The much-anticipated follow-up to her excellent documentary Coded Bias, Shalini Kantayya’s TikTok, Boom. doesn’t quite know what to make of the addicting viral app—a larger story than simply one about those kids today and their “content creation.” The issue at hand is the narrative builds to what might have been a thrilling geopolitical showdown (had a certain President been re-elected) that never came to pass. Covering TikTok for the business, user, and geopolitical angles, it aims to be comprehensive as it darts between multiple perspectives—the users, creators, activists, journalists, and lawyers fighting privacy battles.
Developed by Byte Dance of Beijing, the company has two products: its heavily regulated Chinese version Douyin, which is so sensitive even a tattoo or bleached hair will prevent a user from going live; and TikTok, its global platform. Founded in a small apartment by Zhang Yiming, the platform is primarily a remarkably accurate machine-learning tool built around user engagement in the “for you” page.
Much of the information contained in TikTok, Boom. isn’t necessarily new for those paying attention to the harms of social media. Yiming was early, however, to invest in recommendation engines optimized for engagement rather than the discovery of new ideas. The harms of data collection and optimization are certainly well-known from reports (e.g. the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files and documentary films such as the aforementioned Coded Bias). In that film, data scientist Cathy O’Neil makes a frequently stated case: we need an “FDA for algorithms,” especially those that truly matter.
The stakes in TikTok, Boom. are perhaps somewhat lower than those in Coded Bias, which warned of both a biometric police state and the vulnerabilities of algorithms that are inherently flawed because of who is designing them. This picture does a bit of digging on TikTok’s methods of quelling free speech in instances that are more than just anecdotal. Along the way we’re introduced to users—such as young advocate Feroza Aziz, an Afghani-American who finds a place of community online. Overnight she amasses 100,000 unexpected views and eventually uses her platform to call attention to the plight of the Uyghurs held in Chinese concentration camps. Her post is marked as “unavailable” on the platform.
Uprisings in the summer of 2020 also receive the same treatment, terms like “George Floyd” and “BLM” becoming temporarily unavailable to view until TikTok blames an undisclosed technical error for suppressing millions of videos. Just as accounts by activists (e.g. Deja Fox) are pulled from the platform altogether after violating vague community standards. Despite anxiety felt by Deja, an Arizona teen-turned-viral-star, she simply can’t quit social media—it’s one way she’s able to make a living for herself as both influencer and content creator for hire.
Other content creators have somewhat happier experiences, including Spencer X, a beatboxer who turned his short videos into several exciting opportunities that include free products, travel, and other perks. The platform proves a vital way of launching artists through challenges and viral videos.
So what’s the danger? TikTok, Boom. comes close to sounding the alarm on the platform’s geopolitics, as well as other generally creepy behavior on the Duets feature courtesy grown men who probably should be put on sex-offender registries. Privacy lawyers and parents do help and play a vital role—among them Sean Hannah, who serves as his son Merrick’s business manager and producer.
TikTok, Boom. adds further global dimension, exploring some foreign-policy concerns the U.S. government feels when soldiers record and publish tours of critical infrastructure. It’s also the story of big tech and competition as ByteDance and Meta continue competing in the attention economy to generate consumer data. The film also sheds some light on Trump’s obsession with requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok to a U.S. Company—after getting trolled by teens ordering millions of tickets to his Tulsa rally—and Xi Jinping’s one-upmanship to ensure a sale wouldn’t happen.
While somewhat illuminating in regards to TikTok and its behavior, TikTok, Boom. feels like a review of what smart audiences already know about content moderation, what trends (hint: attractive people showing skin do well), and the danger of recommendation engines built for optimization. The film itself may be a valuable tool for Intro to Media Study courses in high schools and colleges, but its story lacks stakes comparable with Coded Bias. It is always difficult to take on a story when we’re in the middle of it, and TikTok, Boom. by no means plays as a definitive study of all the platform’s harms. Despite its wide scope and informative passages on censorship, there seems to be a good deal more.
TikTok, Boom. premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.