As a global social media company, TikTok must operate within and adapt to different cultures and geopolitics, even when it presents itself as a neutral or apolitical platform. At Tracking Exposed, we develop tools and conduct research on how TikTok contorts itself in these different contexts, whether it be censoring LGBTQ+ terms in countries where sexuality is contested or limiting access to international content during times of war, which the company quietly did for Russian TikTok users when tweaking their policies in response to Russia’s Fake News law.

This talk will present methodologies, tools, and findings for investigating TikTok with the aim of making opaque platform decisions more transparent and as means of holding them accountable. It will primarily focus on our most recent TikTok research, where we compared TikTok’s algorithmic feed recommendations (For You Page) across almost 200 countries for non-logged in users. Our goal is to understand how TikTok sees the world; how it maps new digital boundaries and proximities through its recommendation system. We looked for emerging patterns, trends, and concerns between and within geographically dispersed countries. Using this research as a case study, we will discuss how to develop points of entry into analyzing the TikTok platform, with a particular emphasis on its algorithm. Participants will have a chance to brainstorm and share ideas, as well as see examples of Tracking Exposed’s open source tools in action. Ideally, they will come away from this session with research ideas and methodological possibilities. We will also open the floor to discuss the limitations of such research and how we as a research community can adapt to and move beyond such barriers.