TikTok's algorithm is promoting homophobia and anti-trans violence on For You Pages, experiment finds
- TikTok's algorithm is promoting homophobic and transphobic content to users, Media Matters said.
- Liking just one anti-LGBTQ video can flood a For You Page with hateful content, an experiment found.
- Trans creators told Insider what it's like to end up on the "wrong side" of TikTok.
When Chloe Alice posted a tutorial for fellow trans women on how to tuck, she wasn't expecting her video to end up on the "wrong side of TikTok."
The 26-year-old influencer, who has over 500,000 followers, woke up one morning to hundreds of comments and duets from "transphobes" mocking her and insulting members of the LGBTQ communities.
"There were tons of comments saying, 'Who is this creepo?' and stuff like that," she told Insider.
Alice said that while her videos normally reach her desired audience, primarily those looking to be educated on trans issues, it's fairly common for them to capture the attention of those people intent on harassing her.
She blames this on the TikTok algorithm pushing her content onto the For You Pages of a loose network of transphobic trolls.
And this appears to be happening routinely on the platform, according to a report by media watchdog Media Matters.
"It seems extremely common for hateful content against the LGBTQ community to appear on TikTok - particularly if a user shows interest in that type of content," the organization's researcher, Olivia Little, told Insider.
After liking one anti-LGBTQ video, TikTok's algorithm recommended many more
"TikTok's 'For You Page' algorithm is hyper tailored to an individual's interests, and we found that liking just a few anti-LGBTQ+ videos almost immediately flooded our feed with hateful content," Little said.
To test this, Media Matters set up a TikTok account and monitored the impact of liking homophobic and transphobic content.
The media watchdog reviewed and tracked which videos the video-sharing platform recommended after liking anti-LGBTQ content. After liking just one hateful video, the report said, TikTok instantly began recommending many more on the For You Page of the test account.
Over time, the test account's For You Page became flooded with posts and comments encouraging violence against trans people, celebrating homophobia, and promoting the destruction of the LGBTQ pride flag.
TikTok's algorithm can reach the 'wrong' audiences
TikTok's algorithm, based on a combination of user interactions, captions, hashtags, and device settings, can help creators build a relevant audience. It can also provide users with videos that align closely with their interests.
"With the algorithm, you get the content you support and interact with," Chelsea Brickham, a 38-year-old trans woman living in Florida, told Insider. "So my For You Page is mainly strippers, LGBTQ content, makeup vids, and cat videos."
But for those whose interests involve harassing LGBTQ people, the algorithm also appears to cater to them.
"Does this mean TikTok identifies a user as homophobic and tailors their feed to that interest? It appears so," Media Matters' report concluded.
Brickham said that she was hit by abuse after the algorithm seemingly promoted a video to some unsavory characters. "My last video, which had 1.8 million views, ended up going viral on the wrong side of TikTok," she said.
Her post, a response to a comment misgendering her, was inundated with offensive comments calling her a "dude."
Similarly, Aiden Mann, a 26-year-old transgender man from Tennessee with 2.2 million TikTok followers, told Insider's Connor Perrett that his content often "blows up" with transphobic users.
"Sometimes for some reason - I have no idea why - my transgender videos end up on straight TikTok, or the conservative side of TikTok, or religious TikTok," Mann said.
According to Media Matters, this is because TikTok is acting neglectfully.
"It appears that TikTok's algorithm is identifying users as interested in homophobic content based on the videos that they are liking and packing their 'For You' page with anti-LGBTQ+ videos; that's not an oversight, but a massive failure on the part of TikTok," Little said.
Inaction could lead to 'real-world' violence
A TikTok spokesperson told Insider that it is "committed to supporting and uplifting" LGBTQ voices.
"We work to create a welcoming community environment by removing anti-LGBTQ+ videos and accounts that attempt to spread hateful ideas on our platform," the spokesperson added.
And while TikTok has introduced a series of policies and initiatives to try and protect LGBTQ users, like partnering with Stonewall and banning the "super straight" trend, media watchdogs told Insider that this isn't enough.
"TikTok is failing to protect its users by not tailoring its policies to the specific online harassment LGBTQ+ people face and should be held accountable for that," Little said.
Inaction, she warned, could lead to LGBTQ people facing "real-world" consequences.
"A lot of the content that I saw was often encouraging physical attacks or discriminatory attitudes against members of the LGBTQ community," Little said. "This is particularly dangerous as we witness a record number of violent fatal attacks against trans and gender non-conforming people -- the majority of who are Black and Latinx trans women. It's even more dangerous when you take into consideration that a third of TikTok users may be under 14-years-old."
Jenni Olsen, a senior project consultant for GLAAD's Social Media Safety Index, agrees that the situation needs to be remedied quickly. The best way to do this, Olsen suggested, is by TikTok "tweaking" its algorithms. "If a user has accessed this kind of content, the algorithms could instead choose to surface content that actually counters hate and encourages civil discourse," Olsen suggested.
But in the meantime, Alice is going about promoting civil discourse in her own way. "I'll just keep spitting facts at the transphobes and killing them with kindness," she said.