Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. From performers who launch careers on TikTok like Akintoye-
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These are not your idols
These are opportunists
These are product pushers using you to move some units
You see cause for outrage
I just see a nuisance
Squeeze the life from fanbases almost feels abusive.
Melissa Harris-Perry: -and Jax.
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I know victoria's secret
And girl, you wouldn't believe
She's an old man who lives in Ohio
Making money off of girls like me
Cashing in on body issues
Melissa Harris-Perry: From food foragers like Alexis Nikole.
Alexis Nikole: Let's pop up puffball mushroom. Explosion of spores. Now let's eat some puffball mushrooms. It's vegan because I'm a filthy vegan.
Melissa Harris-Perry: To Sam Ryder whose covers of Alicia Keys made a fun out of Alicia Keys.
Alicia Keys: He killed this.
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Some people want it all
But I don't want nothing at all
Alicia Keys: This is hard for me to sing.
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If it ain't you, baby
Alicia Keys: Damn.
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If I ain't got you, baby
Melissa Harris-Perry: TikTok seems to have something for everyone, human-bird duets.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Guitarists accompanying crooning canines. Yes, that's a husky.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, my fave as a backyard chicken lady, Chick Tok. Yes, TikTok became our favorite time suck during the pandemic. It's already the most downloaded app in the world. According to eMarketer, TikTok is projected to surpass YouTube as the platform viewers spend the most time watching by the end of this year. The algorithm that makes it so successful at getting us to watch also raises lots of questions, questions that are at the center of the new documentary, TikTok, Boom. I sat down with the film's director Shalini Kantayya.
Shalini Kantayya: I started using TikTok in the middle of the pandemic, and I started to hear about it being in the crosshairs of this geopolitical controversy involving national security issues. I began to wonder how does a social media app best known for teenagers dancing become center of this geopolitical controversy. That sent me on the journey to make this film. I think the boom relates to many issues that are common to social media that we're grappling with, including the magic of how content is moderated and the lack of transparency that we have around why certain social media is served up to us at a certain time.
I think the other thing that is particular to TikTok is a few years ago, over a third of their audience was under 14. I think that we really need to also grapple with what it means that we're putting some of the most persuasive technologies in the history of the world in the hands of young people whose brains aren't fully developed, and the power that these new mediums have, particularly on kids.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now let's talk about that potent algorithm. Why is it troubling?
Shalini Kantayya: It is drawing from other social medias like Instagram and Facebook. It pulls from a variety of data that it gets about you, your IP address, what it infers about your gender, your data. It's also watching really carefully what you're watching and the amount of time that you're paying attention to each video and so it gets a very accurate picture of the kinds of interests you have and what might hold your attention.
That's incredibly powerful and I think it's also slightly terrifying. It's so powerful. What happens is within a few minutes of you using it, it gets a sense of your unique likes and dislikes, and it gets a sense of what will hold your attention. Through this very powerful recommendation algorithm, you can lose years of your life.
Melissa Harris-Perry: You talked about being inspired by the young creators. Tell me a little bit about them and what you learned both about them and maybe also about us, our society, the things that we like and gravitate to, and how they're shaping that.
Shalini Kantayya: I have to say that I don't think I fully understood the power of TikTok until I was on Hollywood Boulevard with beatboxer Spencer X who's one of the top earners on TikTok and is a TikTok celebrity. I felt it was a lot like being with Brad Pitt or George Clooney. [chuckles] It's like 10 to 12 were losing their minds. [chuckles] Young girls were crying. He had a crowd around him. It was just unbelievable that in a short time to see these young artists skyrocket to meteoric success in a short time because of how powerful TikTok's algorithm is.
Melissa Harris-Perry: A final question. What do you think we're getting wrong when we talk about TikTok just in general media and in our public discourse about it?
Shalini Kantayya: I think in many ways, this is so much bigger than TikTok. I think that we actually need much more literacy around how these very powerful recommendation algorithms work. As our society seems to become more and more divided, we're seeing the dangers of these recommendation algorithms that are similar to how YouTube works that keep us in the ciphers of what it thinks we want to see.
I think there's a real danger in that in a democracy, that we have to be exposed to different points of view. There's this danger of these algorithmic rabbit holes on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. It is pointed out in TikTok, Boom by Scott Drury that if these data companies start collecting data about children when they're 10 years old, by the time that child is an adult, that algorithm knows you better than a parent knows you, and there are some inherent dangers in that.
The other thing I just think that people get wrong is that TikTok is a massive cultural force. Even if you don't use TikTok, it has become a major source of information. It gets cited on the news and on talk shows, and it's become a soft cultural power. We've not yet grappled with what it means when these technologies come from countries that are not democratic. I think that we need to have a larger conversation around transparency and accountability around these algorithms that are reshaping the public squares of our democracies.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Shalini Kantayya is director of the documentary TikTok, Boom. Shalini, thanks again for joining us.
Shalini Kantayya: It was an honor. Thanks so much for having me.
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