A new report accuses communist Chinese government-tied app TikTok of boosting a controversial Democrat candidate in the upcoming New York City mayoral election.
Spring AI CTO Yehonatan Dodeles posted research on the X platform Oct. 21 providing evidence that the algorithm on TikTok boosted New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani over Democrat rival Andrew Cuomo. Dodeles also provided what he called a leaked onboarding document, describing how TikTok can manipulate the algorithm, ominously declaring, “The goal of the recommendation system is to push the most valuable videos to users.” [Emphasis added.]
Dodeles explained that his company developed an artificial intelligence model to do “deep reverse-engineering of TikTok’s recommendation system and representative data.” The results indicate 17 percent of videos have a non-organic boost, which is the standard across most topics, but 55 percent of political videos received a non-organic boost, according to Dodeles.
He added, “Inside that set, two names dominated: **Mamdani** and **Cuomo.**” And when analyzed for anti-Cuomo and pro-Mamdani content, non-organic boosts were apparently above the baseline — three percent above baseline for pro-Mamdani and 54 percent above baseline for anti-Cuomo. For anti-Mamdani content, boosts were 22 percent below baseline, while pro-Cuomo content was likewise 22 percent below baseline.
While emphasizing the findings are “preliminary,” Dodeles still promoted them as illustrating how, to use the language of the leaked document, “value is created” on TikTok. The platform is partially owned by a communist Chinese government-tied company, ByteDance, as part of a divestiture deal with President Donald Trump.
Like TikTok, the boosted NYC candidate has socialist leanings. Mamdani, whose scandals include praising an unindicted “co-conspirator and terrorist apologist” and apparently not telling “the whole truth” about post-9/11 “Islamophobia,” has shocked Americans with extreme pro-communist and anti-Israel sentiment.
This election accusation against TikTok is not an isolated incident. TikTok has a censorship track record, as MRC’s unique CensorTrack database shows. Users on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict have accused TikTok of unfair censorship. For example, in October 2023, actor Nate Buzolic accused TikTok of targeting posts about Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7. TikTok censored user Michael Sanchez for sharing a conspiracy theory about Israeli involvement in Charlie Kirk’s assassination. In November 2023, TikTok itself bragged about removing over 1 million videos relative to the conflict.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
