The world’s hottest app, utilized by roughly 100 million in the United States, has been consistently criticized in Washington as a platform that the Chinese authorities might use to form and censor what Americans see.
But Comey’s video capturing one of China’s most embarrassing geopolitical blunders wasn’t suppressed. To his delight, the video was seen greater than 2.3 million occasions in two days — particularly spectacular given Comey solely has 3,000 followers. The views got here largely due to TikTook’s algorithmic enhance.
“My wife and I were watching that video’s views go up as the minutes went by. We hit a million in an hour and 20 minutes,” Comey informed The Post. Many commenters, he mentioned, have been excited to observe the international squabble play out in real-time on their telephones. “I bet the pilot who got to shoot that was stoked!” one commenter mentioned.
TikTook’s critics have argued that the spy balloon ought to function a reminder of the menace posed by China’s surveillance and propaganda work. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) tweeted Sunday that “TikTok is a bigger threat than the Balloon” and urged the Biden administration to “blow up” TikTook subsequent.
“The real Chinese spy balloon is called TikTok,” one Baptist pastor in Georgia tweeted, “and your kids are on it 4 to 6 hours every day.”
But many of the hottest TikTook videos round the episode haven’t appeared like Chinese propaganda in any respect. They’ve come from authoritative U.S.-based news channels. They’ve poked enjoyable at the Chinese authorities. And, in some circumstances, they’ve featured loud, proud American patriots.
One video posted by person “bubbathompson0” in South Carolina, captioned “When your drunk buddy gets a video shooting the Chinese balloon down,” consists of two males gleefully providing play-by-play commentary of the balloon getting zapped out of the sky. “He threw a missile at it! … F— you Commie China! … hell yeah!”
That video obtained at the least 1.7 million views and has been ‘liked’ 135,000 occasions, a degree of engagement that implies TikTook promoted it broadly. The poster’s most recent video earlier than that, of a dachshund having fun with the breeze, had about 3,000 views.
TikTook’s opaque suggestion algorithm, like these of its American social media rivals, makes it exhausting for outsiders to know precisely which videos are being surfaced or ignored. And TikTook’s critics have mentioned that ought to gas suspicion that ByteDance — TikTook’s mum or dad firm, based in Beijing — might work to sink videos important of China and elevate ones extolling the ruling Communist Party’s beliefs.
But the spy balloon suggests a extra nuanced state of affairs: that of a colourful, chaotic social community containing many views of the similar occasions, hewing to no clear political dogma and reflecting the creativity and sensibilities of an enormous and raucous person base.
The web inside China is infamously censorious, however TikTook has lengthy professed that the Chinese authorities has no affect over content material outdoors its borders. Though TikTook has apologized for some takedowns it says have been inaccurate, the app gives anybody who searches for it a protracted stream of video content material that might in any other case be banned in China, from dialogue of the nation’s historic crimes to modern-day human-rights abuses.
It’s exhausting to think about a TikTook carefully managed by Chinese censors, as an illustration, sending 5 million viewers to observe an in any other case unremarkable 5-second TikTok video of somebody giving the Chinese balloon two upraised center fingers.
Or permitting hashtags like #chinesespyballoon to surpass 90 million views, provided that the Chinese authorities has fiercely disputed that characterization, saying the “airship” was merely a climate balloon that “strayed into the United States by mistake.”
TikTook is one of the nation’s fastest-growing sources of on-line information, and a 3rd of America’s TikTook customers told Pew Research Center they use it to get the news. From the balloon’s sluggish float over Montana to the explosion-debris retrieval by military boat, many commenters mentioned they have been excited to trace the episode on a video platform that felt “faster than the news.”
Others simply noticed it as an excellent punchline. Patrick Cloyd, whose firm Freedom Balloon Rides runs hot-air balloon excursions from Indianola, Iowa, posted a video from a latest flight, captioned it “POV: Casually flying over Missouri and start to see fighter jets circling your balloon,” and spliced in a brief film freakout scene.
“I was just sitting on my couch thinking, ‘I should make some video about this Chinese balloon. The iron’s pretty hot right now,’” he mentioned. It’s been seen greater than 500,000 occasions.
Some videos’ feedback sections descended into political preventing or conspiracy theories, a standard endpoint of trendy social media debate on Facebook, Twitter and different American social media websites.
TikTook’s openness to real-world storylines the Chinese authorities would favor individuals overlook doesn’t resolve the different factors of TikTook criticism, together with questions over how the firm will shield individuals’s knowledge from authorities spying or misuse.
But to individuals like Comey, the actual property dealer in Myrtle Beach, the outrage over TikTook’s roots feels “a little overstated.” Because his family and friends aren’t frequent TikTook customers, he sees the app as his “personal fun social media,” a spot the place memes and jokes and pranks are extra frequent than the on-line political spats he can discover anyplace else.
He was strolling residence together with his spouse from a buddy’s place on Saturday after they noticed the balloon, and he determined to sit down out on his patio recording it whereas his spouse went inside to observe the TV for updates. When he noticed the balloon explode, he posted the video inside a minute to TikTook and nowhere else. “I wasn’t trying to beat the news,” he mentioned. “I was just like, ‘I’ve gotta send this to TikTok.’”
He mentioned it’s exhausting to know the complete story about what the Chinese authorities does with TikTook, although he’s leery of the declare that it’s their massive secret spy gadget. “What would they be seeing, anyway?” he mentioned.
Whatever the reality, he’s having enjoyable. The day after his video went viral, he posted another TikTok of seemingly decrease worldwide significance: his buddy messing up throughout a bowling recreation. It acquired 441 views.