I got radicalized into the far-right on TikTok. Well, technically I didn’t, but an account that I made did, and this is a graph of what that looked like. I just published this study, and I’ll link it in the comments, but I’ll also break it down right now, here.
So I wanted to examine whether or not transphobia is a gateway prejudice that leads to like, broader far-right radicalization. It’s been pretty clear for a while now that the far-right is transphobic, but we wanted to see whether being transphobic alone was enough to lead you to the far right.
So I made a brand new TikTok account and followed 14 creators known to post transphobic content. Then I started scrolling my ‘For You’ page, and I started exclusively engaging with transphobic content, and I documented the main narratives of the more than 400 videos recommended to me. We also double-blind coded this, meaning that another researcher also watched every video and coded the narratives, and then if we ever disagreed, more researchers would come in and perform a tie-breaker. Once we removed sponsored videos and videos that had been taken down before they could be double-coded, we were left with 360 videos.
Of the 360 total videos, 103 were homophobic or anti-trans, 42 were misogynistic, 29 contained racist narratives or white supremacist messaging, and 14 endorsed violence. Obviously, TikTok didn’t just like give us neo-nazi content immediately. I actually didn’t get my first Nazi symbol until video 141. But the more I interacted with transphobic content, the more I was fed not only more transphobic content, but also homophobia and misogyny and racism and antisemitism. So I didn’t actually have to interact with racist content to be fed white supremacist content, I just had to engage with transphobic content.
What you see in this graph is the TikTok algorithm starting off with a normal feed — memes, recipes, whatever — and then going “OHH, you’re transphobic! Have you tried hating the gays? What about women?”
So, it appears that transphobia can radicalize a TikTokker.
Around video 400, you’ll notice an interesting spike in far-right figures, hate symbols, antisemitism and calls to violence. That’s when I reached fascist TikTok and set my phone on fire. 400 videos might sound like a lot, but if a user watches each video for an average of 20 seconds, they would end up watching 400 videos in just over 2 hours. So, a user could basically download the app at breakfast and be fed the overtly white supremacist, neo-nazi content before lunch.
https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/tiktoks-algorithm-leads-users-transphobic-videos-far-right-rabbit-holes
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