"Our goal is to make it easy to independently research our platform and bring transparency to TikTok content, while rolling out our API responsibly and in a way that helps ensure data is only used for appropriate non-commercial purposes and protects our community's privacy rights.” "TikTok is committed to working with the research community to support independent research,” a company spokesperson said. TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd, comes under a unique level of scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers concerned that US user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Researchers said those terms could severely hamper their efforts and that some of the requirements are more demanding than rival platforms, including Google’s YouTube, Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. TikTok’s rules state that academics must provide advance notice about upcoming research, allow the company to review papers before publication and delete some data after it’s used. By monitoring social media conversations, researchers have been able to flag inaccurate polling information that was turning away voters, for example, and help local governments better communicate with the public during natural disasters like Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida last month. Social scientists say it’s important to gain access to TikTok to understand the app’s impact on a variety of issues such as elections, public health messaging or the spread of misinformation. The difficulty in researching TikTok comes as competing platforms also are making it more difficult to review their data and are starting to charge for access to their APIs. But the terms of service are so strict, academics at leading institutions say they’re hesitant to accept them. TikTok is in the process of making its application programming interface, or API, open to researchers to analyse data on the platform. But researchers said so far, the video app’s rules about data are too burdensome. Publicly, the company says it’s open to this, and is partnering with academics. As TikTok gets more popular, researchers at leading academic institutions want to study what users are doing there.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |