![]() ![]() ![]() Following an 87-year-old man led to three recommendations for three more older men. Following a young black man led to recommendations for two other black men and one cartoon of a black man. An account a pet owner set up for their dog produced recommendations for other dog accounts. All three are verified, but none look particularly similar.Īfter that, results started to appear that were similar to what Faddoul found. We followed KSI and the next three recommended accounts were one with a profile picture of a ghostly-looking man sitting too far away from the camera to even guess his race, a blurry picture of what looks like a teenager at a festival, and a very close up picture of a white man’s face. The first account that came up was that of KSI, an internet personality and rapper with 1.2 million followers on TikTok. To test the findings we created a new account, went on the ‘For You’ page, swiped left to view a profile and followed to see who was recommended. In January 2019, Whitney Phillips, a professor of communication and online media rhetoric at Syracuse University told Motherboard that the way TikTok works could lead users to replicate the community with which they identify. In October 2019 TikTok users of colour called for better representation on the For You page, where users go for recommendations and new tailored content. This isn’t the first time TikTok’s algorithm has been accused of racial bias. TikTok’s algorithm will think it is creating a personalised experience for you, but actually it is just building a filter bubble – an echo chamber where you only see the same kind of people with little awareness of others. “The platform is very appearance driven, and therefore collaborative filtering can lead to very appearance specific results even if the profile picture is not used by the system,” says Faddoul. "Users who follow account A also follow account B, so if you follow A you are likely to also want to follow B." And this has the potential to add unconscious bias into the algorithm. "Our recommendation of accounts to follow is based on user behavior," says a spokesperson from TikTok. ![]()
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