Kate Klonick

That was like the industry term for free speech, voice.

There were limits to that, obviously.

But generally, like, it was a keep it up unless we have to take it down type of thing.

But that's not TikTok.

TikTok comes from obviously China and it comes from a censorship kind of authoritarian CCP culture.

And I mean, I believe the Chinese kind of approach to speech is very reflected in the algorithm that TikTok uses.

It is not a default.

Everyone should see everything.

This is a free world and people have a right to say whatever they want, even if it's a private platform.

It is a we get to determine what people see and say.

And that's it.

Oh, I mean, no.

TikTok, it prescreens such a volume of content that it determines to not be outside of certain political parameters.

And so they're less likely to cause negative interaction effects, to put kind of an economic term on it.

That's a perfect way of thinking about it.

And they push things up that are very milquetoast, very like happy, make you feel good, very apolitical.

And so this is basically downranking or shadow banning.

The idea that you're going to manipulate the algorithm to not delete the content, but not promote it.

And in addition to that, the algorithm is constantly improving and iterating on all the behavioral signals that you give it.

And so it's able to provide a very addictive and...