Watch: The Holler on The Hill Rising TV. TikTok Censoring The Left.
Watch: The Holler on The Hill Rising TV. TikTok Censoring The Left.
The Holler organized several lefty TikTok creators to talk censorship with Ryan Grim and Robby Soave on The Hill's Rising TV show.
The Holler seeded a major story in a large news outlet that lays down a marker to examine TikTok as a pipeline for far-right ideas to spread to young voters on the world’s most popular web domain.
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And shoutout to the creators who joined to share their stories Alex Claverling (@loloveruled), Jessica Burbank (@kaburbank), and Erynn Chambers (@Rynnstar). Pop over to their accounts and say hello!
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Transcript Highlights. Full Transcript Below.
Ryan Grim: And then there's John Russell who posts @HeyJohnRussell, this was taken down.
John Russell (banned video): The crisis that they helped start has killed more Americans than our deadliest war and after their punishment, the Sacklers will still be billionaires with lifetime immunity from opioid civil lawsuits. Fewer and fewer people get more and more power. Now 30 of America's billionaires command more wealth than the gross domestic product of New York. City and state. The place where Wall Street is. They have used it to capture government, buy up media, and make propaganda networks that keep us fighting so that they can keep their grip on power.
Ryan Grim: Now this one has since been restored, but was down for a long time.
John Russell (throttled video): Plans are being laid right now to decide elections before they happen and 2020 was a test run. 47 million Americans think the last election was stolen. 21 million of those say violence is justified to restore the loser. 7 million own guns. 6 million support extreme militias. 3 million are veterans. And 1 million either know or are members of far right groups.
Ryan Grim: Creators of color, particularly black creators who do a significant amount of content related to criminal justice reform, Black Lives Matter, or racial justice have been saying for a long time that TikTok seems to disproportionately come after them, leading to rampant self-censorship in order to stay afloat.
Erynn Chambers: One thing that I have noticed that as a creator, I post a lot about, I post a lot of things but I do speak a lot about, you know, racial justice issues and things that affect people of color in the black community in particular, and I find that in order to not get videos, muted or taken down, I have to do a lot of self-censoring. And one of the most intriguing things to me is a lot of times I will respond to a racist video, like I will stitch or just respond to someone being blatantly racist on a video on Tik Tok, that was not taken down. But my response will be taken down.
Recently, I've made a video regarding music and how a lot of American folk music has its roots in minstrelsy in blackface. And a lot of what I'm talking about the original lyrics of a lot of that content, I had to like censor a lot, but in both the captions and the audio in order to not get taken down. And usually, it'll still get muted for the first like 30 minutes after I post it and then like it's under review, and then eventually get posted. But if enough people get mad at it, then it'll get taken down and then after appeal, and then it's a whole back and forth process.
Ryan Grim: And Jessica, you know, you do Economics For The People. You also talk about imperialism a lot. We talked earlier about some of your some of your videos around Guatemala that have gotten taken down. What what have you kind of concluded about where TikTok is drawing the lines and what and what can fly and what won't
Jessica Burbank: But it is the case that the most of my run-ins with the content violations have been on this series on American intervention and the CIA. And it seems that there's some keyword scraping going on.
I have gotten notifications that on the men annoy women series that it was for, like hate speech, which is quite silly, because it suggests we can't talk about gender at all without being flagged.
Ryan Grim: And Alex, Erynn talked about self-censorship. Have you done some of that? Do you do censor yourself? Trying to avoid what kind of you know, third rails might get you electrocuted by TikTok?
Alex Claverling: Yes, I do. I mean, unfortunately, I think to some extent I do because as my platform has grown, it's kind of a, you have to make a choice whether or not you want to risk your account being banned, where you have to start over from scratch.
But I've also spoken with other creators with millions of followers who have also done this they've tailored their content because they're there too afraid of, you know, losing that platform. And again, we don't we don't have any say in you know, sort of what gets taken down or how the appeal process works.
Full Transcript | The Hill Rising | Tiktok Censoring The Left.
Robby Soave
What's on your radar? Ryan?
Ryan Grim
Well, conservatives in the US don't agree about everything. But if there's one complaint that is universally held among anybody who even remotely leans to the right, it's that big tech is censoring their political views, bans, shadow bans, suspensions, throttling, you name it. And it's obviously not just paranoia. Big tech even took an entire conservative social network parlor, completely off the internet. But on the fastest growing social network in the world, one that happens to be partially owned by China, conservatives are doing just fine, and it's the left that's running into major problems. Let's first revel in the irony here. It's been Democrats, who've been the loudest advocates of big tech, using its moderation authority to crack down on what it calls misinformation and to otherwise choke off speech they consider dangerous. And while we can chuckle at that irony, there's actually a little bit more to it. Because often, people who sit to the left of mainstream Democrats have been critical of that type of censorship, though not always, knowing that when power ceded to authority is almost always deployed against those with the least amount of power. If you empower corporate America to censor speech, in other words, that's not going to work out very well in the long run for the left now, is it? And that's before we've gotten to the question of corporate China. Before getting into what all this means. Here are a few examples. So here's Jessica Burbank, a creator who does econ for the people and who has over 200,000 followers on Tiktok. She's had all sorts of issues with videos that highlight US imperialism. This one here has been stuck in limbo since she uploaded it awaiting an interminable review.
Jessica Burbank
That's fine. I'm in the mood to talk about the CIA. We know that the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government in 1954 and an operation known as PBS success began in 1952. But what does this have to do with corporate interests? Let's introduce our two main characters. There's John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and his brother, Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA.
Ryan Grim
So this type of thing ends up pushing people to try to figure out what it is about their content that's getting flagged. So she tried this one,
Jessica Burbank
part two, take two on the CIA's coup in Guatemala. The first time I posted this, it got flagged, but now I know which word I need to avoid, I think. At the start of this, they fired the ambassador from the United States to Guatemala and put someone in the job that they knew and trusted. He was an elevator operator in Washington. So you could say that's a job that has its ups and downs.
Ryan Grim
And so here's a fairly innocuous one that she did about things that annoy her about men.
This is things men do that annoy women that we’re pretty sure you're not yet aware of. Part four. We're gonna start off pretty hot with number one. When a woman makes a point in a conversation and you give it little to no attention. And then it's later repeated by a man and you react like it's the greatest thing you've ever heard. I'm a fan of efficiency and saving time. I know listening to women can be hard for you. But it's bad for economic productivity for it to take so long to arrive at the same conclusion. So if you could just listen to women when they say it, it would probably be good for the economy. Number four, saying an outfit or article of clothing is weird. You just don't understand fashion, but it's not too late to learn. And lastly, scabbing on Union strikes, you make up most of the workforce. This is especially a problem for the men.
Ryan Grim
Sometimes Tik Tok itself isn't the one doing the censoring. In this case, it looks like a bunch of aggrieved men and mass-reported that video, and it was taken down for quote, bullying, and harassment. Now here's Alex Peter, who has around 700,000 followers and posts @loloverruled.
Alex Claverling
Mind you this just happened after I made a video that was not favorable to a brand on here. And that made a brand look stupid that after that video got half a million views, you can go to my main account and see it. I was blocked from posting. And the reason I was blocked from posting the video that they flagged as promoting dangerous individuals was about a man who was incorrectly sentenced and illegally detained for 10 years beyond his sentence. And he was rearrested when he was released by the courts. That was what was flagged. That was the video that violated community guidelines.
Ryan Grim
And then there's John Russell who posts @HeyJohnRussell, this was taken down.
John Russell
The crisis that they helped start has killed more Americans than our deadliest war and after their punishment, the Sacklers will still be billionaires with lifetime immunity from opioid civil lawsuits. Fewer and fewer people get more and more power. Now 30 of America's billionaires command more wealth than the gross domestic product of New York. City and state. The place where Wall Street is. They have used it to capture the government, buy up media, and make propaganda networks that keep us fighting so that they can keep their grip on power. But our power always comes down to strength in numbers. Bargaining together for better power and wages, voting together to rein in concentrated wealth that has always been a threat to democracy through history. We can still do that. The point is the super-rich are not your friends. Other working people are your friends and we can have nice things when we stick together.
Ryan Grim
Now this one has since been restored but was down for a long time.
John Russell
Plans are being laid right now to decide elections before they happen and 2020 was a test run. 47 million Americans think the last election was stolen. 21 million of those say violence is justified to restore the loser. 7 million own guns. 6 million support extreme militias. 3 million are veterans. And 1 million either know or are members of far-right groups.
Ryan Grim
Creators of color, particularly black creators who do a significant amount of content related to criminal justice reform, Black Lives Matter, or racial justice have been saying for a long time that TikTok seems to disproportionately come after them, leading to rampant self-censorship in order to stay afloat. Erynn Chambers, whose channel with 800,000 followers is called @Rinstarr that's R-Y-N-N-star has seen it often firsthand. So to explain how some of this works, we're joined now by Jessica Burbank, Alex Peter, and Erynn Chambers, who posts at @Rynnstar. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining me. And so Alex, want to start with you. What what's the current status of your account after what happened with T-Mobile? And were you surprised to see this unfold?
Alex Claverling
Yeah, my... I was very, very surprised. Also, good morning, Ryan, good morning, Bobby, thanks for having me on. Basically, my account was banned from posting for 24 hours, which has happened a few times. I was mostly surprised because the ban followed immediately after having responded to the T Mobile brand account and sort of kind of embarrassing them in front of like, half a million people. And then this other video that was taken down. It was just about sort of unjust sentencing, of a case of a guy who was sentenced by the DOJ for an additional 10 years beyond the sentence and the video was taken down for dangerous individuals. And the only individuals mentioned in the video were Azel Gabbard, who was the man who was sentenced and Barack Obama, which, you know, depending on who you're talking to, but I think most people would not say that he would be a dangerous individual, at least in terms of content moderation.
Ryan Grim
Right. And it did seem like they were really reaching for a reason. And if they took that to its logical extension that you'd say, you couldn't talk about criminal justice reform, because anybody who's been convicted of a crime, could then be classified by them as some type of dangerous individual and just simply can't be talked about. Erynn, what kind of guardrails have, have you noticed as a creator, that you're, that you're that you if you bump up against, you might get throttled or taken down?
Erynn Chambers
Oh, well, good morning, and thank you for having me. Um, so one thing that I have noticed that as a creator, I post a lot about, I post a lot of things but I do speak a lot about, you know, racial justice issues and things that affect people of color in the black community in particular, and I find that in order to not get videos, muted or taken down, I have to do a lot of self-censoring. And one of the most intriguing things to me is a lot of times I will respond to a racist video like I will stitch or just respond to someone being blatantly racist on a video on Tik Tok, that was not taken down. But my response will be taken down.
Ryan Grim
Any examples? come to mind? What kind of? And is there any particular kind of language that you think triggers the algorithm? Or do you think it's more that you're getting mass reported? Or what do you think's going on here?
Erynn Chambers
I think it's some combination of it. I mean I definitely think that there is some mass reporting going on. I also like I'm looking a lot, a lot of times like it sounds muted for whatever reason. Recently, I've made a video regarding music and how a lot of American folk music has its roots in minstrelsy in blackface. And a lot of what I'm talking about the original lyrics of a lot of that content, I had to like censor a lot, but in both the captions and the audio in order to not get taken down. And usually, it'll still get muted for the first like 30 minutes after I post it and then like it's under review, and then eventually get posted. But if enough people get mad at it, then it'll get taken down and then after appeal, and then it's a whole back and forth process.
Ryan Grim
And Jessica, you know, you do Economics For The People. You also talk about imperialism a lot. We talked earlier about some of your videos around Guatemala that have gotten taken down. What have you kind of concluded about where TikTok is drawing the lines and what and what can fly and what won't
Jessica Burbank
Right, yeah, I think the line is blurred. And that's precisely the problem. But it is the case that most of my run-ins with the content violations have been on this series on American intervention and the CIA. And it seems that there's some keyword scraping going on. For example, if there's any political language, and along with the word like “bomb” or anything in reference to violence, the video will get flagged and will not get uploaded.
Robby Soave
Jessica, do you get any explanation or warning or any of the thinking behind these decisions from TikTok itself from the platform itself?
Jessica Burbank
You know, I haven't. Usually, it just says content violation. This video violates our community guidelines without an explanation, which is quite curious. Sometimes the video disappears from my page, and I haven't deleted it or received a notification from the app. I have gotten flagged for content violations for saying things like don't call me a capitalist, which is pretty straightforward. But I have gotten notifications that on the men annoy women series that it was for, like hate speech, which is quite silly because it suggests we can't talk about gender at all without being flagged.
Ryan Grim
And Alex, what about you, what of your interactions with TikTok been like, as yours is one of the most almost clear cut examples of it seems like, TikTok kind of protecting a corporation that felt embarrassed.
Alex Claverling
I think that my experiences follow the experiences of Jess and Erynn, in terms of sometimes tailoring content in a specific way, tailoring my language, even when talking about criminal justice issues, out of fear that my content is going to be taken down. And I think part of the problem is that, like Jess is saying, you know, it's kind of a black box in terms of content moderation. And we know there are these X factors like there could be mass reporting, obviously, there could be, you know, keywords or, or hashed images or something. But the ultimate issue is that these companies are totally not transparent, and how they moderate this content. And we ultimately, like as the users are the products, you know, yes, we're sold stuff, but also we're sold to advertisers. And we have no say and how content is moderated and no transparency and how it's moderated.
Robby Soave
Erynn, have you been able to get ever get any clarity from the platform, making it for them to explain what they're doing?
Erynn Chambers
Very rarely, if ever, like, I have noticed that like just recently, I was looking at my account to see my most recent sound that was muted, and it was a sound where I was talking about an SNL sketch involving Elmo. There was nothing about it that was political in any way or controversial. You know, it was just a commentary on whether SNL is out of touch, and the sound got muted for some reason. And I appealed it, and they did restore it, but they never explained why they took it down. And they never explained, explain why they restore it, particularly the sound, they don't even say you violated X community guidelines, they just say the sound has been muted for violating community guidelines. And then they never elaborate and you can appeal it. But that's like it like you don't even necessarily know why it was needed in the first place, which is very frustrating.
Ryan Grim
And Jessica, since you do economics for the people, can you explain some of the economics around this? What kind of incentives? Does this create for creators like yourselves, who are, you know, making something of a living on TikTok?
Jessica Burbank
Yeah, I think it's really unfortunate. I mean, the whole point of this series is that economics has become an increasingly esoteric subject, and we want people to be able to learn about the system that they live in. And so if I have so many violations, for example, on the CIA series on imperialism, my whole page can be taken down. And that means that economics for the people series is gone as well. And I'd have to start all over with a new account.
Ryan Grim
And Alex, Erynn talked about self-censorship. Have you done some of that? Do you do censor yourself? Trying to avoid what kind of you know, third rails might get you electrocuted by TikTok?
Alex Claverling
Yes, I do. I mean, unfortunately, I think to some extent I do because as my platform has grown, it's kind of a, you have to make a choice whether or not you want to risk your account being banned, where you have to start over from scratch. You know, I've been able to do really good things, having this platform for the people that I work with, for my clients in terms of getting them resources, because it's such a large audience, they can donate money and things that are useful to the people that I work for. But I've also spoken with other creators with millions of followers who have also done this they've tailored their content because they're there too afraid of, you know, losing that platform. And again, we don't we don't have any say in you know, sort of what gets taken down or how the appeal process works.
Ryan Grim
And this is usually only something that's associated with the right and it's really interesting to hear this perspective from you guys. And we'll continue to follow this. But thanks so much for joining us today. And we will have more rising right after this.