Abstract
Black content creators struggle for recognition of their contributions to the social media networks they join. Recently, TikTok faced backlash from the black community because the dances and music culture they nurture are being lifted by others without reference to the original and launching with more popularity. Other social media platforms have encountered this issue and had to strategize how to appease their communities, but what did they do and were they effective? A strike started to cripple the network with content drought while TikTok considered how to remedy the issue. TikTok launched the TikTok for Black Creatives program early this year to foster 100 finalists in the creator limelight. Months later, we take a look at the community and how it perceives TikTok in the aftermath and if the program made a difference.

Introduction
Your favorite rapper drops a new hit and everyone you know is all over it. You were going to throw a house party next week and this happens to be the perfect song to kick it off. At the party, you and your friends vibe and customize a dance to the beat and post it on TikTok to join the online community in celebrating this new song. Exhausted from the revelry, you rest although excited to see the feedback. A week later, your feed shows you other people dancing to the same song and you want to check out their style, but wait. It is EXACTLY the same dance? They’re getting a lot of props for their video but there’s no mention of mimicking the dance, prompting you to check your own post’s popularity. It turns out you’ve only had a quarter of the views the other post received and there’s no mention of where their inspiration came from. Sadly this is a common occurrence that caused many black members of the TikTok community to throw a content strike where they refuse to post on the network, expecting the site to be dryer and duller. This incident with TikTok that started earlier this year is also just the most recent in a list of other networks encountering similar responses to social inequity.

Background
This is the reason why the black community of Tiktok started a strike on creating content. While this is not an unfamiliar situation in history, social media brings to light on a much larger scale how much of an issue it is in society as a whole. Isolated events in history reveal particular inventions with significance being stolen, notably Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison and their falling out with Edison receiving the credit for their collaborations. On a more cultural level, we can take Elvis’ rip of Big Mama Thorton’s 1952 “Hound Dog” as an example. Most people know of Elvis’ fame, but very few know who Big Mama Thorton is. Of course America is the melting pot of many cultures, but these additions seldom grant recognition to the origin. Because of the history where intellectual and physical property didn’t exist for the enslaved, their accomplishments gave glory to their masters alone. There are several factors that enable this kind of behavior, ranging from current technology and ties to the past.

As most are aware, racism is not as rampant as it was soon after emancipation, but still exists in vocal pockets and in the subconscious today. Once freed from their masters, black people were able to pursue the American dream and expand their culture beyond the shackles but still under the white man’s shadow. The patent office often turned away African Americans who attempted to lay claim to their works and their voice was not heard when they were wronged (Outley et al 2021). I’m sure you can imagine the exhaustion black people have with someone else taking credit. Today with social media, black people are more empowered with speaking up, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t hindered there either. Before the strike regarding content stealing, TikTok was also accused of blocking and removing #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd posts (Shead 2020) and later apologized although blaming a technical issue.

As technology progressed, convenience and accessibility allowed connections that were previously unfathomable. Where face-to-face interactions were the only way of social exchange, we have come to live in a world where a large part of our day is spent looking at our technology to connect us to our communities and to the world at large. With this easy access and our current culture in sharing everything we experience, we face an increased risk for our ideas and likeness to be emulated. If you noticed someone in the neighborhood wearing the same dress that you have tucked away, you can have a good idea if it was copied based on several factors. You could remember when you last wore the dress, who you recently interacted with while wearing it, and how this person could be connected to you. You could actually investigate what kind of social web could have allowed such a travesty to happen, but submissions to online social media networks leave you with few clues because the information is meant to be very public. While we had our closely-knit local networks panned out for leaks, anything shared online is like a fart in the wind … you really don’t know where it will go, even if you aim it. In the past and today creative works must be witnessed for them to be lifted, and today’s technology allows this to happen at a much broader spectrum.

But is racism the reason why this happens? How is it that content from white creators generally have much more success than black creators? On a large scale, we can look to “like me bias” to explain how, essentially, birds of a feather flock together. This causes people to disproportionately favor individuals similar to themselves, ranging from ethnicity, gender, nationality, career history, educational background, and more (Test 2018). There will always be incidents of gross racism, but the world now makes a conscious effort to avoid it. We are approaching, albeit slowly, a world where skin color doesn’t cause alarm or produce an alternate way of thinking. We will later look at how social media networks tackle the issue.

We’ve looked at examples of creators missing out on compensation in the past, but does that translate online? Initially, social media sites focused on providing a free service with monetization through advertising, but a boring network dies very quickly. Many services have come and gone and some have endured, but it is a very competitive market. In order to maintain a robust community, people need a reason to come back, and a social media network is based on a lively community. It can be cultivated through promotions, but ultimate there are people who thrive in creating content that causes people to flock to the site. I used to follow a streamer who always used YouTube, but there were issues with the network’s restrictions that caused them to switch to Twitch and all of their followers were not far behind. Today’s content creators have become more and more recognized as the lifeblood of the community, and the platforms set up monetization to keep them around with the potential to dedicate more time toward creating content. Of course, you can’t qualify for the payout until you have a dedicated following. Now there is no wonder that the compensation potential in content creation with minorities is a serious issue.
The structure of social media platforms works against this kind of theft because of the goals the companies that create them strive for. Advertisement is the usual method of monetization and motive behind encouraging massive connections and exposure for the members. With more publicity, the network is more ripe for advertisements as there is a wider audience and a more diverse test bed for demographics and interest polling. This provides a strong selling point to advertisers. The larger the network, the more valuable it is. The opportunities to find friends of friends in many modern apps is an example of encouraging extended networks, and it has become a culture where someone may tout thousands of “friends” they don’t really know. If they become popular enough, they may then start to call them followers or viewers as they start to embrace the icon they are starting to become.

Because of this culture, social media networks have swayed toward a common remedy when it comes to racial inequity. These networks have been able to appease complaints by programs to compensate or alleviate the outcomes. TikTok started a program in February to promote black content creators (Amaradio 2021), but does that help prevent this in the future? What does TikTok view as the source of the problem? Because this has been a longstanding issue since before the Internet and social media, they approach these content creators with opportunities to highlight their works. It certainly puts forth good will and productivity for content creators and the network, but is there a way to prevent the event from happening? You could think there should be something similar to a patent office for online content, but that introduces far more problems by making such an establishment that will likely have a similar track record to the original. Still, the networks need to take steps to foster an open forum with metrics and measures to bring attention to those who deserve it.
I can fully understand why an outreach program would be optimal. First and foremost, these communities are going to be vocal as they are empowered in their pocket groups. They have to be very cautious to not alienate anyone or risk shrinking their client base. Instead of looking at negative consequences to discourage copying content without referencing the source, they wanted to choose an uplifting community service. TikTok’s ongoing #SupportBlack campaign is highlighting black business owners on a billboard (Browley 2021). This directs the focus away from the app and toward awareness in society as a whole. This is a great gesture, and users have reported more diverse content on their feed wall. Along with the community outreach and awareness, algorithm changes would be the greatest accomplishments to accompany the program.

Results
But is it enough? Out of a pool of 17 friends, family members, and acquantainces of mine, the majority believe TikTok is approaching the problem with the right mindset, but falls short of expectations. Each person had a minority background and were aware of the TikTok backlash and response from use of the app themselves or by reading the news. Ten of the 17 surveyed identified as Black or African American. I believe a very interesting observation could be made if I surveyed White Americans and their ideas on the situation. I opened the forum for explanations for their answers to get a better idea of the community’s perspective.

The findings of this poll are more interesting in the reasons than the numbers. About 70.6% were happy with the direction TikTok was going to appease the black community while 82.4% believed TikTok could do better. Half of the surveyed admitted they had not followed the story well enough to be confident in their answers, but stuck with their answers all the same. A colleague of mine expressed that because the issue of racial inequity anywhere is so pervasive that a single network “is not capable of turning the world on its head.” Two respondents who said TikTok could not do any better echoed this sentiment while those who said more could be done believed in a couple different schools of thought. One idea was to have an enforcement committee to field reports of mimicked content, although some admitted such a system has many flaws, such as legitmate reporting and evidence. Another believed that since TikTok already tracks usage activity, the feed should display closely relatred material the poster had recently viewed. If such an algorithm could be possible, it would be a good step in keeping relevant information at the forefront while also allowing more exposure to possible original content. If this change would be significant enough to help boost black content creators to the level they deserve, I would support it as one of the better ideas I have heard. Unfortunately, TikTok will not be open with their algorithm details due to the highly competitive market and potential controversy. Since the program started, the community has noticed more diversity in their feeds despite any public plans to alter the algorithms.
While we’re at the frontier of social interactions online, the struggle to keep relevant will always be a struggle, even with simple tools and assessments. For instance, you could view post dates to determine which one came first. This is a simple metric if the platform displays it, but they will often not because the focus of your feed is relevant and popular posts. Timeline takes a back seat and detracts from “hot” status if the viewer finds out the material is days old, even if they had not viewed it before. Because numbers and figures speak to content relevance, only the individual companies will be able to meter out the most effective means to social equity, if they deem it important enough. TikTok’s efforts, like other networks before it, can make the first good gesture but followup and integration are key.

References

Ma, Y., & Hu, Y. (2021). Business Model Innovation and Experimentation in Transforming Economies: ByteDance and TikTok. Management and Organization Review, 17(2), 382-388. doi:10.1017/mor.2020.69
Weissman, C. G. (2019). How TikTok is testing in-app e-commerce. Gigiday. (2021, Nov 10). https://digiday.com/retail/tiktok-testing-app-e-commerce/
Kopf, S. (2020). “Rewarding Good Creators”: Corporate Social Media Discourse on Monetization Schemes for Content Creators. Social Media Society, 6(4), Social media society, 2020-11, Vol.6 (4).
YouTube Content Creators React To Monetization Requirement Changes. (2018, Jan 17). International Business Times [U.S. ed.]. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A523446793/AONE?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=7398ce09
Triller Launches 1st Annual Black Creator Conference To Promote Black Content Creators & Talent Across All Forms of Media, September 23 & 24 in Atlanta. (2021, Aug 17). PR Newswire, pp. PR newswire.
Florini, S. (2019). Beyond Hashtags. New York: New York University Press.
Nana Efua Mumford. (2021). Many Black TikTok creators are on strike from the platform. Here are voices from the boycott. The Washington Post (Online), The Washington Post (Online), 2021-07-15.
Tired Of Not Getting Credit For New Trends, Black TikTok Creators Go On Strike. (2021, June 27). NPR.org, Weekend Edition Sunday. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010676975/tired-of-not-getting-credit-for-new-trends-black-tiktok-creators-go-on-strike
Amaradio, A. (2021, March 22). TikTok Looking to Boost Black Content Creators: TECH: Users say program will help grow their brands. Los Angeles Business Journal, 43(12), 74. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A657923299/ITOF?u=wash_main HYPERLINK
Corliss Outley, Shamaya Bowen & Harrison Pinckney (2021) Laughing While Black: Resistance, Coping and the Use of Humor as a Pandemic Pastime among Blacks, Leisure Sciences, 43:1-2, 305-314, DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2020.1774449