TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer sat down on Thursday with Peter Csathy, a seasoned digital investor and a former mentor at the Disney Accelerator, for an hour-long virtual conversation where he discussed the company’s role in the Tulsa Trump Rally.
Mayer chose to remain neutral on the grassroots movement on TikTok, which was used to deceive Trump campaign officials. The heavily talked about rally in Tulsa last Saturday only attracted 6,200 attendees despite a larger turn out being expected. The TikTok movement that tricked the campaign into thinking that a much bigger crowd would be present was traced back to a “51-year-old grandmother.”
“I don’t know the degree to which that actually worked. We’re a platform. We’re a facilitator between our creators and our audiences. Nothing to do with TikTok except it started on TikTok, by news accounts. And it went over to other platforms too.” 58-year-old Mayer referred to it as “an interesting usage of our platform. It’s something we don’t encourage or discourage,” he said.” It just is. We’re very careful with our content moderation policies. We don’t want harmful or hateful or violent stuff or sexualized content on our service. But other than that, it’s there for our creators to create. And if our audience loves something, it works.” While he didn’t exactly excuse the woman’s action, he did later say that “There’s no inherent reason why the TikTok experience couldn’t be just as delightful for you as it is for your children.”
Mayer was recruited to join TikTok as ByteDance seeks to fortify its reputation in the U.S. since most of its operations are in China. The recruitment also comes amid suspicions of spying on U.S. officials. The spying suspicions prompted the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to ban the use of TikTok by employees this year.
The George Floyd murder had just taken place during his first week on the job. Mayer said he wanted to be sure TikTok promoted social justice in the early stages of the demand for justice.
“The reason my feed was overtaken by George Floyd videos the first week I took over is, that’s what people were watching. That’s what was recommended to me. It was important to people. So, in those moments, joy and creativity maybe aren’t the most important things in the world. The most important thing in the world is social justice, and our product reflects that.”
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