Social Media Influence

While scrolling along my IG feed, I saw a video clip of comedian and former MMA fighter Brendan Schaub discussing how China and the US use their social media algorithms differently, which changes the way content is distributed to the consumer community.

In short, it is stated that China’s TikTok algorithms feed their users content that focuses on desired traits, such as engineering videos and education-based clips. However, their algorithms feed other countries, specifically the US, content that focuses on social fads and non-educational clips. The point being made that China is reinforcing academic and educational social media content, which should increases their children’s desire to learn about the topics distributed to them. While also reinforcing non-educational and “dumbed down” content to other countries (the US), reinforcing those children to engage in behaviors that would theoretically have no benefit to their lives or the lives of those in their countries.

However, one could argue that most Americans and people that use social media prefer content that they consider fun, which typically includes educational content being aversive. And US based social media platforms also reinforce non-educational content. Thus, China is just giving the consumers what they want in order to maximize profits. Meaning their own country’s content is just more restrictive. However, you can’t deny the benefits of creating platforms with this much behavioral control. What do you think?

Below is the video clip I watched, which I got from Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s (@MalcolmJamalWar) IG account, and he got from @therealboycewatkins.