Latest / Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast / Inside TikTok: Nadia Maxwell’s Experiment on Algorithms and Youth Culture

Transcript

Inside TikTok: Nadia Maxwell’s Experiment on Algorithms and Youth Culture · Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Heads with the John and Ben Podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Cheers to Dilma making the world a better TEA guest
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: on the.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: Phone, Nadia Maxwell is a documentary maker, someone who's probably
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: far too educated to appear on our show, but thank
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: you for joining us, Nadia.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Just to give the backstory, you're as John I said,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you're a documentary maker, and you set up some pages
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: on social media sites basically said you were a thirteen
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: year old girl.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, we're prompted. I gave my interests
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: in things like animal's health and fitness, you know, tayus Worth,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: things that my own kind of teenage girls are interested in.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I thought it might, you know, maybe take a week
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: or so for disturbing content to crop up. It took
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: tiktop twenty two minutes and fifteen seconds for the first
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: kind of really heavy traumatic content to be pushed my way.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And so then I'd yeah, and then I'd go and
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: try to redirect the algorithm. I'd put a nipball and
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I'd watch, you know, five videos about nipball, and then
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: I'd go back to the for you feed and just
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: over kind of a three day period, say, take something
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: like kittens. I think on the first day it was
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: sort of twelve percent kittens, and on the next day
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: it was three percent kittens, and on the last day
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: there were no kiddens, you know, at all, whereas disturbing
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: content rose, so that by day three, sixty five percent
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: of what was waiting for me in the full U feed,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: you know, despite trying to redirect algorithm that was really
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: really flow on heavy content.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Is there not any responsibility from techtic or the social
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: media companies?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you would think so, right. And someone
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: recently said to me after I did this experiment, and
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: you can actually hold on a video and you know,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: an option will come up to say you're not interested.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: And I thought, all, that's interesting. So I tried that
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: this morning. I put a mental health into the search
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: speed so that I knew it would start sending me
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: again traumatic kind of content. And then when that content
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: came up, I held on it and I said not interested.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And then about secting videos later, it showed me another clip,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: so again I said not interested, and then again another
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: minute later. More so it's like, you know, they're saying,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: we've got filters and we've got things that you can use,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: but actually when you try to use them, and I
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: went online and just kind of read on online communities,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: are other people finding this feature work? And everyone's just
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: like no when I say, I'm not interested, why is tiktokan?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is really refascinating because, as you also said
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: in there and the article I was reading as well,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot for young brains to process
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: on TikTok because you're not really expecting some of the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: stuff you're going from, like a lip sync video or funny,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden something quiet falon comes
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: up and then yeah, it's a lot for adults to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: even get the hit around.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's emotionally confusing. You know, you see
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: something really heavy and then suddenly, like you say, it's
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: a lip sync video, So there's no time to mentally
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: processe what you what you've seen. And this is me
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: coming you know at it as an adult, I've got
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: like a whole lifetime I've experienced to draw on. I
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: know that I can, you know, shut it down and
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: go for a walk in the park and make myself
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: feel better. But I think it's just so much to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: put on to young kids, and we know you know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: theoretically the legal ages do things, but we all know
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: so many kids that are on the platform for around
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: you know, age ten or eleven, and it's it's really frightening.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: You know, So what does it do to empathy if
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: you're not actually your kind of brain's been trained not
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: to have time to reflect and have interfere around what
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: you're seeing.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Social media companies, you know, as you say it's age
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: thirteen for TikTok, they've got pretty clear guidelines and they
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: say they remove a lot of the videos, but it
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: sounds like there's a lot of it's still coming your way.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: No, and like you don't even have to put in
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the last name to sign up to these platforms. You
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: put in one your first name, and you make up
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: an age and you're in. Like it's far too easy,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: and obviously across the ditch in Australia, you know, it's
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: really encouraging to see that you know, their government are
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: going to bring in and it remains to be seeing
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: how it actually looks, but you know that they're raising
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: the legal age to sixteen, and I feel like that's
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: what we need to do here in New Zealand because
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: it's not for you to put it on Definitely not
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: for you to put on kids to monitor what they're doing.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: And it's also not fair to put it on us
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: as parents. Kids have got a porcela in your pocket
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to the digital world, and if you beside them every
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: minute of the day, you can't reasonably be expected to
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: protect them.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Do you think that.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Age limit will actually be effective? Yeah, well, there's a
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: great researcher in New Zealand doctor smet to marsh and
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: she says, look, probably not going to be one hundred
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: percent effective, but you know, doesn't mean we still shouldn't try,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: you know, like it might be per.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess too if it does become law, and
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: not that you need to be weak in your parenting,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: but I think if you're like, oh, my mate to me,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: he's on Instagram, he's allowed to do it. But then
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: if it's a law that gives appearance something to reference
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: to go, hey, this is law.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. This made the government dead cops,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: not all us.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: As parents, right while even as adults, I think you
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: said it earlier, we can't even go Sometimes I pull
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: myself out of a whole thirty twenty five minutes just
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: scrolling looking at camp videos.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And things best than the worst of humanity, all in
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a quick scroll. Is that sometimes well Nadia makes a
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: really really fascinating your research out of christ Church. Thank
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: you so much for your time in your conversation this morning.