Michael Mezzatesta is a climate educator based in Los Angeles, California. Over the past two years, he has used TikTok and Instagram as a means to spread the word about climate marches and real ways people can get involved and fight to address climate change.
In September 2023, he helped bring attention to the climate march in New York.
“We expected there to be 5,000 to 10,000 people there. I am sure more than 50,000 people attended,” Mezzatesta told Al Jazeera.
He says it’s mainly thanks to TikTok.
“Even during the march, people I didn’t know came up to me and said they saw your video and that’s why I’m here,” he added.
But Mezzatesta’s ability to organize using social media platforms like TikTok is increasingly under threat.
A slew of recent decisions by Washington and social media giants like X, Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram), and ByteDance (owner of TikTok) have made organizing around major social and political issues ahead of the resulting election cycle much more difficult. USA.
TikTok is fighting a ban signed into law by President Joe Biden, citing data privacy concerns. For the US audience, ByteDance would have to completely spin off TikTok. Otherwise you will be banned from the platform. It could take at least a year for the ban to finally take effect, pending legal challenges. The social media platform has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government amid claims that the law violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects freedom of expression.
But the dispute between the federal government and ByteDance has left activists like Mezzatesta in a difficult situation as they navigate the future of organizing demonstrations and demonstrations for the public.
This sentiment is also echoed by organizations such as the young activist group Gen-Z for Change.
“Instead of enforcing universal data privacy legislation to protect Americans from the real data privacy crisis we have in this country, Congress decided to ban an app that has been one of the most powerful platforms for youth organizing.” Founder Aidan said: Cohn Murphy told Al Jazeera.
This is in addition to some state-level challenges. Earlier this year, a federal judge struck down a Montana bill banning the app. The state appealed the decision and the case continues.
this month, two native american tribes They joined the fight to stop the state from banning the app, arguing the move goes beyond tribal sovereignty and that the state should work to close the digital divide on Native American lands.
The federal ban won’t go into effect until after the November election unless the courts ultimately stop it. But the implications can be immediate.
“TikTok will be incentivized to change some of its moderation practices to appease some of the elected leaders who issued the ban,” Kate Ruane, director of the Free Speech Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told Al Jazeera. “You can,” he said.
manipulation charge
TikTok is a powerful tool for organizing, but the social media app itself is having a large impact and has been accused of manipulating public discourse on numerous social and political issues in recent years.
TikTok has been criticized in India for suppressing high-profile creators who promote Hindu-Muslim unity (TikTok has been banned in India since 2020), some views on women’s reproductive health, and content about China’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims. It has even been accused of suppressing content from those it deems “ugly.”
Conversely, it was accused of promoting and pushing disinformation on users during the early days of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Recently, the app was accused of promoting pro-Palestinian content more often than pro-Israeli content.
“There is a lot of speculation about what is and is not promoted on the platform. But the truth is that many times we don’t actually know. There is a dire need for transparency,” Ruane said.
U.S. lawmakers have overwhelmingly called the decision to ban TikTok a national security issue related to how the company uses customer data. However, this has been a widespread problem for years and is not unique to TikTok. Notoriously, during the 2016 election, digital analytics firm Cambridge Analytica used personal Facebook data to create voter profiles and then sold them to campaigns.
However, social media has long played an important role in social mobilization, such as Twitter and Facebook during the Arab Spring uprisings in early 2011. Because social media has become a key tool for communicating about the protests in Bahrain, Egypt. Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen. The movement ultimately led to the downfall of several leaders, including Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.
Over the past four years, the use of TikTok for grassroots organizing and access to information has been similar.
One study found that during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020, 94% of TikTok users believed the app had “generated meaningful action” for the social justice movement. From Reach3 Insights, a consumer insights consulting firm. This is largely driven by protest turnout. The same report found that: 26% of TikTok users I attended a BLM protest twice as many as my peers who weren’t on TikTok at the time.
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project, told Al Jazeera: “TikTok plays a particularly important role for minority communities seeking to build solidarity online and highlight issues that are important to them.”
“Many of the calls to completely ban TikTok in the U.S. are aimed at scoring political points and are rooted in anti-China sentiment,” Toomey argued, adding that the government has yet to provide evidence that many of its concerns about TikTok are justified.
TikTok did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by press time.
The U.S. government’s move against TikTok isn’t the only recent obstacle erected in the social media landscape that makes organizing much more difficult for activists.
Not only has Meta’s Instagram failed to combat misinformation on its platform, it has a history of suppressing content on certain hot-button topics.
In 2020, Instagram came under fire for blocking posts about the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2021, it was criticized for encouraging misinformation about COVID-19, and in 2022, it was criticized for restricting some content related to women’s reproductive rights. At the end of last year, international human rights organization Mehta was accused of censoring pro-Palestinian voices.
In February, Instagram announced changes to its platform that would limit access to political content.
“This change will not affect posts from accounts people choose to follow. This affects what the system recommends. We’ve been working for years to show people less political content based on what they say they want and their political posts. And now people will be able to control whether these types of posts are featured.” A Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Al Jazeera. It contains little political content and the company does not specify what it defines as “political content.”
Instagram broadly refers to political content as posts that may refer to “laws, elections, or social topics” that affect specific groups and/or society at large.
“That in itself is a concern to me because it could contain all kinds of content related to the LGBTQ community, for example,” Ruane said. Is the content related to reproductive rights or politics? “There are a lot of really important issues related to the election that aren’t necessarily about any particular candidate.”
Shortly after the changes took effect Hundreds of activists and journalists The social media giant has written an open letter urging it to reverse the move. Now, users are furious over Instagram’s move and are posting videos on the social media platform. go around change.
Instagram limits political content. Try changing your settings 👇🏾 Here’s how: pic.twitter.com/J3ZBXoSgTR
— Polyamory Black Girl (@polyamblackgirl) March 22, 2024
Meta said it would also introduce similar features to limit political content. FacebookHowever, no details were given or when.
Changes to X have also proven problematic. Since Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, an avowed free speech absolutist, purchased the app, people who do not share Musk’s worldview or positions on certain issues have had difficulty using it.
Last year, Musk, who has increasingly aligned himself with far-right talking points, banned left-wing activists and shadow-banned journalists who criticized him, such as Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein, while reporting on Tesla’s self-driving issues. It is known that he did. characteristic. At the same time, he reinstated right-wing conspiracy theorists and white nationalists like Nick Fuentes.
“What we see with Twitter is the importance of ownership of a particular platform. It has become more difficult for many activists and journalists to engage with the platform,” Ruane said.
When Al Jazeera reached out to Twitter or Since Musk’s takeover, the platform has generally refused to respond to media inquiries and has relied on automated response messages that ignore them.
Twitter has been a bastion of political organizing. In 2011, counterculture magazine Adbusters used this platform as a way to organize the largest sit-in in modern American history. Occupy Wall Street inspired tens of thousands to join the nonviolent movement. This later sparked similar movements around the world, including climate protests and women’s reproductive rights marches, with recent sit-ins on university campuses in response to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza over the past few years.
Musk’s move to limit the free speech of those with whom he disagrees is antithetical to Twitter’s previous role as a global public square.
But what particularly concerns organizers is the limitations of TikTok and Instagram.
“There are many ways to send a message to people, but when it comes to sheer reach, I would say you can’t beat Instagram and TikTok,” said Mezzatesta, a climate educator. “They are the top two. “This is a major asset we are losing.”
