On paper, TikTok has strong safety policies protecting minors, but “what happens in practice is the real test,” said McNamara. When it comes to proactively policing the sexualization of kids or trading of child sexual abuse material, she added, “TikTok is behind.”
Category Archives: Tactic
Tactics & Techniques: “Majority of female journalists have been target of online violence – report”
“Abuse was highly gendered and designed to “humiliate, belittle and discredit” [female journalists] on both a personal and professional level.”
Vulnerability Spotlight: Low quality moderation of non-English language content
A former Google leader who worked on trust and safety issues acknowledged that the company focuses heavily on English-language enforcement and is weaker across other languages and smaller markets.
Vulnerability Spotlight: The Illusory Truth Effect
If you see something repeated enough times, it seems more true. Multiple studies show that it works on 85% of people. Worse, it still happens even if the information isn’t plausible & even if you know better.
Tactics & Techniques: “How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World”
“If the world’s largest online advertising platform doesn’t care that it has made false information, hate speech and toxic propaganda profitable in societies like ours, and has no intention to do anything to change because it wouldn’t financially pay off, that is devastating”
Tactics & Techniques: “Pranksters posing as laid-off Twitter employees trick media outlets: ‘Rahul Ligma’”
“You got conned. Name is ‘Rahul LIGMA.’ C’mon man,”
Tactics & Techniques: “Powerful People Tell Us Things”
“By allowing politicians to lie about their true motivations and printing the lies as fact, the news media continues its long tradition of allowing powerful people to manipulate the public into not understanding the true drivers of political actions and policies.”
Tactics & Techniques: “A pro-government disinformation campaign on Indonesian Papua”
“It is the notion that these tweets are spontaneous posts by authentic Twitter users that is false, and which marks the campaign as disinformation.”
Technique Spotlight: Algospeak
Algospeak is used to make it harder for automated moderation to detect harmful content
Tactics & Techniques: “Facebook uncovers Chinese network behind fake expert”
“The accounts had promoted the claims of a fake Swiss biologist called “Wilson Edwards”, who alleged the US was meddling in efforts to find the origins of Covid-19 […] However, the Swiss embassy said that it was unlikely this person existed.”