
TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor - Gonzih
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/
======
papeda
Geez, I thought this might be an overblown piece about algorithms unwittingly
optimizing for the wrong things, but the headline is pretty accurate.
Discussing how moderators choose content to recommend to people in the “For
You” section (not a user — I assume this is something highlighted to users):

> Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress
> uploads from users with flaws both congenital and inevitable. “Abnormal body
> shape,” “ugly facial looks,” dwarfism, and “obvious beer belly,” “too many
> wrinkles,” “eye disorders,” and many other “low quality” traits are all
> enough to keep uploads out of the algorithmic fire hose.

A TikTok spokesperson seems to confirm they are real guidelines, but won’t
confirm how they were used.

> TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner told The Intercept that “most of” the
> livestream guidelines reviewed by The Intercept “are either no longer in
> use, or in some cases appear to never have been in place,” but would not
> provide specifics.

~~~
miguelmota
Instagram does the same thing; my 'Explore' tab is full of beautiful people
even though I don't follow them. From a business standpoint it makes sense to
promote the best looking content since it'll lure in more young users. The
young kids probably think something like "Hey look at all those beautiful
people. I want to be like them and they use Tik Tok so I'm going to use Tik
Tok too."

~~~
mgraczyk
No, having worked on explore sourcing and ranking I can tell you with
certainty Instagram does not do the same thing.

~~~
scarmig
Implementation is different, but passes all the same test cases.

~~~
Summershard
Maybe it works that way, because users prefer to follow pretty people.

~~~
PunchTornado
the question is having an algorithm do that (suppresing ugly and therefore
unpopular users/photo) is different than having a moderator do it?

~~~
cvlasdkv
yes because it's a choice.

------
continuations
TikTok has a long history of doing shady things:

* TikTok's local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content - Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal [1]

* Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing - Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims [2]

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-
local-moderation-guidelines-ban-pro-lgbt-content)

[2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-
how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing)

~~~
arendtio
Actually, I wondered why this article was news. I was under the impression
that it was common knowledge that tiktok was doing that kinda stuff.

------
pjc50
The Russians call this "face control"; the practice of maintaining a club full
of only good looking people by the bouncers.

It's unpleasant, but a handy reminder that TikTok and other social networks
don't work for you, but make you into a product.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
To play devil's advocate, presumably they work for some people, people that
want to go to a club in which they attendees are selected by looks.

Sounds just like a lifestyle magazine, or a catwalk, or a million other
situations that have been normalised in which people are chosen for how they
look (just about every prospectus appears to choose people to present their
idea of the right type of diversity, for example).

It's not great, but TikTok just seems to be doing the same as most other
organisations?

~~~
mattnewton
Just because it is normalized in some other parts of society doesn’t mean this
isn’t a new front to fight this kind of discrimination on. Especially since
this platform is gaining a lot of popularity with younger generations, an
order of magnitude more than the nightclub scene’s impacted users
[https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-
statistics](https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics)

~~~
lotsofpulp
The biological platform of humans discriminates. There seems to be a greater
amount of pleasing chemical reactions happening when people see good looking
people, so they seek them out themselves. I don't know how or if one can fight
that, it's seems to be one of the fundamental mechanisms of mating.

~~~
mattnewton
There is a difference between recognizing biology, and apps weaponizing it to
drive engagement. This is like saying that nicotine releases dopamine so no
one can fight cigarettes.

Even disregarding social ideals about listening to people who don’t look like
underwear models, the potential for harm is very real - look up Body
dysmorphic disorder for the kinds of very real mental health problems this can
create in younger generations.

I think given the potential risks, we should have conversations about what
this problem is and possible policy solutions. Giving children skewed
perceptions of the world, or encoding these kinds of biases about who is worth
paying attention to is dangerous.

------
cocktailpeanuts
How is this different from nightclubs having a high bar to entry?

I am not saying this is an ethical thing to do, I am saying these apps are no
different from nightclubs and they gotta do what they gotta do to survive. And
no matter what you may say, humans prefer non ugly people over ugly people. I
am sorry but this is simply how humans work. If you disagree, then you are a
hypocrite.

So should high end nightclubs be publicly shamed for doing what they do (when
what their "users" want is exactly non-ugly people) and driven out of
business?

~~~
mwfunk
Because TikTok isn't a nightclub, it's a place for people to put their own
content out on the Internet. Not just people, but primarily people living in a
pathologically authoritarian state that doesn't allow them to access other
places on the Internet that they could put their content on.

But even ignoring the authoritarian state angle, surely you'd think it'd be
weird and counterproductive for user content from YouTube or Instagram or
imgur to have similar policies? Those sites are also not nightclubs or
modeling agencies or a Hooters franchise either.

FWIW it's totally shitty for nightclubs to be discriminatory in that way. I
get why they do it, but it doesn't make it any less shitty of them, and it
sure as hell doesn't let them off the hook for their shittiness in this
regard.

Tangentially, this is one of infinitely many reasons that nearly all of
humanity hates nightclubs, including the people that feel socially obligated
to go to them, and including people still young enough to convince themselves
that they must be having fun there because it sure looks like everyone else
is, not realizing that everyone else is thinking the exact same thing.

~~~
tedk-42
The entitlement is too real here.

Their platform, their choice for what goes on. You want something better? Go
build in yourself. I have no problem with platforms self moderating. At the
end of the day consumers speak with their actions.

How many TV shows feature dwarfs or people with who are abnormal? Don't blame
a platform for the inherit flaws in most of us. It really only serves as a
black mirror to the truth.

~~~
leshenka
> Their platform, their choice for what goes on.

Can you say the same about Facebook?

~~~
nomel
I'm not sure what their current policy is, but they also had community
standards [1] which they defined and enacted.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-facebook-wont-let-
you...](https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-facebook-wont-let-you-post/)

------
keanzu
_A TikTok spokesperson said the goal was to prevent bullying on the platform,
tying the document to a report from December that showed that the company was
suppressing vulnerable users’ videos in a misguided effort to prevent them
from becoming the centre of attention that could turn sour._

Now that is some fine spin! Reminds of the Oscar Wilde sketch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uycsfu4574w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uycsfu4574w)

~~~
nothrabannosir
I used TikTok for a while and saw plenty videos of actual bullying. The
comments were never too happy about it, but there was clearly no effort to
moderate it.

TikTok doesn’t care about bullying.

~~~
hrktb
It seems their goal is to make the issue go away altogether by pre-censoring
people so they don’t have to police bullying after.

Here it’s humans taking that shortcut, in the future I’d totally imagine AIs
resolving to eliminate the source of the problems when dealing with societal
issues. And we sure won’t be happy about it.

------
Consultant32452
This is what happens when you mix utilitarian morality with a desire to stop
online bullying. You just stop letting the most likely targets of bullying be
seen. This is much cheaper and easier than trying to get rid of everyone who
has ever been mean online, because that's everyone.

~~~
im3w1l
The documents reveal that it's about curating appealing content to get user
retention, and that the talk of stopping bullying is just talk.

~~~
catalogia
> _The documents reveal that it 's about curating appealing content to get
> user retention_

Seems kind of similar to what supermarket magazines do. Obviously a social
media app is not a supermarket magazine, but the premise of cynically using
pretty people to drive up engagement is nothing new.

~~~
_jal
Magazines are not communication platforms their 'users' expect to use in
anything remotely the same way.

A better comparison might be bottle-service bars where looks or money buys
your way in. Which I personally don't mind - if that's your thing, I guess, go
for it. Not every place has to be somewhere I want to go, and they're pretty
up-front that you need to meet whatever standards or pay crazy money.

Tik Tok, from observed behavior, is weaselly about it.

Combine with the fact that it is obviously part of the Silk Road strategy and
likely an intelligence tool, and I'm going to continue to treat is as the
radioactive garbage it is.

------
brenden2
Most forms of media do this to varying degrees. Most actors, for example, are
attractive people. Few unattractive actors are successful, unless perhaps they
only play roles which play off of their unattractiveness (like
antagonists/villains). TV news anchors are also usually picked for their
attractiveness.

------
kristopolous
Although this ruffles sensibilities, isn't it kind of expected from an
entertainment platform?

Any traditional teen magazine from 20 years ago (seventeen, tigerbeat)
wouldn't be scolded for heavily policing what photos go in the pages. Not only
that, they heavily post processed everything.

There's superficial and arbitrary gatekeepers for what is called news, what is
played on the radio, basically everything. Even some of the talent shows have
strict, rather low, age cutoffs. 29 is too old for American Idol (it used to
be 25).

Even more apparently egalitarian entertainment, such as contestants on the
Price is Right aren't "truly random" and get shortlisted into energetic people
who come in larger crowds in order to make better television. Most people
think that's probably also fine. Some guy just standing and shrugging after
being revealed a "brand new car" wouldn't really be right.

So for a digital social entertainment platform to do the same kind of pruning,
it's kind of expected. Content is filtered to create better entertainment for
the target demographic, one that I'm not in.

Maybe you think it's not the right filter system but now we're doing a target
marketing debate and not one of ethics.

~~~
stainforth
We're moving past allowing this kind of manipulation and distortion of
reality.

~~~
kristopolous
It's more a question of "proper" filtering, not "no" filtering.

For instance, if a PhD program only accepted white male applicants, we'd find
that unacceptable. If instead, they only accepted people with proper
credentials, scores, and recommendations, we'd find that fine. It's not no
filter, just the right one.

Similarly, if we were making a movie about Jim Crow segregation and needed
actors to play white racist men then our same unacceptable filter all of a
sudden looks reasonable.

So it's not about removing filters, it's about making them justifiable and
relevant. That's why we say "there's _no reason_ that a qualified X can't be a
Y", that part, the reason part, is important.

------
zeeone
Like most Hollywood productions, TikTok wants to show the healthy and the
beautiful over the sickly and the ugly. This is purely driven by customer
demand. The good news is that 1) TikTok a private enterprise and it can set
its own rules and 2) it's in China so it won't be vulnerable to public shaming
and social pressure to bend its business decisions to please fringe groups.

------
cosmodisk
I only heard about TikTok probably a couple of month ago,as I 'checked out'
from social media platforms long time ago. Now what they are doing is is
awful, however, that's already the case across the board. The world celebrates
handsome men chasing a ball, women that have more silicone and botox in them
than an average lab. We somehow give more attention to someone,who's ass size
falls within 9th percentile, than the scientist,who discovers cure for some
nasty disease. We reward people with tons of cash for coming up with some
nonse, science free absurd, while we are ready to throw stones at anyone who
says that oil fried fries are bad for us. The same crap happens on youtube or
instagram,where pretty faces push yet another cream from big name corp.

~~~
PaulKeeble
In offices, managers are taller and more handsome than the average. What we
reward as a society in the west is beauty, not merit and hard work,
unfortunately. Study after study shows the same trend in a huge variety of
ways, from believing in social mobility to thinking job performance is about
job performance despite the often opposite. But I also think this level of
anti-intellectualism is temporary.

~~~
orestarod
There is correlation. Someone who cannot take care of themselves is probably
not suitable to lead others. In work, "beauty" regards more what you can alter
on yourself than what you were given at birth.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There is some correlation, but it's not perfect.

I've thought a lot about this and I think beauty is both shorthand for "that
looks like someone healthy and very functional" and also is something that can
be faked, so it's not a reliable indicator.

For this reason, I think it will always be both valued and controversial. To
whatever degree it genuinely signals something of underlying value, like
health and competence, it's useful shorthand. To whatever degree it is a
signal that is hackable, it's shorthand with a poor signal-to-noise ratio.

I don't think we will ever completely solve it. We will always be caught
between those two facts.

~~~
s17n
Let me help: it's not actually a useful signal. Solved!

------
mgolawala
I can see how moderators would be instructed to surface content that is more
"appealing" to the audience and beautiful people are no doubt going to be more
appealing.

It's like the contestants on reality TV shows tend to not be ugly as well.

For some reason it _feels_ slimy but I am not sure why. Perhaps it is being
confronted with the notion that the world isn't fair.

~~~
afterburner
These schemes only work if the participants continue to think the world is
indeed fair.

No wonder they're not interested in seeing people air this dirty laundry.

------
anigbrowl
_Gartner would not explain why a document purportedly aimed at “preventing
bullying” would make zero mention of bullying, nor why it offers an explicit
justification of attracting users, not protecting them._

PR people really are the worst. It's OK to be rude to them at parties.

------
krick
I'm not really surprised how this is considered a huge deal once again, but,
in fact, this is what the users generally want. TikTok is a quite specific
platform, it's not there to share opinions and whatnot. It's to film and
binge-watch hundreds of short stupid gimmicky music videos depicting what the
general audience of the platform finds appealing (which turns out to be
uncannily specific thing: I'm afraid by now it must be millions of hours of
the same music, moves and facial expressions by 14-year old girls with awfully
similar clothes and hairstyle).

Videos TikTok moderators are suppressing here get to be watched and liked too,
but not in some unassuming liberal manner SJWs are hoping to promote: you can
find _hundreds_ of so called "TikTok cringe compilations" on youtube. It's not
what TikTok's "normal" audience wants to see in their feeds. So TikTok is
doing them a service supressing this stuff. And it absolutely doesn't matter
if they do it "algorithmically" or with manual labor. Essentially this is the
same process, they differ only by cost and efficacy.

~~~
crispinb
_this is what the users generally want_

It is not the case that people entirely autonomously 'want' things. Humans
have culture, which amongst other things, inculcates desires. Further, it
manifestly doesn't follow that anyone is right to provide anything that people
happen to have been acculturated into wanting. That brand of absurd corporate
nihilism would have been literally unthinkable to any human prior to (roughly)
the European Enlightenment, and is what has led our planet to the brink of
oblivion.

------
grecy
Why is this a surprise? Glamor magazines and Hollywood movies have been doing
this for all time.

This is the natural consequence of any platform that wants to be popular and
get a ton of media attention.

Is it mortally wrong? of course it is, exactly the same as glamor magazines
and Hollywood are.

------
searchableguy
Here's my 2 cents -

A. [0] Familiarity breeds attractiveness.

This isn't a new concept. You can find many advocate groups who want
"diversity" in workplaces and higher positions to stop systematic or perceived
racism due to non familiarity. How is that different from above? Do you have a
choice to be ugly or not? Do you have a choice on whether your body is
deformed or disabled? Do you have a choice on being poor?

To little extent, maybe but most can't be helped beyond a certain level.

B. Scale

Night club doing it doesn't affect society as much as a platform with 1.5+
billion users. Of those who are going to vote new policies and may get to a
high position of authority later,

do you really want your judge who uses tiktok to sentence you for longer?

You can already find people living in echo chambers online and as more of it
is moved online, will you be okay if your child is excluded from something
more than a billion people use because she is a bit shorter than normal?

How many of you have LinkedIn, twitter or social media crap that you despise
but have to use due to others using them? What will happen then?

C. Awareness

Do you think users are aware that they are being censored constantly compared
to real life where you can't avoid meeting different people? If you go to a
bar, you will see different people in your way - few "ugly" and others pretty.

<sarcasm>

I propose we stop ugly people from having kids so everyone remains pretty and
similarly symmetrical. Who wouldn't wanna live in a world with everyone pretty
and same? It's not like we will seek more exoticism after that happens. The
problem will remain solved forever.

</sarcasm>

0]
[http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~efi614/documents/InPre...](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~efi614/documents/InPress-
a_ReisManiaciCaprarielloEastwickFinkel_JPSP.pdf)

------
viztor
Unfortunately, those written document are nothing more than ugly but accurate
reflection of the market. TikTok does this the same reason Hollywood does. The
only difference no one in Hollywood wrote it down, but it is almost as a
taken.

------
sneak
Instagram does this too, just algorithmically based on likes and engagement.

You can’t prioritize posts in an algorithmic feed without deprioritizing
others.

Reverse chronological is the only non-editorializing choice, and it’s not an
option on most major platforms.

I encourage people not to donate content to these censorship platforms and to
disintermediate their connections with their audience.

------
8bitsrule
Whatever 'ugly' means in this century, ugly appearance is much preferable to
ugly action.

Another demonstration that centralization is anathema to community. It
concentrates power in a few hands, and it creates single-points-of-failure.
The internet is not yet routing around that kind of damage.

------
rickety-gherkin
I think the club analogy here is spot-on. From what I've seen of TikTok, if
you're classically attractive then you're famous on there, and it drives the
wants and trends of TikTok. A userbase that is infatuated with crushes. It's
no different than any teen magazine from the 90s. I have an ignore-worthy
conspiracy about this app, stop reading here if are you have a distaste for
this.

I think it's used as a staging environment to test mass human interactions
with computer generated videos of people in a setting where there isn't pre-
loaded skepticism and where the sample sets are extremely good. Mass amounts
of people doing the same dance is a pretty good data set, and the information
in this article makes me believe this even more. They are effectively
"cleaning" the data so the sample set is attractive people in clean and
presentable homes or areas with good lighting, all confined to the "For your
page" stream. Might not be true, but it's a fun thought.

------
matz1
In other word, the sky is blue, most people would prefer to see attractive
people, its not rocket science. It would be stupid for tik tok to do
otherwise.

------
LatteLazy
If you think is is unfair, wait until they find out about Tinder and Literally
The Whole Modelling and Acting Industries.

------
robbrown451
Would we be upset if they told the moderators "try to promote things that will
be shared/upvoted a lot", and tied their earnings to how good they did at
picking winners? Even if the effect was precisely the same?

Basically, what seems to have happened is someone worded it crassly, but they
were just telling them to think like marketing people, and use common sense.
Also, the word "suppression" implies censorship and heavy handedness, while
"promote" seems harmless. But they can really be describing the same process.

------
jhare
News flash: social media is garbage. What do you expect from these companies?
It's just a private entity that makes its own rules about its own landfill of
humanity. All of a sudden because anyone can make a post TikTok is obligated
to preserve their rights? Not the case.

Not that this is a good thing. It's childish to be surprised and indignant
about these companies' policies and behavior like they're your buddy or
something.

------
literalanyone
So... "Sex sells." Is this new?

I feel like we want the world to be a better place in 2020, and then we are
reminded the humans are basically still humans.

~~~
tmpz22
It's like you expect the cook at the restaurant to thoroughly wash their
hands, they don't legally have to do it thoroughly, but ultimately if you knew
they didn't you probably wouldn't eat there to begin with.

Users deserve to know how hard they are being fucked. Informed consent, even
for the naive users, basically.

~~~
catalogia
> _they don 't legally have to do it thoroughly,_

I don't think that's an apt analogy because I don't think that's true. I've
perused the health inspector reports for local restaurants a few times and
I've seen businesses written up for substandard sanitation practices. It may
not be the most enforceable law ever, but nevertheless I'm pretty sure the law
does require them to wash their hands thoroughly.

------
ct520
makes sense to me. Isnt this how society works at large? Cute hostess at the
front of a restaurant to great you. Top sales earners are usually in decent
shape and charismatic. Society segregates itself away from the poor. Sounds
like tech imitating real life to me. (to be clear not saying its right, but
giving my opinion on what I perceive in society and how this aligns to it)

------
runawaybottle
It’s just verbiage right? Replace moderator with ‘casting director’, and
replace website with ‘movie’ or ‘tv’. The goal is the same.

------
rvz
Well that's no fun isn't it. You warp reality to make the whole social network
a complete misrepresentation of only looking at the happiest of everyone's
side. There is at least someone keeping a straight face and on TikTok but
still feeling ugly or depressed there anyway. It is the same nature that users
of Facebook have and it isn't very healthy and promotes one-sided stories.

The interesting observation and funny side to this policy is that there could
be a story to be told here where the suppressed "ugly" and "poor" people
become the heroes and the TikTok elite and its glamorous fans have become the
super-villains.

------
everyone
So, its like TV or films? ... or advertising, magazines.. most media come to
think of it.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
This is more like trickle down authoritarianism promoting Potemkin villages in
all spheres of life. Old decorations just won't do there.

------
imchillyb
This is a wonderful example of why no speech should be allowed to be censored.

Freedom of speech isn't a slogan. Freedom of speech means allowing others to
say things you don't agree with or like, because it allows your own voice to
be heard.

Once censorship is allowed, in any form, it will always devolve into us and
them. Us and them is determined by who is running things. They're the us.
Everyone else is them.

Us justifies their decisions and actions, but it's still the same ol' story.
Power corrupts and those Us' in power, will use their influence in any way
that they choose.

Censorship equals tyranny.

------
nojvek
Ugly fat poor. 3 strong words repeated over and over in the comments. I hope
people realize that there is a pretty large demographic that may identify with
this.

As for TikTok, it’s a Chinese app and things we consider discriminating may be
a bit normalized there. I constantly get surprised how much the CPC gets away
with, but asking my Chinese friends, they’ve made peace with it “it’s for the
greater good”.

So like Facebook’s unofficial motto “growth at any cost”, this doesn’t
surprise me coming from TikTok. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook did/does
this too.

------
KorematsuFred
I am unable to see what is wrong with all of this. I wont be using tiktok if
it had ugly people doing stuff I am not interested int.

As someone has pointed out on this threat elsewhere, Tiktok is a night club.
You gotta dress up, put up fake eye lashes, high heels and show some cleavage
to get more attention. THAT IS their business model.

This outrage is nothing but silicon valley hippie attitude which I think the
chinese simply don't give a shit about.

------
philwelch
I have to admit, my reaction is...so what?

Social media is a playground for beautiful, glamorous people, because those
are the personalities most people want to see. It’s true for YouTube and
Instagram. If you’re a relative newcomer to the market like TikTok and your
promoted content is filled with ugly people, users will notice that and assume
your service is second rate.

------
classified
Rules of censorship:

Censorship is OK when it helps making money.

Failing that, censorship is OK if we dislike the content being censored or the
people posting it.

TikTok doing this is Universal Chinese that is understood all over the world.
No need for translation.

------
tomrod
Not a TikTok user.

I mean, to me, this is how things just work, ethical or not. What would we
expect from "featured" things? Typically people in television (shows and
commercials) or otherwise "featured" fall into more attractive territory.

Is it shallow? Absolutely.

Is there anything to be done about it? I mean, maybe, but is there some
monetary harm coming to TikTok users?

------
virtualpresence
Hahaha that's like 99% of the people on there. Great marketing tik tok. Tick
tock your time is coming

------
saltedonion
How is this any different than having an algorithm do it for you? If human
moderators use these rules, it probably means the content it lets through is
correlated with high engagement. What’s the material difference to an
algorithm that just favors high engagement as well?

------
mothsonasloth
Everything is becoming more curated and centralised, it wouldn't take a
stretch to make a dystopian outlook where eugenics and social credit is
implemented through a global tech platform.

If you're not gifted with good lucks you are punished in the system.

------
majani
Have people in here actually downloaded TikTok and browsed through it? It's
actually pretty amazing how beautiful their creators are. It's gonna be a
legitimate unique value proposition for them as a social network

------
m3kw9
How is this different from Hollywood filtering actors and actresses for good
looks?

------
SamReidHughes
I remember the first day a local Philz cafe opened, it was immediately filled
with very attractive people. Months later, its population looked mostly
interchangeable with that of the Starbucks across the road.

------
overcast
Reminds me of the S10E7 of Curb your Enthusiasm, "The Ugly Section"

------
aabbcc1241
TikTok (and many other social network) is a business company, it can do
whatever it favor as long as it's legal. Instead of complaining it, it's more
constructive to come up alternatives :)

------
Sophistifunk
Why pretend this is novel? All visual media select for prettier people, and
every single company that wants to operate from (or in) China will do the rest
of the slimy pro-state censorship.

------
strategarius
Too many comments down there. Beijing troll factory noticed the post?

------
MrBuddyCasino
"TRUE JUSTICE If you really want diversity & protection of minorities
suffering workplace prejudice, stop chromo-categorizing -- that fake
unempirical business.

Hire unattractive people. They are the one suffering the most, & deprived of
attention." [0]

[0]
[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1231359316147478528](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1231359316147478528)

------
mordymoop
There’s that really really old social media platform called television that
does something pretty similar.

------
_pmf_
Why is this a problem when done by social media companies and not a problem
for the rest of the media?

------
Ozzie_osman
God bless the Intercept for continuously pumping out investigative journalism
pieces.

------
s_y_n_t_a_x
> These same documents show moderators were also told to censor political
> speech in TikTok livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor” or
> broadcast streams about “state organs such as police” with bans from the
> platform.

This is the story. Why would anyone use a CPC social media platform?

~~~
volak
Presumably because a lot of attractive young people do

That's explicitly the point.

Yes its evil and manipulative - but everyone should understand CPC is not
above such tactics. And neither are pop magazines, holywood.. other people

Its an ugly world out there

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
More because of the money they dumped into advertising.

I wouldn't equate pop magazines to the people who run concentration camps and
silence anyone who talks ill of them.

------
hurricanetc
If you don’t like it don’t use TikTok. It’s as simple as that.

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nkkollaw
Well, I guess those videos turn people off and they stay on the app less, and
TikTok wants to make money.

TikTok works with AI, but the same would happen on Facebook, where people
click on "Like" manually.

Cry me a river.

~~~
daveFNbuck
This is not about low quality content getting automatically filtered out by an
algorithm because people don't like it. This is about TikTok using human
moderators to prevent users from ever seeing content made by people they don't
like.

~~~
linuxftw
So, like reddit?

~~~
capableweb
Moderators of the subreddits in reddit are normal reddit users (normally)
compared to the moderators in TikTok who I presume are selected by the company
and on payroll (or contractors maybe, I seem to recall Facebook uses
contractors for this)

~~~
catalogia
Paying their labor seems to be a respect in which TikTok is better than
reddit, not worse.

------
lonelappde
Netflix and NBC TV do this in the shows they distribute too.

~~~
TLightful
Not necessarily.

I'm re-watching Breaking Bad. A great show about some ugly f*ckers.

------
alecco
Comments here are ~50% whataboutisms.

------
throwaway122378
Well that’s like saying Reddit suppressed pro Trump community

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-
tr...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-
filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users), which points to this.

------
strategarius
People should probably hate their lives using Chinese social network. Chinese
are well-known for racism even against other Asian people, not to say all your
information is being stored on servers of a communist totalitarian state.

