TikTok is Poisoning Society

this video is brought to you by surf shark i was very uncertain whether or not to include a sponsor on this one due to the subject matter but surf shark is a tool promoting security and protection so i landed on yes alright before getting started i want to do a brief history of who i am and outline my relationship to tiktok as a social media application i do not actively use the platform i understand that there is massive growth potential for any creator i understand that creators who leverage it properly are seeing monumental follower gains and i understand that there is content there which can be seen as entertaining but all things combined tik tok is a platform that i despise i've covered the application multiple times now first it was criticism of trends and challenges where tick tock users would dress as victims of global tragedy and inappropriately sing or dance on screen pretending to be victims on the anniversary of 9 11 pretending to be victims of the holocaust these teenagers were displaying what i consider to be a horrifying lack of respect and common decency but even worse many of these users were also participating in challenges challenges are a flash in the pan of social media popularity but in a short amount of time they can deal a substantial amount of damage challenges on tiktok range from benign or relatively easy tasks to flat out dangerous behavior snorting spray tan solution for example which allegedly increases melanin production eating entire scoops of dry protein or mixing powder which can cause aspiration pneumonia drinking methylene blue commonly used as fish tank cleaner to recolor your tongue and the list goes on challenges on tick tock range from innocent to potentially life threatening and anywhere in between putting pennies behind electrical sockets which causes electrocution and fire holding your own breath until you pass out and slapping school teachers or vandalizing school bathrooms when i say that these challenges are now a constant part of our everyday lives all of us even when we don't know it i'm being serious because the influence of tick tock that has bled over from personal behavior to societal impact is profound on december 17th of 2021 in the aftermath of a national tragedy tiktok gave rise to ambiguous but substantial threats of violence against schools forcing a nationwide security response in the united states some parents were never aware some may have heard about it after the fact but this social media app was playing a role in school cancellation now forcing a police response to thousands of elementary schools ultimately nothing happened thank god but the reality of what this app has become cannot be denied however for those already forming an opinion of the platform it gets worse the next example of coverage i looked into was medical tick-tock is a home to viral and popular trends but what are those trends doing for teenage girls those trends are likely causing neurological disorders as they are bombarded by and subjected to viral content of facial and behavioral tics or manufactured quirky behavior which they begin to subconsciously imitate tick-tock trends designed to be engaging and funny like multi-million view fake videos of tourette's ticks is causing actual health problems in underage users but it gets worse the entire application is formed around small snippets of content one of my most popular videos ever was called tick-tock is destroying a generation and centered on medical research suggesting that tick-tock lowers attention spans decreases concentration and affects short-term memory these factors combined as well as the resulting depression and anxiety that are built when users cannot properly moderate their own attention span also their susceptibility to advertising which can be very damaging or are subjected to things that they are unable to avoid or turn away from due to self-control issues make tick-tock a singular feedback loop of nearly all major negative factors involved with social media entirely in essence tick tock is a one-stop shop designed to facilitate rapid digestion of content for everything bad that has come from this aggressive social media revolution that video the previous one went viral in the aftermath i was engaging with a number of professors and lower grade teachers about which particular sources i had used and in what order with an ultimate effect where the subject matter itself crossed over into classrooms that level of response felt good i was proud of it i disliked tick tock i formed that opinion based on a variety of medical and social factors i sourced the information and then it had some measure of impact as a result but believe me when i say this it gets exponentially worse from here all right before going further sponsored video and that sponsor is once again surf shark your life online is a minefield you play games browse websites download files basically everything is a risk surfshark is here to 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using promo code echelon again that's promo code echelon and three full months for free if you click the link down below in the description big thank you to sureshark for sponsoring the channel and being a long-standing partner this is the part of the video where i need to outline methods and give disclaimers investigating this subject matter is kind of tricky merely possessing a recording of what i looked into is probably under some circumstances illegal having been made aware by a community request that ticktock live might contain problematic underage content i was faced with a difficult question of how exactly to investigate this after a great deal of thought i landed on this kind of solution i would not engage with anything that i discovered except to say precisely what i was doing investigating tick tock live to see if there is inappropriate or directly paid for explicit content by minors if i encountered a broadcast that i believed to be a legitimate example of underage explicit content i would cease recording immediately document what i had found with notes only and move on i would only record footage from streams where i was reasonably sure that those recordings were not over the line and i would blur all or nearly all of the content that i recorded in the final video since much of it would likely be near the line at best should this kind of content be an issue i was not prepared for what would happen next using a tick tock account i created some time ago for challenge and trending research purposes on prior videos i began to browse the tiktok live page it's important to note here that tick tock live does not function like youtube or twitch for example because you are not able to directly search keywords or categories tick tock is above all else a primary feed of popular content where you selectively choose what to engage with but that content feed is determined by an algorithm this presents our first problem the tick tock algorithm as reported and investigated by the wall street journal utilizing dozens of custom bot scanning accounts served a never-ending stream of drug content and sexual fetish material to users between the age of 13 and 15. the algorithm began to bombard these test accounts made as users with a self-expressed age of 13 14 or 15 with non-stop depictions of whips chains or torture devices they were funneling these children into what some users refer to as kink talk which commonly contained sexual power dynamic fantasies and other very explicit behavior hundreds of videos containing adult material whether it be substances behavior or both were served in rapid succession to underage accounts by a central feed which is governed by the algorithm now it's important to understand how and why this occurs and while the answer to that question might be incredibly complex one of the easiest explanations is watch time how long do you hover over a video letting it play this one key metric can be used to determine without ever needing to examine likes or followers what content is more popular on tick tock and for children ages 13 to 15 sexualized material can be an interest simply watching that portion of the feed for a few seconds longer even if you never decide to like the video or follow the posting account can tell the algorithm that you want to see more and in a matter of minutes you can be sucked down a rabbit hole of algorithmically driven adult content served to a miner's account which reinforces itself over and over and over again tiktok live is a central feat where users are mostly subjected to whatever the platform wants them to see until they have found specific streams that they like from particular broadcasters and followed those accounts but what happens when the feedback loop starts and what if the subject matter is even worse at this point i need to say something to everyone watching especially parents i can't show you all of what i found i can't even show you most of what i found out of respect for the children involved i need to heavily censor redact or remove portions of footage and other on-screen content but what i found here is disturbing within minutes of browsing the feed i was being shown users primarily girls who were certainly under 18 and could easily have been under the technical age requirement of 16 for tick tock live which many users i found would openly admit some stated without hesitation or numerous times that they were 15 others 14 etc and it became clear that should the algorithm decide to serve you that content if you watch it longer or if you like any of it there was no shortage from there things got worse i started to see questionable content popping up where girls often appearing to be quite young or holding signs or standing in front of the camera with a revealing outfit those signs would say things like rose equals say daddy or ice cream equals 360 spin or even universe equals cut shirt or in one case a woman who was definitely older than 18 she would cut off the wedding dress she was wearing for a certain chat sticker the thing is these pictures or stickers are not just pictures they're money in a way that seems nearly purpose-built for obfuscation these little stickers and pictures like a rose are actually a way to donate money to these broadcasters many of whom were openly admitting to being under 18 or even under 16 years old as they did spins bent over on camera lifted their shirts or engaged in other clearly suggestive content directly for money following the rules that i set out for myself through four separate sessions i had to cut the recording and delete the footage over half a dozen times bombarded now with a feed of this content determined by the tiktok algorithm i was being served a never-ending stream of girls on tiktok many of them at very young ages being paid by a chat room of viewers intending to see them in compromising positions it's awkward it's uncomfortable and once you begin to see what's really happening it makes you sick but there's more attempting to go about this process ethically i began to ask questions in the chat room i would directly state that i was a journalist i don't actually view myself to be an adequate journalist by any stretch but that's an easier and more mainstream way of communicating the types of questions that i was intending to ask rather than i'm a gaming youtuber so yeah i would directly state that i was a journalist investigating the tiktok platform to see if there are underage users being paid by older men for explicit content and the results were very troubling one of three specific things would happen when i asked this question and i'm going to show heavily redacted background footage with audio of what occurred in two of those outcome possibilities the first was that the broadcaster would ignore me or refuse to engage that's what i expected and i wasn't surprised in the slightest the second was that the broadcaster would immediately suspend me from the chat and repeatedly even frantically express that they were 18 years old or 19 years old or that i don't break terms of service i promise i promise etc here's an example all right guys i am 19 i think someone asked my comments guys i'm 19. yes guys i'm 19. this response was also expected to a degree considering the fact that a random user was asking them about what would be borderline or highly illegal and disgusting behavior without any sort of preamble they don't know who i am or what i actually want and they simply respond by distancing themselves however the third outcome which happened numerous times was the most interesting and concerning when asking the question of certain broadcasters some of them would answer yes i have heard of that stuff they would go on to describe that it didn't happen in their broadcast but they did know about it they had some friends who did it etc etc but the strangest factor of all was that on more than one occasion and only after they answered affirmatively to my questions the broadcaster would be suspended or banned from the platform in real time here's an example of that for context this girl i'm just going to call her jane for privacy reasons answered my question as you'll hear with yes i do know about that it doesn't happen here though and was then suspended immediately afterward i don't know what to tell you man i just i just been doing it do you hear of older men using tips on live reminders but yes i do but nobody's on here with that and if they are i dismiss it right away i'm a journalist investing in a platform that's what's up um i went on to have a roughly 10-minute off-platform interview with jane about specifics of this and this is where i started to become aware of coded language to be clear i cannot give a definitive reason why multiple broadcasters were suspended as soon as they answered my questions acknowledging that the problem even exists but it did not happen a single time to a broadcaster that blocked me or refused to answer it only happened when they gave a statement and it might be possible that the ban was simply for evading the 16 year old age requirement jane had acknowledged in the very same broadcast that she was 15 and was coincidentally handed down at that particular moment but i am extremely skeptical of what was going on here regardless this is when i started to learn about coded language and where it became increasingly difficult for me to keep investigating it felt disgusting and wrong to even sit silently in these rooms let alone continue to ask questions things started to make sense from then on as to what precisely was happening viewers are using coded language to have underage girls perform for them that's really what it is fit check means let us see your stomach or pull your shirt up you forgot something or get something from the back means walk away and show your ass outfit check was a common one very common where girls would back up to show their entire bodies and the chat rooms were completely overrun with requests and i don't just mean trolls here they were overrun with paying viewers requesting feet pictures often referred to as feet check or toe ring check or anything like that or attempting to move off platform and discuss some sort of larger transaction through cash app do you want to make 400 fast or 500 fast etc or buying them something from their amazon wishlist i want to be extremely clear right now not all of the broadcasts that i found or that i'm using in the background right now were underage girls performing for money but many of them were perhaps for some they just looked younger than they were but some of them openly acknowledged that they were 15 while taking donations in order to do squats and spins these are children using tick-tock live to display their bodies even fully clothed but doing splits and showing their feet or spreading their legs for money from older men and it is a breeding ground of inappropriate and sickening behavior to be clear i undertook multiple sessions of investigation after starting with an old account i created a brand new fresh never before touched profile and engage with the same pattern of browsing this new account fell into the same content black hole as before in a very short span of time and were right to undertake the process again i have no doubt in my mind at all of similar or identical results i have to be careful here because certain claims i ran into over the course of my second session devolve into hearsay it wasn't one of the specific girls that i talked to personally but her friend who had been allegedly extorted after selling nude pictures to one of the viewers in her chat room that type of situation and i do believe that she was sincere as a personal opinion is called sextortion and when underage girls are performing for money on a live broadcast fielding thousands of donations in some cases and requests for other ways to send them money for a favor is often what they would say in the chat room it can absolutely occur on that platform in a very short time frame i was finding more instances that made my skin crawl than those that didn't understanding that nearly every single teenage girl who uses the live broadcast feature of tiktok was being bombarded with requests it starts to feel overwhelming a 13 year old girl who lies about her age is suddenly getting showered in gifts for showing her feet and twirling on camera she gets more money when she dances provocatively and an algorithm designed to serve content that people are interested in is showing her broadcast to more and more sick people all around the world every day even every hour or minute this kind of situation is so prevalent okay i was shocked by this i encountered young boys who were using face filters pretending to be young girls in order to receive roses and other gifts which are redeemable for cash maybe some of them were pranking the audience sure but if there is such a high demand for this such a large economy of transactions and behavior taking place that children will use filters to appear more feminine and engage with it for profit that is a serious problem when doing follow-up research for this video i learned something else moderators of tik-tok are specifically being trained using real material depictions of child sexual abuse uncensored explicit images of children are used in high volume for moderation training and we need to ask a sincere question why do they feel it necessary to do that after my initial wave of research on the subject i found an article on forbes written by alexandra s levine titled how tick-tock live became a strip club filled with 15 year olds this was an excellent piece of work and most importantly contained quotes from security legal and law enforcement experts i'll link it down below if anyone is interested it was invaluable in my own creation of this video as per tick tock's own enforcement report they removed over 300 million videos in 2021 alone that violated their community guidelines and the majority of these were not removed by automation combining the adult nudity and sexual activities category with the minor safety category accounts for over 50 percent of all videos removed since 2020. looking at the number of accounts removed that are suspected to be under the age of 13 15 million of them in one quarter october to december of 2021 15 million account deletions for suspicion of being under 13 years old in just three months i am not going to make the claim that tiktok is failing to try and moderate their platform if their internal reports are to be believed they certainly make that effort i believe i witnessed it in real time as i investigated all this when broadcasters acknowledged my questions and were immediately suspended they even resorted to highly unethical tactics to educate their moderators on child sexual material as they do this but with the volume that they process the sheer number of children flooding into the platform and the undeniable economy that has arisen for sexual exploitation and transactional behavior we must ask the question is this platform doing more harm than it is good an algorithm that has aggressively promoted adult behavior from substances to kinks and more directing that content at children is now governing a live feed of broadcasters where underage girls are being showered in gifts to perform suggestive actions or poses many of them with cash app paypal amazon wishlists or venmo in their bio specifically for this purpose while a massive community of groomers and most likely pedophiles watch intently many of them actively trying to pull the girls into an off-platform environment whether for money or other incentives the footage i found within mere hours of investigating this topic had to be cut several times in fear of crossing a profound moral ethical even legal boundary and once you have witnessed these broadcasts even in passing the machine learning of tick tock will continue to push them into your feed aggressively at every turn hear me when i say this anyone in my audience who is a parent or even a free thinking teenager carefully examine when and how you use this platform because shrouded behind the simplistic visual of just a rose or an emoji is a cache for favors underbelly of children performing paid actions for groomers and sick individuals set aside the dangerous challenges the disrespectful trends the medical concerns of imitation and neurological disorders or the rampant scamming and falsified content that plague this platform each and every day set all of that aside and look now at one simple reality an algorithm that has been proven to serve wildly inappropriate even dangerous content to children now governs an effective marketplace of underage exploitation is this application worth using that's it i reached a point in the production of this video just to be completely honest with everyone where i couldn't take it anymore if it feels like an abrupt end that's why i had to shut down stop looking stop recording and stop asking questions and stop scripting i saw what i saw and i know what it is to a degree you'll have to take my word for some of this but i'm more than willing to stake everything i've worked for since the birth of this channel on my words today i believe tik tok is poisoning our society in a way that will have untold and dramatic consequences on the future young boys are being funneled into a world where underage girls are performing dances for cash for for little images that are convertible to cash they are in chat rooms where explicit discussion of what they would like to do to that little girl is taking place and if we think about this logically what kind of result will that have on their opinion of women and their future behavior in context this social media platform is one of the most terrifying and disgusting things i've ever seen in my life and again i believe that to some degree tiktok as a company is attempting to moderate this reality but when the effects of your product are almost universally negative it probably should not exist that's it link down below patreon locals odyssey another youtuber to check out merch social media surf shark the video sponsor etc etc but i'll cut it there and stop rambling as always thank you all for watching and have a nice night you

Channel: Upper Echelon

Views: 2,089,360

Keywords: tiktok, tiktok trends, tiktok challenges, tiktok mashup, tiktok compilation, tiktok live, tiktok streams, tiktok search, tiktok news, tiktok challenge, tiktok dances, tiktok users, tiktok famous, tiktok moments, tiktok investigation, tiktok platform, social media, upper echelon gamers, tiktok viral, viral videos, tiktok media, tiktok exposed, tiktok followers, tiktok info, tiktok issues, tiktok damage, tiktok worst, tiktok 2022, tiktok 2021

Id: qbv-VteX5H8

Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022