ABC Four Corners program and Triple J’s Hack (26 July, 2021) featured an insight into Tik Tok and its influence on our girls. Many of our students are on the TikTok social media platform. It is important that parents are aware of how this program influences our girls and may take their data.  Here is a summary of the key aspects of the program as outlined in Pedestrian.TV:

1. TikTok’s algorithm can promote misinformation and dangerous content, including eating disorders. The app can expose users to dangerous content with real-life impacts through its algorithms, data harvesting, and censorship.
2. TikTok has a racial bias
3. TikTok scans your videos for facial data (and not just the ones that you upload) “The Four Corners report claimed that TikTok doesn’t just scan facial data from the videos uploaded onto the app, but also from videos users might record on the app and never upload, or any videos and photos in their camera rolls. The report alleges that the app analyses faces for personality and demographic traits, using that information to create a profile of the user and create a more accurate algorithm.”
4. There is a lawsuit claiming TikTok harvests children’s data illegally – “Anne Longfield, the former Children’s Commissioner for England, is leading a class-action lawsuit alleging that every child who has used TikTok since May 25, 2018, may have had private personal information illegally collected by ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) through the platform for the benefit of “unknown third parties”.
5. TikTok censors political content – The Four Corners x Hack report referenced an academic investigation by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which found that TikTok appears to use its algorithm to hide political speech that it thinks is controversial.

I encourage all parents and students to view this program show on ABC iView or read the online article accompanying the program.

Mrs Christine Harding, Assistant Principal