You could see this kind of thing happening with macro images on imgur and reddit 6 years ago. So much of this "organic" social media is just submarine PR. It's awful.
"... the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news".
I agree, this interpretation seems more likely than submarine patent [0]: "Analogous to a submarine, therefore, submarine patents could stay "under water" for long periods until they "emerged" and surprised the relevant market. Persons or companies making use of submarine patents are sometimes referred to as patent pirates"
First, it reinforces that the cartels are a huge part of life tor real people, not some theoretical issue “somewhere else”. It personifies the issue.
Second, I don’t buy for a moment the idea that it will turn our kids into sicarios. If anything, knowing that world actually exists just under the surface and so nearby should give pause to people who are flirting with the edges of it.
TikTok seems like content moderation time bomb in general, and it makes me wonder if they’re struggling to attract brands when they can’t ensure their ads won’t end up appearing after a heroin production video that’s already racked up a half million views.
As a regular TikTok user, I’ve been quite impressed with TikTok’s content moderation abilities. What’s more interesting, however, is that TikTok, unlike other mainstream social media channels, does not pretend it takes a hands off approach to moderation. It’s an accepted fact that it’s TikTok’s platform and they’ll moderate what they want and when they want to.
As for large brands advertising on these videos, anecdotal evidence says it hasn’t slowed anything down. Additionally, brands already have a tolerance being alongside problematic content to some, though not unlimited, degree (see YouTube).
Wait, I never really caught on to what the first "TikTok panic" was about. There was noise about someone was going to have to sell the "TikTok" part of the company? because $reasons? then that couldn't happen because $orange_man_bad? or just because it was his idea?
I bet "They're showing heinous shit to the childrens" is a big reason for urgency, too. Like people have kids and immediately forget that they were kids, saw all that themselves, and came out ok.