China

I had the idea to check out Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to see how it differed from American TikTok. I had heard China cracks down on its version of the app, making educational videos appear and suppressing subversive content.
That really was not the case from what I saw, though. While I saw some cool stuff, like cooking and video game content, I was quickly served up some creepy videos, including animal abuse and some sexual content.
So what’s the deal? Is the American notion that Douyin is engineered to make Chinese people great citizens totally false? What reputation does Douyin have? I’m curious from the perspective of an American who knows little about what goes on in Chinese social media.
- source
pretty sure the sanitized version full of positive and educational content is douyin version for minors. its like youtube kids or having parental controls
They have the usual limbic system hijacking videos (outrage, dumb etc) but it’s true they also push more videos on ‘science’ and ‘patriotism’.
They still have to make money, so the way these are blended is subtle and it’s probably most recognizable when you collect thousands of data points and zoom out. It’s more about narrative-shaping over the long term rather than any one particular video.
They also completely crack down on drugs and suicidal content etc. The last 2 obviously not done by TikTok.

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