The curse of the algorithm
The influence of TikTok has reduced political debate to attention grabbing stunts and perpetual outrage
In August 2018, Australian politics quietly entered a new age. Almost nobody noticed.
The trigger was the creation of an exceptionally addictive digital platform by the Chinese technology company ByteDance.
ByteDance’s new supercharged TikTok algorithm used AI to process mountains of information containing clues to an individual’s appetite for, say, performances by dancing cockatoos compared to acrobatic cats.
If that makes TikTok sound trivial, it is because, at one level, it is. It prefers attention-grabbing stunts and smart-aleck comments to lectures on quantum physics or reasoned discussions about tax policy.
The algorithm craves attention above everything, which explains why the Minister for Disability was caught on camera in his office last week behaving like a jackass, waving his arms around theatrically and gyrating in his suit.
Mark Butler, 55, wasn’t drunk or amusing a restless infant. He was trying to grab your attention to tell you the great news about Labor’s tax cut, the one so small you’d otherwise miss.
