate contentious issues such as misinformation. Additionally, Meta has found itself in conflict with researchers, and it is rumored that the company intends to discontinue CrowdTangle, a tool that is frequently utilized by researchers and journalists to investigate the manner in which content is disseminated on Facebook. Additionally, since Elon Musk acquired control of the company, X has significantly restricted the access that researchers have to data, which has resulted in its once open APIs becoming prohibitively pricey for the majority of groups.
TikTok may be especially sensitive to what it views to be inappropriate use of its capabilities, given the circumstances surrounding the company. Over the course of several years, the firm has stated that it does not match its content policies with the interests of the Chinese government. This is despite the fact that numerous government officials have urged for the app to be blocked. More recently, the company has been subjected to a greater level of scrutiny about its treatment of content that is associated with the Israel-Hamas war. This criticism was also fueled by what the company claimed was an erroneous portrayal of hashtag data from their perspective.
Having said that, according to the researchers, the corporation has made some compromises. According to reports, TikTok intends to make the tools accessible to some civil society organizations that have raised concerns regarding the business’s content moderation procedures. This comes after the company started providing an official Research API to a few academic institutions in the previous year.
The decision to abruptly turn off a tool, on the other hand, will most certainly cause academics to have more questions regarding the degree to which the corporation is prepared to collaborate with them. As stated in their writing, the researchers from the NCRI expressed their significant worry regarding the lack of transparency.