♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ unice wani: tiktok is very much become a way for the young generation to press ourselves invery way. you can be yourself, you're at home, you're filming, and there's always going to be, like, millions of people watching you. i like this one. look and see. you never know when you could blow up. ♪♪♪ rory eliza: i think every young kid's dream is to be successful online. avani dias: the chinese social media platform

tiktok has changed the internet. it's become the most popular app in the world. rory: there's fishing videos, there's cooking, comedic skits, singing, dancing. literally, everything you can think of, tiktok have. ♪♪♪ david polgar: it's not an app on their phone anymore, it's their livelihood. it's how they communate withheir frien. it's how they see the world. that's a part that i don't think everybody has adjusted to yet. dr. niels wouters: we're really at risk of having generations of young people that have formed identities in response to something that a technology platform prescribes to be the new normal. avani: behind the shiny dance videos, the platform is leading people down dangerous paths. lauren hemmings: i'd like to think that i wouldn't have struggd with an eating disorder if i hadn't downloaded tiktok. anne longfield: my claim with tiktok is that they are harvesting huge amounts of data illegally

without the consent of children or their parents. jamil jaffer: if you just look at tiktok in isolation, it seems innocuous. but it's really, it takes place in this much larger context of data collection, artificial intelligence, and a real effort by the chinese to consolidate influence in the region and across the globe. avani: tonight on "four corners," "tiktok." in a joint investigation with "hack" on triple j, we're going down the rabbit ho to reveal the dark side of the app. how the platform censors political content and harvests children's data, and how the app's powerful algorithm eoses people to misinformation and dangerous content. ♪♪♪ rory: hi, my name is rory eliza, i--and what? avani: and what do you do? rory: i am a full-time tiktoker. ♪♪♪

rory: so in the morning, i'll wake up maybe 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, and i'll check my phone, check if my videos have done well, or you know, how my followers are reacting to the content that i've just posted. tiktok, honestly, i get so much love on there. it's so weird because that's my biggest platform, it's tiktok with 5 million followers. it's crazy to think that 5 million people, that's people, it's not just a number. and if you really think about it, it's 5 million people that have tapped that follow button. they're all just so friendly, and they're kind of like your family. it's just weird, like, you don't know these people, but they know so much about you that they treat you like a family member. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ rory: and on that note, welcome to the new rory eliza,

avani: rory eliza is one of millions of young australians recording virtually every moment of their lives to get famous on tiktok. rory: get ready with me for a date. yo, i chose an outfit. let's go, transition, yeah. so i think every young kid's dream is to, you know, be successful online. so, i think there's definitely a group where they all just--they all want to be influencs 'cause it's kind of like the in thing now. and i think that's because of tiktok. avani: tiktok has been downloaded more than 3 billion times around the world. it's become a cultural phenomenon. female: you know, i'm 21 and just learned how to do my own laundry. female: some tomatoes and some cheese. male: dude, no, you're going to go like, like, "aye." "oh, okay. okay, okay." "aye." ♪♪♪ avani: everything is about going viral. a dance started by someone in their living room and uploaded to tiok can turn into a stadium

full of people performing it in unison. ♪♪♪ rory: i like how creative you can be on it. like, it's just so fun to go on that app and just express your real self. ♪♪♪ avani: rory started posting comedic skits on tiktok, and her following snowballed. rory: no worries, i'll scan that one right through for you right now. avani: this was her first viral video. it got nearly 14 million views. rory: how about some peking duck? rory: oh yeah, but we actually don't have the peking duck, but we've got "the snake and goose." rory: what an odd name. rory: it is pretty normal for a book. avani: in 2019, rory decided to leave school to become a full-time tiktoker.

rory: wait, wait. is this a library? rory: school was just one of thosehings i just was t good at. i decided to leave school when i was in year 11, and i was never there, you know. i was always in sydney doing meetgs or presentations for tiktok, and i just wasn't there. and when i would come to school, i would have no idea what we're doing 'cause, you know, i've been away for heaps of days. rory: no worries at all, thanks for coming to our library. daniel: school, you can go back and do it at tafe. you can go back anytime and do it if you need it, but you may never get this opportunity again. so, we just thought it was worth leaving school and pursuing all the business opportunities while they were there for her. roryno worries at all, thanks for coming to our library. avani: how do you feel about the fact that 5 million people are watching her content? daniel: oh, it's incredible. it's even--when she goes live. there was a time she went live, and she had 22,000 people watching her in her room, and i just--i, sort of, my mind goes back to elton john concert here, and she had more people watching her than we had at that elton john concert. and kind of, "wow, that's happening in my daughter's bedroom at the moment." it was a bit, yeah, different.

da♪ hey, baby. ♪om at the moment." avani: big fashion and cosmetic brands started noticing rory's success on tiktok and wanted to tap into her growing audience. ♪ you're so powerful. ♪ ♪ powerful. ♪♪ avani: companies sponsor influencers like rory, and businesses pay tiktok to advertise on the platform. this is central to the app's lucrative business model. rory: in this work industry, being an influencer, you have to present yourself as a brand. you know, we aren't really people anymore, we're brands. we're selling products for brands. so, you kind of got to look the part. the money involved, it's enough to live off. i'm in the medium to high range of incomes in australia, so yeah, very, very decent. daniel: it's hard not to even be jealous sometimes because you look at our life and you know we get up and we go to work,

and we come home, and she can earn mey that can take us days to earn in minutes. rory: i found myself driving and just crying, having like a total breakdown, and i found myself having some really quite nasty thoughts. avani: rory shares her life th five mlion peopl even her lowest moments. rory: why am i meant to be on thiearth? like, why does no one like me? why do i have no friends? avani: but most days, she feels very alone. rory: okay, that's-- rory: being away from people, it's definitely lonely, you know. i film four videos a day. that's a good three hours in my day, and then i've got another eight hours, and i'm like, "what the heck am i going to do for the rest of the day?" like i can't ring up my friends like, "y'all want to hang out?" 'cause they're at work. so it definitely gets lonely at times, and, you know, sometimeif you're reading the hate comments and the stress load, it can be so much for your body, and you're just overwhelmed, and you're lonely. so that can also creep into depression. male: catherine hasn't had a question. i'm happy to return to you but let's keep it civil.

andrew. catherine ♪ yeah, yeah, yeah. ♪ avani: with people stuck at home during lockdown desperate for entertainment, tiktok became the world's most downloaded app in 2020. and it's continued to hold that title this year. ♪♪♪ dr. bondy kaye: tiktok in australia has seen the same kind of bump in 2020 as elsewhere in the world. in october 2020, there were an estimated 2.5 million users on tiktok, which was about a 50% growth from earlier on in the year. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ avani: of the popular social media apps, tiktok is the most addictive. leaked tiktok advertising data shows users spend an average of

an hour and a half on the app each day. rory: you know it's like 8 p.m., and i'm watching and watching, and then i'll look up at my clock, and it's 2 a.m., and i'm like, "where the h" it's 'cause the something for you page is so addictive, and it's just so spot on. avani: tiktok's algorithm is its most valuable asset. it's designed to determine your interests and send you personalized content to keep you on the app for as long as possible. female: i went and saw my mama, and i went and got my hair done as well. bondy: tiktok works by recommending content to you through your activity on the app. so, the more that you scroll through the app, the better the recommendations are tailored to your specific interests. rather than selecting content that you want to watch, like you would on youtube or on netflix, you primarily access content through one main feed, which is called the for you

page on tiktok, which is essentially just an endlessly scrolling, algorithmically curated feedf videos that refreshes each time you open the app. avani: as soon as you sign up to tiktok, the app starts collecting data about you, your location, gender and age and also your facial data to figure out who you are and what kind of videos you want to see. niels: your face is a form of biometric information, and your face can be analyzed to distinguish a range of personality and demographic traits. avani: tiktok collects your facial data every time you make a video or use a filter on the app and can even access photos and videos saved on your phone that aren't being used on the platform. to understand how an app like tiktok interprets that data, scientists in melbourne have developed what's called a biometric mirror. niels: so biometric mirror, for instance, is trained by way

of artificial intelligence to distinguish how intelligent you are, how attractive, how weird, how responsible and ho emotionally unstable you are. the interesting thing there is, of course, that biometric rror bases its assumptions on a single snapshot your face. so all of these assumptions are generated based on the exact appearance of your face at that exact microsecond that the photo has been taken. the tiktok algorithm might read your face and think that you are dealing with a significant mental health challenge. you might be presented with videos that are created by users going through a similar challenge at that time, and it might really create a very colored worldview for you, where it's really hard to deal with your mental health challenge at that time. avani: lauren hemmings is studying to be a midwife.

she used to spend her uni breaks scrolling through tiktok. lauren hemmings: i think it was quarantine boredom that kind of motivated me to download it. it was quite an innocent hope of just getting a good laugh, really, you know, like getting funny vide and seeing what was on it. i never had the intention of making tiktoks or sharing them. it was more just kind of from the viewpoinof, yeah, the viewer. avani: lauren started following a popular fitness influencer on the app. lauren: there's one woman who had, like, quite a simila body type to me. and she'd expressed that she was unhappy with that body type. and she had started tracking calories over quarantine. she had lost a really, really significant amount of weight. avani: the algorithm then flooded her feed with content promoting unhealthy weight loss.

lauren: i was no longer seeing funny dance videos or anything. it was just like this completeocus on that, like, fitness and healthy lifestyle goal. avani: tiktok pushed lauren toward the popular trend of meticulously tracking how many calories you eat in a day. something researchers warn promotes disordered eating. the hashtag what i eat in a day has more than 7 billion views on tiktok. lauren: it turned into, like, this obsession, and i felt that i could not eat anything without knowing how many calories it contained and without meeting, you know, my target number of calories throughout the day. there was a few months where i didn't put anything into my mouth that i had not weighed. avani: four months after downloading tiktok, lauren admitted to her friends and family she had an eating disorder. lauren: i'd like to think that i wouldn't have struggled with an eating disorder if i hadn't downloaded tiktok.

i think, you know, tiktok was the ma contributor to the development of that. avani: young users are increasingly turning to tiktok to find and spread information on how to restrict food and hide their disordered eating from their families. dr. suku sukunesan: what they do is they actually share content of what they go through and what they have de for the day in the fascination to become thin. so, they would share recipes, they would share diet plans, they would share how you need to be disciplined. for someone who's vulnerable and desperate, they would follow anyone's advice. none of this advice is actually good because some of this advice is, "oh, lick a pumpkin for your lunch, but don't eat. drink a liter of water, and you should be fine." claire benstead: i was super hesitant to go on tiktok becse i'd heard that it was a really bad space for people with eating disorders because the algorithm knows everything, and then it would curate your feed be

interested in that kind of stuff. avani:laire benstead has been in and out of hospital for anorexia for more than five years. she decided to download tiktok to find support and to promote her earrings business. claire: you want that support because it's such an isolating illness, and there's so many people in my life that don't get it and don't understand it. avani: claire says the tiktok algorithm identified life she had an eating disorder, and she noticed an immediate change to the types of videos on her feed. claire: so it went from being, you know, my algorithm was, you know, australian humor and musical theatre humor and all of that kind of stuff, to just being eating disorder content all the time. and as i got sicker and i got re obsessive, all i could do was just flick tough my phone and look at this footage. i spent hours on it and just fixated on it. i wasn't recoving at all. i was actively relapsing. avani: claire was admitted to hospital. as part of her treatment, her psychologists worked with her to remove the toxic content from her tiktok feed by

unfollowing accounts and reporting videos. how long did it actually take you to get rid of that eating disorder content from your algorithm? claire: ages, pretty much being in hospital, so probably took two months it took me to change the algorithm. when you're kind of scrolling through like this-- avani: even while claire was showing me her caned up tiktok feed, videos about eating disorders began reappearing. claire: there we go, here's one right now, just every five or six videos, and so i'm in a good spot that this doesn't trigger me. avani: so even though you're saying not interested, it's still coming up? claire: it's still coming up. avani: if you report tiktok videos, the company says its moderators then decide whether to ban them, which in turn is supposed to teach the algorithm to stop featuring them. claire: yeah, i just say that i'm not interested in it. avani: tiktok's policies say, "the app bans content promoting, normalizing, or glorifying eating disorders." claire: and you can say that it's offensive. avani: but when users like claire have reported those

videos, they were told they don't breach any guidelines. claire: you would think that, you know, something this serious, and it's got the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, you would think that that would be something that you could report because it is promoting those behaviors and it's making it worse. ♪♪♪ avani: tiktok also says it bans pro-eating disorder hashtags, so users can't search for those videos. and if they try to, a number for eating disorder support service the butterfly foundation automatically pops up. but users find ways around it. claire: but the issue is now that it's ever-evolving. like there's a hashtag now that people with eating disorders use, and you would never guess that it was an eating disorder hashtag. like it's after a famous singer. they're just changing them to be completely irrelevant from what an eating disorder is, and so it's so hard to escape now, and i think it's really hard for tiktok to keep up with it all.

bondy: there are mechanisms in place to screen some of that content,ut a lot of its also reliant on human moderation. and when you consider the amount of videos and the volume that is being uploaded to tiktok, it's a very difficult task to imagine human moderators can catch everything. avani: last year, tiktok established a council of outside experts to advise the company about content moderation. david polgar is one of them. david: as we know, with great power comes great responsibility. there's a lot of power in tiktok's algorithm. therefore you have to constantly be aware of how it's impacting other individuals and other communities. i think comparably speaking, tiktok has, has done a pretty decent job with being more reflective on rabbit holes and how that can affect individuals.

but at the same time, you're dealing with human behavior. you're dealing with bad actors. you're dealing with major differences of how people define appropriate versus inappropriate, and we have this tricky kind of balancing act that's constantly happening. avani: tiktok's business model is built on creating a fun, glossy, and glamorous version of the world. and the company has been found to strictly control content that doesn't fit with that image. in march last year, tiktok policy documents were leaked showing content moderators were instructed to suppress posts by creators considered "ugly, poor, or disabled." the documents said videos including people who are chubby or obese, with ugly facial looks like too many wrinkles or facial deformities, and other disabilities should be excluded.

tiktok has said it no longer engages in these practices. ro: i don't want to admit it, but looks have a lot to do with it, and, you know, we're all secretly a bit vain as much as you don't want to admit it, you go for looks over no looks, you know. so, i think looks definitely have a lot to do with it. and if you look at all the really big-time influencers, they're all beautiful. like, if you look at all these influencers, they're all stunning, like nothing wrong with them. so, i think looks definitely have a lot to do with it. ♪♪♪ ♪ like this. ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ like this. ♪♪ ♪♪♪ avani: much of tiktok's popularity is driven by dance trends choreographed by black creators and then copied by white influencers. but black content makers say that the platform actively discriminates against them.

female: think it's high time we let black women on this app also be famous for doing the bare minimum. like i should be able to just sit here in silence and let y'all look at me. and the next thing you know, i have a million followers. female: petition for black people for the rest of april to stop talking. bondy: there have been instances of black-creator-led mass walk-offs from the platform, called blackouts, where, on a certain day, black creators will stop using the platform or will urge other creators to leave the platform because of tiktok's inaction and failure to respond to or engage with some of the criticisms and the scourse that black creators have raised. so, if the company continues to be reactive and responsive rather than proactive and really meaningfully engage, then these issues are goingo continue to occur. unice: often, it makes me quite furious, i guess, 'cause it's like these black creators, they got talent. they're out here, dancing and showing what they're capable of.

so it's kind of very much disappointing and hard on us when we're out here expected to have all of these in ordero get the vis, in orr to get the likes and the shares. but no matter how much we try, we're just not going to get that. avani: unice wani is an 18-year-old tiktok creator from perth. unice: i like this one. look and see. i feel like the more i go viral, the more i can basically show the younger generation and show more colored girls, i guess, or people out there, like, i'm okay in my own skin. i love myself the way i am. i don't care what social media says about me, what people on the other side of the screen says about me. you can be yourself at the end of the day. unice: let me quickly address this. avani: as her following grew, so did the hateful comments, and she decided to confront the issue on the app. unice: so a majority of you guys still feel the need t

comment about my skin coloand about how dark i am, and about how black, black, black, black i am. well, guess what? i'm black, and i'm so proud. avani: unice says often her videos are hidden or muted from the tiktok feed, meaning few people see them, a practice known as "shadow banning." unice: are you stressed? are you mad? are you upset? are you sad? sorry, what? unice: i guess you tend to get a lot ofhadow bans for speaking up about stuff such as racism and stuff. you could mention one words, black, say all of this, and your video could get shadow banned. when you post a video, the video just, it's on the app. it's just, you're not going to get any views for it. so you can see it, it's just on they go onto your account as well. so it's up there, it's just it's not going to gain you views.

avani: last year, tiktok creators noticed the algorithm was suppressing posts with the hashtag black lives matter or george floyd. male: so, word on the street is that tiktok has banned the black lives matter hashtag. avani: one of those creators was sydney man, paniora nukunuku, who had created a video using a pool table to explain the black lives matter issue to australians. paniora nukunuku: this is a white australia table, and they pretty much had a 200-year head start, and they established everything in the country, so their break looks like this. bro, can you get homeownership in and business? paniora: beautiful. paniora: that was spicy. that blew up bigger than i thought it would. paniora: i just need to put this here. male: wait, what the? paniora: don't worry. it's trauma, injustice, and discrimination, but i said sorry, so it should be fine, just go for it, bro.

paniora: it was the biggest video at the time that i've done. i don't know why. oh, i do know why, because it was good. i shouldn't look at the camera, but i'm just really proud right now. paniora: using these two cueballs, i'll explain to you-- paniora: that resulted in my account getting banned for, like, seven days, i don't know why. they claimed that my video breached community guidelines, which is extremely vague because there is no swearing. there is no explicit language. there's no nudity or explicit, like, sexual stuff, none of that, and my account got banned. female: the black lives matter is trending on tiktok, which is ironic considering how much time tiktok spends silencing the voices of black creats. avan tiktok apologized for suppressing hashtags referring to black lives matter, blaming a glitch in the algorithm. female: let's take a moment of silence for this man. bondy: the company responded with a new initiative for black creators called the tiktok black creator program. i've spoken to creators who had been approachefor that program, who ft that it was lip service.

it wasn't really a well-meaning effort to engage with black voices and engage with discourse that is portant to black communities. avani: paniora has more than 180 thousand followers on tiktok. he often posts about living with a disability. paniora: so, growing up with a fake leg, i always got in trouble every time i parked in my disabled spot. paniora: the first video i did was me going up to a pool and telling my friend to record me dip my fake leg in the water to test the water out it was a really dumb idea, but for some reason, people loved it, and in the space of eight hours, it hit about 780,000 views. paniora: if you have this many followers and that many likes, it's 'cause you'rpretty. if you have this many followers and the same amount of likes, you're just funny. avani: paniora ran into trouble with the tiktok censors when he posted a video of a confrontation with someone who

was telling him he shouldn't have a disability permit. paniora: so this old lady had the nerve to ask me if this is my disability card. this. i wonder if this is enough? avani: the video was taken down. tiktok said it breached the app's community guidelines. paniora appealed, and it was put back up, but he's had other videos about his disability removed as well. paniora: the video gotaken down, and i didn't even know it until i looked back at the hashtags and sites to see which videos that i've done have, like, made it to the top, and that wasn't there. i appealed it, and i don't know why that was taken down. paniora: don't ever do that again. paniora: do i feel like tiktok's being racist? i don't know. has tiktok been hit up in the past around their moderators being told to limit the exposure of disabled people and ugly people? yes. they've been called out on that.

is this happening again? i hope not, but it definitely feels like it has. female: we know that to decolonize palestine means also to decolonize-- paniora: i'll follow you, if you move, i can get some shots. avani: in may this year, paniora posted a video from a pro-palestine rally, but tiktok's algorithm flagged it, and it was instantly taken down. other creators posting tiktoks about palestine have said they've experienced the same thing. ♪ weight on the shoulder. ♪ paniora: when tiktok started removing my videos about the protest in regards to the palestine situation, i was furious. i was like, why? there is nothing in these videos that will justify, like, a removal, there really isn't. fergus ryan: one of the big problems with tiktok and the unique nature of its opaque algorithm is that it's very difficult to understand or to recognize

when censorship is taking place. female: people came together. fergus: so, it is possible for content on the app to be promoted or demoted without anyone knowing. female: i'm so sick and tired of every social media platform silencing palestinian voices. fergus: but we also see evidence of how content moderation that takes place in china, how that type of thinking is still applied to tiktok outside of china. avani: tiktok is owned by a chinese start-up, bytedance, which is believed to be worth more than 250 billion dollars. it's heavily regulated by the chinese government, and there's a communist party internal committee in bytedance, which ensures the party's political goals are pursued alongside the company's. fergus: we have to be extra concerned about how apps like tiktok can be used as a vector for censorship and surveillance.