Thirteen minutes was enough TikTok profile of a seventeen-year-old boy, which she made journalist The Sydney Morning Herald's Amber Schultz began receiving content that presented men and women as opposing sides.
Journalist Amber Schultz created a fake profile of 17-year-old Jayden Michael to examine how quickly social network algorithms can lead a young user into a vortex of content that gradually leads him to the so-called manosphere.
For the experiment, a factory reset phone and an American eSIM were used, the use of which did not require identification. Jaden Michael thus became a new user of social networks, only that behind him was not a seventeen-year-old, but a journalist who recorded what the algorithm offered him.
The profile was passive for the first half hour. Schultz scrolled without specifically directing the content. And then the messages about the war of the sexes started to appear.
From "gender war" to violent content
After 13 minutes, the profile was already exposed to content that introduced it to the story of the conflict between men and women. After 18 minutes, content appeared with the message that feminism is destroying the world. Five minutes later, Schultz recorded what she described as violent and misogynistic content.
In the next hour, the picture became more and more definite. In the recommended contents, women are represented through the traditional role of being beautiful, putting on lipstick, smiling and accepting a man as their boss.
This, according to Schultz, is the path by which the manosphere can function. From content about the differences between men and women, through gender conflicts and criticism of feminism, to messages that assign women a subordinate position and men the right to control them.
In its most severe forms, such content can be part of a wider chain that leads to the normalization of violence and sexual harassment.
@sydneymorningherald Thirteen minutes of scrolling on social media is all it took for my fake profile of 17-year-old Jaden Michael to be exposed to the manosphere content pipeline. Using a factory-reset phone set up with a US-based e-SIM (which doesn't require ID), Amber Schultz set up an account for 17-year-old Jaden Michael. For the first 30 minutes, I was a passive user. After that, I started linking videos and following users who promoted manosphere views. #socialmedia #manosphere ♬ original sound – Sydney Morning Herald
The experiment also has one important methodological limitation. After the first 30 minutes of passive use, Schultz began liking videos and following accounts related to the content she was looking for. From that moment on, the algorithm no longer had to deal with a completely passive user. He received specific signals, what he likes, what he follows and what content he stays on.
What exactly is the manosphere?
Manosphere is the name for internet communities, forums, accounts and content dealing with male identity, male-female relations, feminism and gender roles. There are also extreme communities that promote misogyny, the subjugation of women and the justification of violence.
In the most extreme forms, women are presented as a group to be controlled by men, and violence and sexual harassment can be presented as acceptable ways of establishing power relations. This is why the manosphere is mentioned more and more often in discussions about the safety of children on the Internet because of the content that young people are looking for, and because of what the algorithms offer them.
How TikTok decides what we watch next
Unlike classical media, in which the editor decides which text or article will reach the audience, social networks largely use recommendation systems that evaluate what could keep an individual user on the platform.
Every move can become a signal. The video the user watched to the end, the one he stayed on for a few seconds longer, the content he liked, the account he followed or the topic he opened more than once. Based on such behavior, the system tries to predict what the user would like to see next. With TikTok, this is especially important because the homepage "For You" is precisely based on personalized recommendations.
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