The insidious Dark Side of TikTok US
UPDATED 2/12/2024
During the January Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing of X, Facebook, SnapChat and TikTok, Senator Lindsey Graham and other Senators reported that TikTok's Israel representative resigned and turned Whistleblower against TikTok for its internal team's pro-Hamas terrorist support. This confirms the the content of this article that discusses how TikTok's team began actively harassing the Randy Dreammaker channel beginning in October 2023 for posting a video condemning Hamas' slaughter of the innocent on a Jewish national religious holiday.
TikTok and it's internal team has been harassing, targeting, put a shadowban against and taking other measures to censor the Randy Dreammaker channel beginning in October 2023 following the Hamas Terrorist Attack on Israel.
I thought about writing this article about TikTok for three months. I talked myself out of it multiple times. "You sound like you're whining Randy Dreammaker! I told myself", "You've got so many more important things to do right now", "It won't make a difference anyway, because TikTok bias and double standard in enforcing their policies will silence you."
John Fetterman say's TikTok is corrupting its users views with bias against Israel.
Then a few days ago, I was taking a break from a project I am working on, and decided to visit Google News to see what I've been missing.
It was then I noticed several reports in Google News featuring progressive politician, John Fetterman.
I am certainly not progressive, though since the end of 2023 Fetterman has suddenly began saying things that actually sound like common sense. Whatever happened with him lately, he has caught the attention of a lot of conservatives with statements that are pro-America.
So when I saw Fetterman discussing TikTok's censorship and shadowban tactics and policies, I realized it was time for me to say what needed to be said. Timing sometimes matters, and currently at this time, TikTok censorship has been trending in the news. So I know I am not imagining it.
PBS Article
Long before I began exploring TikTok as a possible media platform for sharing my original Digital Creations, PBS released this article called: The Real People Behind Shadowbanned TikTok accounts. (HERE)
The Randy Dreammaker 2024 article, The Dark Secrets of TikTok Shadowban and Censorship is not groundbreaking in the troubled history of Chinese owned TikTok video network. It's become a large enough problem to draw the ire of the US Government.
What you will find in this article in addition to my experiences, are the different kinds of insidious secret methods, techniques, algorithms, and tricks my investigation into TikTok has revealed that no one has discussed prior to my release of this article.
TikTok implements some very twisted methods to censor those it sees as adversaries to its political or socialistic agenda. It inserts extreme bias in favoring specific political content over another.
Over the past few years, conservative politicians and supporters of President Donald Trump, Israel, etc. complained about this bias. Even I thought it reached a point where it just felt like many politicians were unfairly complaining.
Unfortunately, every complaint I've read about, seen in the news, or discussed in the US Senate are grounded in facts, despite their whininess.
This is not limited to America. Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and India and several other countries have full-bans on TikTok.
According to an article published by the New York Times, "Britain and its Parliament, Australia, Canada, the executive arm of the European Union, France and New Zealand’s Parliament — have banned the app from official devices."An article by the Associated Press included these additional places that have implemented some for of ban against TikTok as of 2023, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan and Taiwan.
All of these platforms have "censorship" algorithms if they have any method available that allows for public posts to be made. Previously, I thought YouTube had the most aggressive and cloaked methods of censorship. That was until I began investigation into TikTok's methods after my channel received two strikes for the same content.
The first strike was because I posted a pro-Israel video while TikTok was trending and featuring pro-hamas terrorist propaganda videos. The second strike was received on the exact same video, because I used TikTok's, "Appeal Decision", feature to disagree with their reason for the first strike.
That was something I had never observed on any other network, website, app. in thirty years as a beta testing. A retaliatory "ding" on an "Appeal Decision" invitation. It's not only the most horrible customer service and etiquette response I have ever encountered, its downright abusive.
I mention customer service and etiquette response, because I have training and certification specifically in customer service etiquette from ATT, Xerox and a University in California. I've trained others in customer service etiquette and risk management for the YMCA and a California Universities, Workforce Development Program.
My experience with censorship and propaganda in media.
My first involvement in the film industry began when I was 20 years old and worked as an Intern for CableVision, California in various capacities. Since then, I've worked on features, pilots, tv series, documentaries, shorts, music videos for all kinds of people, companies and platforms.
Up until 2022 I believed YouTube was the most pronounced censor of publicly produced independent video content. That all changed in 2023 when I decided to explore TikTok. As of 2024, TikTok has far exceeded YouTube in censorship, hostile bias, hostile actions against creators, shadow banning, etc.
While I had heard of TikTok censorship claims by members of the US Senate and Congress, I didn't have any clear evidence of it and in fact publicly defended TikTok in 2023 on X, against those claims.
That was until Oct 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, then everything changed. I had uploaded a new music remix video called, WUS. It featured an artistic remix of musician Steve Terreberry's Knot Slip music video, with new lyrics in written form, a few seconds of Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israel had been attacked by Hamas, a still image of a photo every media outlet in the U.S. had been using to represent Hamas, and a short clip of a guy shooting off screen, then walking off screen and escorting someone else across the screen. Sounds pretty innocent so far right?
WUS was censored for rejecting the anti-semitic attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, while TikTok was trending pro-hamas terrorism and anti-Israel hate videos on its platform.
Obviously, the WUS video shown above is not streaming from TikTok, nor the original cut, but instead streaming from Rumble. It had to be entirely reconstructed from scratch because the TikTok upload was being used as the "Master Cut", and the original edit was accidently deleted off the editing computer. Some commentary was added into the recut.
Then came the first punch. TikTok claimed the video promoted terrorism and hate speech and gave it a "Channel Strike".
I graduated from film school in advanced filmmaking and cinematography, I know what propaganda is. I had to study the history of propaganda in film during college. I sat with hundreds of other students and debated movies that were presented as propaganda media, from Hitler all the way to modern social movements.
What evil thing could I have put in the WUS video that would make TikTok claim it as a terrorism promotional video I pondered. In fact, just to make certain my movie review skills were not rusty, (I've been reviewing video and film media for IMDB for 15 years, and TMDB in 2024) I web searched "propaganda in media" and refreshed my mind.
Nope, couldn't find anything that would make the WUS video a terrorist promotion propaganda video, especially since everything in the video was about Anti-Semitism.
So I decided this must be that TikTok bias that Conservative Content Creators in America are experiencing. I searched for Israel content on TikTok and was flooded with hundreds of thousands of hours of extreme content being featured and promoted by TikTok. I wanted to give TikTok the benefit of the doubt, so I then searched for pro-Israel content. Guess what I found! More pro-hamas and anti-semitism. In fact the only pro-Israel content I was finding after conducting a long and exhaustive search were TikTok content creators who said TikTok had censored their commentary and other kinds of videos containing their reasons for supporting Israel's right to self-defense.
In sharp contrast, the video's TikTok was promoting and that were trending, were people making threats against Israel's Prime Minister, Netanyahu; statements calling for violence against Jews, individuals swearing and spewing evil hate speech and swear words about Israel, etc.
So I appealed the decision. Having been a multi-million viewed web series host on YouTube in the past, I understood how an "Appeal Process" is supposed to work. TikTok's feature looked similar. It asks you to review their community guidelines, state a reason for the disagreement and then wait for an answer.
My appeal reason disappeared after submission, but it didn't really matter anyway, because twenty minutes later, TikTok denied the appeal. However, unlike YouTube's appeal process where the warning stands until it times out, TikTok did something utterly twisted.
TikTok gave the video a second strike on my channel because I appealed their decision and reason for giving it the first strike.
For the next three months I began seeing all kinds of strange intentional malicious behavior happening in my account. I have a lot of history as a beta tester for lots of video platforms, apps, stores, ebay, YouTube, Mercari, PayPal etc. so I understand algorithms and am able to spot and distinguish between A.I. filters and human targeted bias. So let's talk about the kinds of Censorship I've encountered on TikTok since November.
The first TikTok bias was giving a second strike to a video, just for appealing the original strike.
An algorithm would have simply declined reinstatement of the video, and the original strike would remain standing. Only a person would be able to subjectively review the reason I provided for my appeal along with reviewing the video and decide to not only deny the appeal and keep the first strike, but add an additional strike to put the channel one strike away from a permanent ban and to "hard" shadowban the channel. Why? Because there was more on my channel their bias representative didn't like.
I came across this article by the Visions For Humanity Organization that might explain this. They have it under the topic of: Corruption.
The second strange bias targeting event occured three days later on two videos that vanished.
For these two videos, I noticed a massive drop in views, comments and interactions until they went dead. I wasn't sure why at first, while my main app showed everything to look as normal, everyone else via the web and their apps were not being shown the videos.
They had hidden the video description and tags on those two videos. The only way to have seen them would be to visit my TikTok profile and scroll through the videos, but even if you did that, the descriptions were removed. I complained to TikTok support via a third party social media and suddenly the description and tags reappeared, but the videos remained throttled.
This (Now Removed Video) video featuring Hannity in discussion with activist Cornell West and Attorney, Alan Dershowitz about the attack of Hamas on Israel is one of the two that TikTok hid the title description and keywords, followed by hiding the entire video.
TikTok said racism against White People, Hate Speech against Americans' who support Republican Values, Nazi and KKK Stereotyping of white people and specifically voters of Donald Trump is not a violation of their policies.
The Bias is real. I reported this video after reviewing the reasons TikTok gave me for giving the WUS Music Video two strikes. This TikTok video promotes bigotry, anti-whiteism, hate speech, racial profiling, anti-semitic Nazi and KKK images, but according to TikTok app support, doesn't violate their policies.
TikTok app support refused to defend my account from Impersonation, told me to sue them.
Immediately following this, a fake @RandyDreammaker account appeared on TikTok using my personal copyrighted headshot photo, name and uploads of several of my videos. The official Randy Dreammaker TikTok account is (Here) and my supplemental Randy Dreammaker account is (Here)
TikTok in their policies state take impersonation seriously and remove them off TikTok. Apparently, that is only true if you're lucky enough to get one of its non-bias non-activist support team members. Do they even exist? I haven't encountered any yet.
These were not Stitch, Shared or Duet videos that tagged me in my account, these were straight up reuploads of downloads that used a third party tool to avoid crediting my channel as the original creator.
I intentionally do not participate in TikTok's monetization program so there is no bias or influence on my end. I also make all videos that TikTok makes it possible to be freely shared, Sitched, Duet, and downloaded on TikTok which creates a watermark of my channel name on them. But don't abuse it.
So I once again I contacted TikTok support and instead of siding with me as the creator, they told me they were not going to follow their state policy in removing the content or the imposter channel and I should sue the account in court.
How ludicrous! TikTok knows its creators are not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal court to force its employee that was harassing my channel to remove their fake account. A creator might spend that much suing TikTok for violating their free speech rights, since it is an editorial media company like Netflix, as opposed to a social network which focuses on social engagement.
But that's besides the point.
It is dumbfounding that TikTok only has its policies in place to protect its own interests when convenient. In comparison, TikTok's refusing to uphold its policies is similar to you visiting your local Walmart, buying something that has a 100% money back guarantee, discovering it doesn't function correctly, returning it back to Walmart customer service and then their customer service representative looking at you and saying, "Sorry, our 100% money back guarantee policy doesn't apply to you because we don't like you". That simply doesn't happen at Walmart, but metaphorically it does happen on TikTok.
TikTok community guidelines policy states 100% it does not allow imposter accounts.
So again, I had to by-pass TikTok's official app staff that has been bias towards my account and go through an alternative method to ask TikTok why they were refusing to enforce their imposter account policy and telling me I had to sue that fake account. A few days later that account disappeared without notice or any response from TikTok.
All of my videos featuring Donald Trump are being specifically targeted.
Immediately after the imposter account disappeared, all of the viral videos that were receiving high 100K+ views featuring Donald Trump froze. This is not a I like Trump or I hate Trump issue. This is an issue of fairness, free speech, and the legal ramifications of the policies that TikTok requires its public contributors to agree to.
If TikTok presents it policies and terms of service as being legally contractual to it users in order to utilize its media editorial network, then that legal contract also obligates TikTok to follow and fairly implement it policies to everyone.
That said, an in depth review of its policies reveals that TikTok states one thing as a hard fact in it notification messages to it users, while giving itself a lot of flexibility in its terms of service. In other words, the final paragraph of many of its policies reads something similar to this.
"We are going to do these things to you if you do something we don't like, but we reserve the right to not apply the same policies to everyone, especially if it regards a bias we agree with."
I am short of time, so I am not including the many screen captures of TikTok's mumbo jumbo policies. I am not an attorney and have no legal knowledge other than what I was taught in film school about copyrights and content media. So if you are interested, I encourage you to read their policies. That being said, I have attorney's and it is my impression that a content creator could take issue with this kind of subjective policy or lack of policy enforcement.
The most recent viral video targeted was the Trump Christmas message.
In TikTok's policies it contains some mumbo jumbo about political videos. I am not a politician, I am an independent content creator. However, you should know, that in its policies, TikTok states it will take action against accounts who engage in political commentary that do not fit its bias.
It doesn't actually say, "does not fit into our bias", but this is easily derived by a careful evaluation of the political content it is shadowbanning and that which it rejects as being a violation of its policies. The video I included posted by IAmSabine who TikTok stated does not violate their policies is a perfectly clear example.
I know this Christmas video should be at least 100K on TikTok based on my followers. It also trended on Instagram Reels which is incredibly difficult to do, and YouTube which seems to be decreasing in popularity.
TikTok froze it at 18K and it has remained stuck at 18K every since. They hid the video at the beginning of December 2023, and did not make it publicly viewable until a few days after Christmas. I uploaded this video at the end of October initially because I had the foresight to understand that TikTok could apply some kind of censorship to it. I didn't know for certain since I had only been active on TikTok for a few months at the time.
It trended to 18K views and comments during the two off season months before December, that alone suggests it would of hit over 100K had it not been censored. The Thanksgiving Message video I edited and uploaded easily hit 100K almost immediately and continued to trend organically despite the shadowbans against it.
During Christmas TikTok hid the Trump Christmas Message video from public view, while showing to me in the TikTok app as though it were still visible publicly.
TikTok now has a visibility shadowban against all videos across my channel. As soon as they are published they immediately receive a restriction limitation of 250 views.
I get 250 views in the first twenty minutes I upload a video. Once they get capped, they get kicked out of TikTok's "For You" which prevents the 7000+ followers and others from seeing them.
I've tested this algorithm multiple times. If my assessment is correct, this TikTok algorithm does several things.
First it has a cap of 250 before full throttling occurs. This is enough time for most TikTok content creators to upload their video, review it a couple of times, then move on to watch videos or go off TikTok without realizing they're hard shadowbanned.
Second, this 250 cap is considered a reasonably high number for many content creators, so it would only be viral creators who would realize censorship was being applied.
Another way to test this, is to have or open a second account using the same device, app, computer web browser without a VPN. This other account will experience the same TikTok shadowbans. This is because as discovered during the senate hearings, TikTok gives itself more app privilege's than most apps on your smartphone, tablet or PC. These privileges' include storing device Identifying signatures, in addition to your internet providers ip address associated with your account, so if you have more than one account, all of those accounts are going to be hit. That is unfortunate for a household with multi-TikTok users and limited devices.
Will using a different smartphone or computer let me bypass a TikTok shadowban or permanent ban?
I was talking with a community of very smart people about TikTok and someone asked this question, so let me answer it once and for all, because it works very similar to many of the apps I have beta tested.
The short answer is maybe, but only for a very brief moment. TikTok uses algorithms similar to several marketplaces I beta tested. These apps save your devices identification signature when you sign up. They also save your internet host providers IP address that is associated with your location.
So if you bought a new smartphone, installed the TikTok app and signed up for a new account using alternative information, while it would take some time, eventually their security hunting algorithm will connect you to the location and ip address of your mobile phone number or internet provider. Then you are banned again.
A VPN may help delay this, but unfortunately VPN's have a tendency to occasionally dropout resulting in your hidden IP address or phone provider to be discovered, and yep, you are banned again.
The only way to bypass this would be to change to a completely different internet provider, for example changing from Spectrum Cable Internet to ATT DSL Internet.
You would need a brand new device on a completely different phone providers plan, for example changing from ATT to TMobile.
You would need to use all new alternative account information. New phone number, address, etc. This is because all these things are recorded and stored by the TikTok app to their servers. This way, even if you delete your TikTok app and uninstall it from your device, that information is retained by TikTok in case you ever decide to sign up for a new account.
You would also need to deny TikTok access to your new devices' location.
In my opinion, it would cost more than the benefit of using TikTok. You're welcome! I just saved you from having to pay some troll account on Instagram for the same information.
The newest restrictions against my channel by TikTok is freezing view counts.
I will admit, it is a genius method of manipulation, and the most evil and insidious form of algorithm I have encountered. A psychological Hard Shadowban algorithm. Its purpose is to diminish a troublesome content creators confidence, with the hope they'll get discouraged and stop posting videos or leave TikTok on their own.
It's secondary purpose is to encourage a content creators following audience to unknowingly assist TikTok in its censorship by encouraging them to unfollow the creator due to the perception of inactivity.
This next TikTok algorithm sounds like something out of a Pinky and The Brain cartoon.
If you formerly used the original Twitter and were shadowbanned, you probably encountered something similar. Old Twitter's shadowban hid all of your followers and followed accounts from public view. This made your account appear to have unfollowed everyone. To those you follow, it would appear that you unfollowed them, resulting in many of your followers unfollowing you in return.
This was very problematic on old Twitter for many years, and it wasn't until right before Elon Musk purchased Twitter, that its users started figuring it out.
Though similar to old Twitter, TikTok's version is a bit more mischievous.
For example, my current followers and subscribers on the main Randy Dreammaker TikTok account has 7774 followers. But I've counted over 200 new followers in a single day. For the past two months my follower account has been 7770 to 7776 max. When it has hit 7776, a few minutes later it would slowly drop back to 7770. When my account began receiving 50 to 100 organic followers a day, the number raised to 7774 and stuck at 7774.
How it works. When a content creator receives a new follower, the app posts a message stating who followed you. Additionally, a summary report is available stating how many new followers you have received. However. this particular shadowban manipulates the total view count so it looks like you haven't gained any new followers.
I have sat and stared for hours several different times observing this, and have seen several different variations of it.
One variant is similar to the view count algorithm, in that it only adds one new follower for every X new followers. Again I do not know what the X ratio is.
Then there is a variant that will show you the count go up by a few followers, but then after a while, reverse the count back to the original frozen number of followers.
Not certain if this is an additional variant or just part of the other two, but I have also watched many followers subscribe and follow, only to have the same number show as unsubscribing.
It's a really wicked algorithm for sure. Originally I suspected it was part of the view count algorithm shadowban, but because it works slightly different with dissimilar results, I am leaning for it being independent.
This article's first draft was much longer. I have a lot of evidence, links to non-profit organizational investigations that have tested some of the shadowbans, algorithms, policy abuses. I have a ton of screen captures documenting changes and events as they occur, even some live screen recorded video.
And while I enjoy writing, it's already 3:05 AM and I gave up work of today's project to sit down and write this. So let me conclude.
Some of my prepositions may lack inside insight into these shadowbans, I am looking from the outside at their effects and impacting results and using my experience and knowledge to theorize some of them based on observation.
That said, some of them are slowly being verified through internal TikTok whistleblowers. Others are being discussed in community groups that are concerned about TikTok's impact on society.
Something similar happened with Instagram in the past, and Instagram similarly denied any knowledge of what was being discovered.
Ultimately, Instagram was exposed and forced by the US Government to clean up its act and become more transparent. It's still slowly recovering from the changes it had to make to address similar wrong doings.
While it is easy to dismiss TikTok as a fun app, toy, social media tool, several insider articles I was reading this week suggest that TikTok is not social media at all based on what social media is legally defined as, and that means it resides outside the protections allowed to social media companies like Facebook, X, Threads and Blue Sky Social. In fact TikTok engages in editorial of content in the way it groups, trends, suggests and echo chambers user contributions. This potentially gives content creators greater legal protections and free speech rights against censorship and shadowbans. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2024 and into the next presidential era.
I do not mind being wrong about the algorithm semantics, as long as I come close in accurately describing their functions and intentions.
Update, I designed a competitive video channel test between YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok that should be impossible for TikTok to fail. It failed.
It's been a month since I wrote the article about my investigation into TikTok's abusive shadowban actions against people of faith, Trump Supporters, Conservatives, Moderates, Jews in Israel and others it decides on a whim do not fit into its China political foreign interference obligations.Over the past month, I have been uploading one video a week to compare the results against YouTube and Instagram Reels.
The reason for only uploading a single video to TikTok a week for this test was to avoid any attempts to be targeted as creating spam, to monitor how many subscriptions numbers TikTok was removing every week (which has been a consistent number, despite the large number of new subscribers each week), and to avoid any TikTok staff direct interaction against the channel so only TikTok's insidious and abusive censorship and shadowban algorithms are being observed.
Let's take a look at the test results.
On YouTube, the Randy Dreammaker channel has 365 Subscribers today.
On Instagram Reels, the Randy Dreammaker channel has 1,927 Followers.
On TikTok, the Randy Dreammaker channel has 7770 subscribers.
(Note: TikTok's reported number rises to a maximum of 7776-7777 after posting a new video and then immediately begins to drop to 7760 or lower within three days, as previously described.)
Today is Thursday. Using various analytical data and methods, I determined that historically if I post a video on Thursday at a specific time to TikTok, the video should reach 300,000 to 900,000 views, hundreds of comments, 10+ shares and around 15 to 20 cross postings by other TikTok users via Stitch and Duet.
I've been posting the single video on TikTok on this day to give TikTok a major advantage over my YouTube channel which does better with weekend uploads and Instagram which does better with early morning, start of the week uploads.
So for this investigative test, TikTok has a 50% or better opportunity to beat out Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, an addition to its 7411 larger subscriber base than my YouTube channel, and 5,849 larger subscriber base than my Instagram Reels channel.
TikTok also received an advantage because I used the highest number of 7776 and not the weekly dropping number when calculating the math.
I average 50 to 75 new subscribers a week on TikTok presently and the number reported by TikTok never goes up to the highest subscriber number that the channel reached of 7,777 before TikTok began targeting it, but also during the test week it drops back down nearly the same amount of new subscribers it reported via I received. In other words, its more in-depth advanced user analytical data system is showing different results what is being shown to all TikTok users who visit the channel or view a video.
Compare that to my YouTube channel that receives an average of 3 new subscribers a month without dropping, and Instagram Reels that receives around 10 new followers each time I upload the trend-able videos I am using for this TikTok test.
TikTok VS Instagram VS YouTube Shorts
Here are video test results as shown in the screen captures, 9 hours after uploading to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube.YouTube Shorts (365 Subscribers)
2,724 Views
107 Likes
26 Comments
N/A Shares
N/A Bookmarks
Instagram Reels (1,927 Subscribers)
1,599 Views
96 Likes
3 Comments
8 Shares
3 Bookmarks
TikTok (7,776 Subscribers)
308 Views
62 Likes
2 Comments
N/A Shares
4 Bookmarks
Statistical Analysis
Based on analytic data and the aforementioned advantages provided to TikTok which has the highest amount of subscribers, largest amount of new subscribers, viral history and a channel specifically targeted to the audience the video was intended for, TikTok should be significantly out performing Instagram Reels which does not target a specific audience and has a history of lower performing videos, and YouTube that is targeted to a completely different audience and has the lowest of the three for virality.Instead TikTok is the lowest in Views, Likes and Comments for a video designed to reach virality. On YouTube and Instagram the video is trending based on 9 hours of performance despite multiple disadvantages.
I rest my case against TikTok. TikTok censorship even far exceeds that of Facebook who fact checks every video uploaded, or YouTube which has an extensive history of its own in censorship. But worse is TikTok's now well documented association with pro-Hamas terrorism supporting internal management who actively engaged in anti-semitism and targeting and harassing channels that discuss Israel.
(TOP)
(TOP)