#microtarget

[gwss200group19]

TikTok’s Algorithm

TikTok’s Algorithm and How it Works.

Like many other social media applications, TikTok uses an intricate algorithm to determine what videos and ads to push to a person's account. Unlike other platforms, you do not have to follow any of these influencers for their content to appear on your feed. The algorithm works based on likes, shares, saves, and comments. Although the people you follow can influence the content that appears, you do not need to follow someone to get their videos on your “ForYouPage.” (FYP). Another aspect considered when TikTok determines what is pushed out to a person is how long a person watches a video. The longer a person watches a type of content, the more it will appear, furthering its vacuum (Dias and Jeanavive, 2021). All these aspects of an algorithm combined steer a consumer down a certain content rabbit hole. 

A person can become a “micro-target” for certain content within a few hours, creating an “echo-chamber” of various values and beliefs.  While it may not always be harmful, it can promote dangerous content and ideas into young people's minds. TikTok has been found to influence users' social, sexual, and cultural identities and can influence people to want to change themselves based on their “ForYouPage” (Dias and Jeanavive, 2021), so if your feed is full of videos on the same idea, from the same person, or the same topic reposted repeatedly by different people, it’s not surprising that the person may conform to these videos. When such a powerful algorithm is combined with young, impressionable minds, it becomes extremely easy to influence them and mold them into a person that aligns with toxic traits, gender roles, and sexist behavior.

How the Algorithm can influence Behaviors and Ideas

Many different kinds of videos can be found on TikTok, and not all of them are concerning. That said, gender stereotypes are perpetuated within many TikTok videos and trends. Chapter two of Gendered Lives talks about how gender roles are social constructs that are learned during childhood and everyday experience (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2020). These traditional roles can be harmful because it encourages men to be violent while at the same time telling women to be docile and to endure abuse (Allan G. Johnson). A theme in the essay Gender , Migration, and Exlie which can be found in Gendered Lives it discusses how throughout the world gender roles can be attributed to the reason why gender related violence is unreported (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2020). When people watch videos on TikTok that have gender roles, it can cause an unconscious bias. This bias may appear as they interact with family, friends, classmates, and coworkers. Gender roles can appear through subtle trends and videos, demeaning jokes, or explicit videos that detail what a person should act like. 

SOURCES

Dias, Avani, Jeanavive McGregor and Lauren Day. “The Dark Side of TikTok’s Algorithm: Beyond the Dances and Skits There’s a Darker Side to TikTok. The App’s Algorithm Is Exposing Users to Dangerous Content While Controlling Which People and Political Movements Get Attention.” ABC News, July 26, 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/tiktok-algorithm-dangerous-eating-disorder-content-censorship/100277134.

Johnson, Allan G. “Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us’ (1997)," in Gwyn Kirk & Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Gendered Lives: International Perspectives” New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Freedman, Jane, Zeynep Kivilcim and Nurcan Özgür Baklacioğlu. 'Gender, Migration and Exile (2017), in Gwyn Kirk & Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Gendered Lives: International Perspectives.” New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

[subzerocatayst]

did the internet gods just fucking smell that i bought the valve complete collection? i started seeing more portalposting on here after i got it

[tomorrowusa]

When you understand that Republicans are not entirely cookie cutter, you can frame messaging to instigate division among the various GOP subgroups.

Data journalist Nate Cohn separates the GOP into six groupings based on poll responses regarding various issues.

In a specific state or legislative district you might be able shape issues in such a way as to make a Republican candidate seem unpalatable to certain elements within the party. Even if disaffected Republicans don't vote for the Democratic candidate outright, they may simply skip voting for any candidate for that particular office.

In Arizona in 2022 the GOP nominated a particularly dreadful slate of candidates for statewide office. They lost by several percentage points even while the GOP did passably in downballot races.

[W]hile majorities of Republicans side with Mr. Trump on almost every issue, those majorities are often quite slim: Around 40 percent of Republican-leaning voters support aid to Ukraine, support comprehensive immigration reform or say abortion should be mostly or always legal.

The closer the race, the more useful microtargeting becomes.

[absynthe--minded]

Watching Yellowjackets is just constant armchair quarterbacking where I yell at the cast for not being good at exorcisms and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world

[allthewesternstars]

jesse what the fuck are you talking about

[todays-xkcd]

Hard to imagine political rhetoric more microtargeted at me than 'I love Venn diagrams. I really do, I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles.'

Presidential Venn Diagram [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A Venn diagram with three circles.] [Upper left circle:] Eligible to be President [Upper right circle:] Would be a good President [Lower circle:] Unusually vocal about love of Venn diagrams

[Intersection of all three circles:] Kamala Harris [Intersection of the upper left and lower circles:] Me

[satelliteofsin]

Tumblr mobile showing me porn ads but we're not allowed to post porn??? hello???

[bauerntanz]

Microtargeting und der Missbrauch von politischer Online-Werbung

#Microtargeting und der Missbrauch von politischer Online-Werbung in Fokus des #EU_Parlaments. Ein Kommentar von @netzpolitik

Die EU will die Gefahren von politischem Microtargeting und verdeckten Online-Kampagnen endlich entschieden begrenzen. Doch damit die neue Verordnung ihr Versprechen einlösen kann, muss sich das Parlament gegen Rat und Kommission durchsetzen. Ein Netzpolitk.org-Kommentar. Neue Regeln für politische Online-Werbung sollen schon zur EU-Wahl 2024 gelten – Gemeinfrei-ähnlich freigegeben durch…

[tanadrin]

Per election twitter, not only does the Trump campaign seem to wholeheartedly believe the polls, instead of funding or organizing any kind of get-out-the-vote effort, they have been focusing their money primarily on microtargeting ads at the demographic the polls have them ahead with (young people and minorities who did not vote in the last few elections) and on cooking up far-fetched legal challenges to the election. Although despite my original misgivings I think it is now incontrovertible that Biden dropping out was the right move--the relative enthusiasm people have for Harris and her comparatively high favorability ratings are hard to argue with!--I think the Biden campaign was right not to put too much stock in the polls. They got raked over the coals for this when people were urging Biden to quit, but Trump's people taking the polls too seriously has resulted in some really weird strategic decisions.

[socialistexan]

Help,I'm being microtargeted

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A class action lawsuit alleging Facebook allowed advertisers to discriminate is set to go ahead after the Supreme Court of Canada this week refused to hear an appeal filed by the social media giant.

The case, which could include thousands of Quebec residents, will return to Quebec Superior Court to be heard after the Supreme Court of Canada this week refused to give Facebook leave to appeal a ruling by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

[...]

The Supreme Court's decision is the latest development in a case that began in 2019 which centres on the practice of allowing advertisers to "microtarget" ads to Facebook users according to their ages or genders.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[mayasaura]

the way john's friends' original names are censored even outside of his dream bubble when pyrrha talks to varun about G--, makes it seem to me like not only is john hiding the names from us, they have been erased from the tlt universe entirely. rendered unpronounceable, or unintelligible. i don't know how realistic this is but like. did john just fully delete his friends' old names, do you think?

Nah, not literally. He literally cannot do that. Or at least. Hm.

Erasing their memories was a trick of the brain matter; a much more elegant and permanent version of what Harrow brute forced on herself to forget Gideon. If he were going to make his Saints' names literally unspeakable, he would have to do remote brain surgery on every person in the Nine Houses, giving them microtargeted aphasia for a set of words most of them had never and would never hear.

But. When we heard Pyrrha say G—'s name, we were hearing from Nona's perspective. For the effect we saw, he wouldn't have to have made the names unknowable to everyone, just to Alecto.

I think narratively the reason the names never appear in print is like... It is because we're not allowed to know them. It's too private. Even after ten thousand years, the grief still runs too deep. But you might be right about John having erected a literal barrier to enforce that. Much to think about.

[velvetvexations]

all the discourse (tm) has made me extremely nervous to even have like, amab characters who experiment with gender/are feminine/nonbinary, ect ect. Not that i would go out of my way TO be transmisogynistic in depictions-- or wouldn't listen if i genuinely was-- but my first thought always tends to be 'what if someone reads this character in extremely bad faith and assumes i'm doing the thing of 'teehee, this character isn't REALLY trans'' and assumes i'm transfemme baiting w a gnc char'.

I find the very idea of baiting people with GNC characters who could be transfem weird. Who's microtargeting their queerbaiting like that? It's almost always just gay/lesbian baiting.

[jkottke]

Bushwick Analytica is an art project that helped kids microtarget their parents and other adults on Facebook with hand-drawn ads such as “I should have a dog. Get your kids a dog!” and “Save the animal habitats”.

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

what's Lottie Lee?

I'm glad you asked, anon!

Lottie Lee is a femslash ship between Lottie Matthews and Laura Lee (it's unclear if this is a double-barrelled first name or if she is on Charlie Brown-style full-name basis with the rest of the cast) from the show Yellowjackets, which I've been blogging about a lot lately. They're teammates on the Wiskayok High School Yellowjackets, the 1996 New Jersey girls' state soccer champions, whose plane--chartered by Lottie's loathsome rich asshole father--crashes on the way to nationals and leaves the team stranded in the Canadian wilderness for nineteen months.

Laura Lee is introduced as a clueless, naive Evangelical girl who throws up a ton of death flags, but she survives the crash and becomes a more complex and important character (she has a meaner sense of humor than one would expect and enjoys ribbing her teammates, among other things). About halfway through the first season Lottie, who is being heavily medicated for schizophrenia that may also include an element of genuine precognition or clairvoyance, goes cold turkey off her meds and begins having powerful audiovisual hallucinations that are soon coupled with what appears to be demonic possession after a just-for-fun seance goes horribly wrong. She seeks out Laura Lee for help understanding what is happening to her and they enter into an intense spiritual friendship in which Laura Lee validates and encourages Lottie's visions in return for imposing a conservative Protestant theological structure on them. Unusually for this type of theme in this type of show, this is presented as generally good for both of them.

Unfortunately, this doesn't last for long, as Laura Lee attempts to fly an apparently airworthy general-aviation plane to find help but dies shortly after takeoff from what many of the other characters (and much of the fandom, myself included) believe to be direct sabotage by a malevolent supernatural force. Lottie is heartbroken and spends the rest of the show so far in deep mourning. By one episode after Laura Lee's death she is ordering Bacchae-inspired attempted sexual battery and ritual murder of another important character called Travis while high off her ass on powerful entheogens in combination with the preexisting antipsychotic withdrawal. By two episodes after Laura Lee's death she is starting a cult and in the second season we learn that a version of the cult has kept on keeping on into the early 2020s, with a superficially more stable middle-aged Lottie at its head.

And yet she keeps having visions of the deceased Laura Lee--two major ones in the second season, potentially with more to come in the third (fingers crossed!)--who keeps attempting to provide her with moral guidance and categorically refuses to give up on her and abandon her to her metaphorical and/or literal demons. @eucatastrophicblues and I have decided that if the Yellowjackets cosmology has a conventional heaven and hell then Lottie will almost certainly end up in the former, not because she's handling her own shit successfully (she is Not) but because Laura Lee is almost certainly willing to go full Trajan Option for her even after she eventually dies. (As another fandom of mine might put it, "Deathless devotion! Dyke drama! Obliteration!")

tl;dr Lottie Lee is a ship that I feel microtargeted by and if you are asking me this question on anon you might feel microtargeted by it too.

[romesinruins]

You're over come by the spirit of a straight white man, how do you plan your epic tale of vengeance against the ones who wronged you and what's the estimated body count?

congrats for providing a scenario i have never thought of in my life.

I've never been a straight white man and i know I'd love my murder spree microtargeted but idk how straight white male me would feel about that.

It depends on the number of people who wronged me bcs it would be at least that many but also the setting of this. like. u gotta admit action movie murder spree with unknowable numbers of casualties sounds fun.

I mean. I do want to go apeshit sometimes but also I feel like the urge to go apeshit is deeply entertwined with being a woman who has to deal with lots of people every day.

so. right now i'm saying like 3-10 but also if you ask me this again tomorrow afternoon there's a chance i'll want the streets to run red with the blood of my enemies and every single one of their loved ones