Senator James Lankford (R-OK), member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on Wednesday warned of the dangers of foreign entities using social media algorithms to silence American political discourse during a hearing on foreign threats to the 2024 election.
Witnesses for the hearing included Mr. Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, Alphabet; Mr. Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs, Meta; and Mr. Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft.
Excerpt
Lankford: This is just an example, side-by-side, of content delivery from a company. When there was a comparison that was done of content delivery to individuals that were 35 and younger from Instagram to TikTok, Uyghur content, it was 11 to 1 Instagram. So TikTok hardly delivered it, 11 to 1, that if someone was talking about Uyghurs, Instagram was talking about it, TikTok wouldn’t. In Tibet, any conversations about Tibet, 41 to 1 Instagram to TikTok. TikTok just screened it out. Tiananmen Square, 80 to 1, content on Tiananmen Square. This is among Americans, by the way. Hong Kong protests 180 to 1. That seemed to be a conversation that was discussed on Instagram that just didn’t show up on TikTok for whatever reason. Ukraine, 12 to 1. And this one was interesting to me, there’s 50 times more pro-Palestinian content on TikTok than pro-Israel content.
Now, I say that to you to say, there’s a sense of an outside foreign influence, in this case owned by a foreign entity, trying to be able to deliver content to the United States, to affect the national conversation. That’s the challenge that we have, because there’s not a challenge on what Americans want to be able to talk about. The challenge is a foreign entity reaching into the United States and saying, ‘Hey, I want to try to influence you by delivering content to your box that may try to sway opinions on this.’
