The content related to illegal trans-border activity is one more example about the growing influence of TikTok.
ABOVE: Algerian and Tunisian TikTok influencers have been glamourising dangerous Mediterranean crossings on several TikTok channels
BY:
Eric De Grasse
Chief Technology Officer
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
6 June 2022 – Selling or renting people for illegal purposes remains an area of interest to government officials. Disruptions like Russia’s “special action” in Ukraine have contributed to the flow of product. This will become a huge issue across Europe, just one more deep, deep ramification from this war.
Meanwhile, I read “Inside the Risky World of Migrant TikTok” and learned:
migrant TikTok is an ecosystem of content by and for migrants often repurposed to advertise and promote perilous, sometimes deadly journeys across closed European borders.
The write up added:
experts pointed to migrant TikTok as a new entry point for young people into the world of irregular migration. The absence of reliable information means that social media has long played a role in helping people share advice, with Facebook groups and other private channels acting as informal hubs for knowledge: how to travel, whom to contact. But with the rise of apps like TikTok where posts are public, compounded by recommender algorithms that repeatedly suggest similar content, virality has given this information greater reach among people who aren’t actively searching for it.
The article includes an interesting observation about the smart software in use at Zuckbook and TikTok; to wit:
Social media companies like TikTok and Meta increasingly employ AI systems to moderate content at scale. But since these AI systems are context-blind, digital rights activists say they can end up missing, for example, a key word in dialect. That keyword may continue to feed similar content onto a user’s timeline. And these content creators know exactly how to game the AI systems.
The European Union is poking into this subject and regulations may emerge:
New EU legislation attempts to mandate the monitoring of online smuggling networks and even algorithm transparency, while agencies like Frontex and Europol have tried to use data scraping to inform predictive analysis models for what routes illegal migrants might use. So far, it’s resulted in a tug of war that leaves the content largely up and available.
The write up points to the word “haraga” (or “harraga”) which roughly translates to “those who burn at the borders”.
SHORT BACKGROUNDER: Harragas, sometimes spelled Haraga, derives from Algerian Arabic and literally translates to “those who burn” and refers to North African migrants who illegally immigrate to Europe or to European-controlled islands in makeshift boats. The term “to burn” alludes to the migrants practice of burning their identity papers and personal documents in order to prevent identification by authorities in Europe. The North African men who partake in illegal migration refer to themselves as Harragas (“burners”).
The Harraga are from the Maghreb, they are specifically Algerians, Moroccans, or Tunisians and are predominantly men between the ages of twenty and thirty five years old. The term Harraga is also used in reference to the act of covertly crossing over a country’s border or transgression of a law. It can also refer to smugglers and human-traffickers who directly facilitate regular and irregular migration.
And if you do a short “haraga” Google search or Facebook search you’ll see hundreds of links. Just a few:
And there are also hundreds of videos across Youtube in Arabic and French. The Google, Facebook and YouTube links pretty much repeat the content in the article I cited in my opening paragraph.
As the article notes, you can click through countless TikTok videos and Instagram accounts, scrutinize videos of boats (mostly filled with young men, drifting upon calm, glassy water). On accounts that aggregated these videos, footage of sea journeys would be cut alongside images of the same migrants walking along well-groomed European streets and posing in front of monuments like the Eiffel Tower. The content helps mainstream the very idea of migration. They can look like standard TikTok clips: young people posting videos of travel by land and sea or of arrival to their European destinations. There’s little direct context about them, apart from the posters’ TikTok usernames and the occasional direct reference to immigration in their captions.
And the videos imply – but don’t overtly state – that the passage was illegal, and therefore arranged by smugglers. Videos directly referencing smuggling services would be tagged. So what you have is a “chat” and conversations around migration, but targeted to those fleeing violence and seeking asylum. The context is implied – but done in a way so it is not picked up by the algorithms. Follow the chats and you’ll find out you pay €1,350 ($1,560) for a place in a boat alongside 20-30 others. Oh, and lots of ads pop up for sea-weather gear.
The focus on TikTok is good. TikTok is gnawing into the viewing habits of people far younger than I. Facebook and Google say they want to “check” the China-affiliated super app. But their filtering systems need a hell of a lot of tweaking to cope with the migration information findable on Google, Facebook and YouTube.
Just a few observations:
• More attention should be directed at TikTok but also the many other constantly proliferating short video platforms as well
• “Smart software” is struggling to keep up, not able to filter content the way border control professionals need. It will always be a whack-a-mole struggle.
• The EU regulatory move warrants attention but like the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, EU regulatory moves always seem to morph into the quagmire of “unintended consequences”.
• Where there is traffic, there will be ads. Always Rule #1 in the web infrastructure.
BOTTOM LINE: The content related to illegal trans-border activity is one more example about the growing influence of TikTok. The flip side is that Zuckbook and Google may find themselves simply “following” since content moderation is becoming impossible.
ENDNOTE: last year our boss, Greg Bufithis, wrote a monograph on TikTok entitled “TikTok and the Algorithmic Revolution” for one of our media clients. Our client allowed some of the content to be posted on his blog site and it provides a good overview of the company. You can access it by clicking here.
