news

Here's what's been happening.

Jul 16, 2024 Our recent study on Search Suggestions was govered on Wired.com on search and Netzpolitik.org (in German).
Jul 9, 2024 We were interviewed by SPIEGEL Online on search suggestions, together with Miazia Schüler from AI Forensics. The article is in German.
Jul 4, 2024 Martin participated in expert discussion on influencer marketing organized by the office of Tabeao Rössner (Greens, Chairwoman of the Committee on Digital Affairs of the German Bundestag).
Jun 20, 2024 Kathy participated in an IPIE panel on AI Audits.
Jun 10, 2024 Kathy presetned our work at the German Trade Union Confederations (DGB).
Jun 8, 2024 Our research has been covered in DER SPIEGEL (German) and the results of our survey were included in a seperate article.
May 29, 2024 Kathy was at Re:publica and participated in a panel on Systemic Risks Online: What we know, what we don’t, and how to fix them?.
May 23, 2024 The tiktok-audit team will be at CPDP 2024 with Martin on a panel on Auditing Algorithmic Risks and Kathy talking about data access.
May 21, 2024 Kathy published a comment at Deutschlandfunk Kultur (in German) arguing that politicians should be on TikTok.
May 6, 2024 Kathy Meßmer gave an interview to German television news show Tagesschau, parts of it aired Friday night.
Apr 29, 2024 We met with the TikTok team responsible for the Research API for a discussion and they invited our input for future improvements on the API, possible endpoints and data fields.
Mar 1, 2024 Next Wednesday, March 6th, Martin Degeling will take part in a panel discussion at the European Parliament Protecting the 2024 Elections: From Alarm to Action How the DSA can protect democracy by meaningfully addressing the virality of disinformation and hate speech.
Feb 17, 2024 Martin gave an online talk about auditing TikTok at a meeting of the BAG Digitales und Medien of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.
Sep 29, 2023 Our blog posts on political ads on TikTok got mentioned among others by Understanding TikTok and netzpolitik.org (German)
Aug 18, 2023 We start our blog with a quick overview of TikToks new Ad Library.
Aug 16, 2023 Kathy Meßmer explained in the Deutschlandfunk how TikTok draws users into the digital war zone (German)
Jul 27, 2023 Kathy Meßmer discussed how platforms should assess systemic risks at the Digital Services Act Stakeholder Event in Brussel. The recording can be found here
Jul 11, 2023 We published a response to the European Commission’s Consultation on Digital Services Act transparency database
Jul 7, 2023 We have published an extend list of the variables TikTok uses.
Jun 21, 2023 Anna Semenova published a case study analyzing YouTube’s Interconnected Components
Jun 6, 2023 Kathy Meßmer spoke at the RightsCon in Costa Rica on Developing the San José Principles on content recommendation
Jun 2, 2023 We have also submitted a comment on the public consultation process of the European Comission on the draft delegated act on audits. A summary is available on our main website.
May 26, 2023 Kathy Meßmer discussed at the CPDP whether the Digital Services Act will promote safer and healthier algorithmic rankings?
May 23, 2023 Based on our experience with TikTok we’ve submitted feedback to the European Commissions Call for Evidence for the Delegated Regulation on data access provided for in the Digital Services Act.
Apr 19, 2023 Our analysis of the search function in the TikTok app has revealed the names of block lists TikTok is using. Our results are summarized in a Mastodon thread.
Apr 13, 2023 To show the differences between the metadata available on the TikTok website and within the app, we’ve published schemas of each video from the different sources.
Mar 29, 2023 Kathy Meßmer argues on the Deutschlandfunk that the filter bubble theory is outdated (German)
Mar 22, 2023 We published a collaborative mapping of research on systemic risk
Mar 20, 2023 Our team was interviewed for the Algorithm Governance Roundup
Mar 16, 2023 Since the summer of 2022, we have been monitoring the TikTok websites for the videos shown there. A graph-based representation of the most common hashtags is now available, as are the code and data we used to generate it.
Feb 7, 2023 We have published a paper on auditing recommender systems that proposes a risk-scenario-based process which will guide our analysis of TikTok.
Dec 29, 2022 Martin Degeling was interviewed by Deutschlandfunk about alternative social networks (German)
Dec 15, 2022 Added the TikTok Algo 101 document and translations. The document was frist discussed in the New York Times in December 2021, but was online in Chinese since January 2021. The document was translated using Yandex and slightly edited by @mrtn3000.
Nov 30, 2022 Martin Degeling was a guest on the digital human rights podcast (German)
Sep 14, 2022 Martin Degeling was interviewed by Understanding TikTok about his work and the project.