NEWS
TikTok emerges as a political battleground in Navalny-stirred Russia
TikTok has crafted a number of policies over the years to distance itself from the often-messy political fray, but its users continue to have other agendas in mind.
In Russia, a tug-of-war has emerged on the social network.
On one side are young people using the app to create videos in support of free speech, rallying the public against the government and its treatment of Alexei Navalny, the anti-Putin, anti-corruption politician and activist.
On the other is a government that has quickly versed itself in the art of video messaging — tapping and allegedly paying influencers to dissuade the masses from joining them.
Navalny’s long-term battle with Putin’s government has included political run-ins, imprisonments and a poisoning (with an evacuation to Germany to heal), followed by a return to Russia, subsequent arrest and conviction for violating a previous parole.
Through all of that, Navalny has taken on the mantle of anti-authoritarian hero. With many already unhappy about how the government is handling a weak economy and COVID-19 — a situation that has shaken (but, apparently, not completely toppled) government approval ratings — Navalny’s call for mass protests has been met with a strong response.
And as those protests unfold, TikTok is shaping up to be the scrappy social media analogue of that activity — not unlike the prominent role that Twitter took on during the Arab Spring.
“Political content is not typical for Russian TikTok,’’ said food blogger Egor Khodasevich, whose @kushat_hochu account has 1.2 million followers on the app. “Before Navalny’s return, Russian TikTok was all about dancing, pranks and post-Soviet trash aesthetics. All of a sudden, political videos have started to appear across all categories — humour, beauty, sport.’’
Now, in a significant turnaround, Russian content on the app is being flooded with catchy videos of teenagers cutting their passports in half and throwing them away, pupils taking down portraits of Putin and swapping them with those of Navalny, and others creating how-to’s for would-be protestors — advising them to wear warm clothes, to equip themselves with water and power banks and, if arrested, to pretend they are foreign.
@almorozova#навальный #свободунавальному быть против власти – не значит быть против Родины♬ оригинальный звук – новый год кончился…
These are pooling around hashtags like #23января (January 23, the date of one of the biggest protests so far) and #занавального (“For Navalny”).
The wave of videos even got shout-outs from Navalny himself — fittingly, not on TikTok, but Instagram, where he praised the TikTok activists for helping get the word and the crowds out.
“Respect to the schoolchildren who, according to my lawyer, caused a frenzy on TikTok,” he noted on one post. Later he poked fun at how the TikTok protest videos were described as “fakes” planted by dastardly Americans.
Russia as a country has a small but fast-growing and vocal group of TikTok users.
Figures provided to us from SensorTower estimate that of the more than 2.66 billion times to date globally that TikTok has been downloaded (a figure that includes its Chinese version Douyin), it has been installed about 93.6 million times in Russia (figures that don’t count third-party Android stores, direct downloads or sideloads).
A report in the Moscow Times from the end of December estimates that there are around 20 million active users in the country, more than double the 8 million it had at the end of 2019. TikTok itself does not disclose current MAUs in Russia or globally, but analysts have projected that the company is on track to pass 1 billion MAUs sometime in the early part of this year.
Even with those sub-100 million numbers, videos with the Navalny hashtag have passed 1 billion views on the platform (as of the time of publishing, the number of views has passed 1.6 billion).
The Empire Strikes Back…
But Russia is nothing if not persistent when it comes to being ahead of the game in tech, and it has been harnessing the media world in a couple of ways in aid of its own ends.
State television and other state media outlets strongly encouraged people to stay away from protests, citing issues like public safety, the spread of Covid-19, and the threat of arrest (one they followed through on: authorities have carried out controversial mass arrests of hundreds of people at these gatherings).
At the same time, attention turned to social media, and in particular TikTok.
Roskomnadzor first confirmed that it would fine all major social media platforms up to 4 million rubles ($54,000) over protest-related content, citing that “these Internet platforms failed to remove a total of 170 illegal appeals in a timely manner.”
It then followed that up with an order to the management teams of TikTok, Facebook, Telegram and Vkontakte to appear at the regulators’ offices to explain why they have not yet removed offending videos, reminding them that failure to comply will mean that fines will be increased to 10% of a company’s annual revenues, dangling the threat that non-compliance could mean services get blocked.
With TikTokers claiming they were being called in by the police after their videos were taken down, TikTok more directly started to get threatened with fines by the regulator in the wake of all this.
As with previous moves to censor online platforms, investigators explained their actions as a response to societal impact. In this case, regulators described protest videos as a coordinated criminal attempt to get minors to commit illegal acts that could endanger their safety.
In addition to all that, the state appeared to take on a guerilla approach, too.
Small accounts, newly created accounts and popular bloggers slowly all started posting videos persuading people away from the protests. These videos, in Russian, warn of the dangers of protesting.
It turns out that at least some of the people posting videos were quietly getting paid. Sums ranged from 2,000 rubles, or about $25, through to 5,000 rubles, according to one TikToker who declined the offer and posted the proposal on TikTok instead.
(Those figures may not sound very high, but they can still be welcome sums for young people in a country where the average salary as of 2019 is around $718 per month.)
It hasn’t taken long for the situation to get unmasked. Several videos criticizing protests have been removed in the last week. It’s unclear whether TikTok — which declined to comment for this article — or the original creators removed them.
But in one case, a TikToker who goes by the name @golyakov_ (741,000 followers) initially posted a stream of reasons why protesting was dangerous. He then later admitted to getting paid but claimed to believe in what he was saying (perhaps one reason why the video has stayed up?).
Startok, one of the agencies that represents social media influencers, confirmed to us that it has cut ties with two of the creators who had taken payments to make videos in support of the state.
TikTok’s immediate connection and current popularity with younger adults has made it unique in the social media pantheon. However, it wasn’t the only social media platform seeing anti-Navalny activity — both in terms of messaging, and entities soliciting posts for payments.
A Navalny assistant posted this thread on Twitter of Stories from Instagram casting doubt on Navalny’s decision to return to Russia as a publicity stunt, knowing he would be arrested.
Meanwhile, Boris Kantorovich, a sales director of social media agency Avtorskiye Media who has used Twitter to post about people getting detained, noted that he also came across briefs on Telegram chat ADvizer.me, as well as in a Facebook group that required bloggers to create a video with one or two talking points. He said included “protesters provoked the police at the rally,” “we are tired of Navalny” and “we want peace and quiet.”
When Kantorovich posed as one of the TikTokers that he represents, he received a brief for a 15-second video. “After a quick negotiation I hiked the price up from 2,000 rubles to 3,500 rubles,” he said.
Further creative briefs came with the guidance that they needed to condemn protests on 31 January and 2 February, the second being the date of Navalny’s trial.
“Bloggers should say that ‘Navalny will go to jail 100%’, he is ‘funded from the West’ and ‘his recent imprisonment is legal,” Kantorovich said.
Kantorovich added that authorities didn’t reach out to his agency Avtorskiye Media to advertise with the bloggers it works with: “We clearly mark all ads but authorities don’t like it, because they are trying to create an illusion of a public opinion,” he said.
Similar information was shared by Anatoly Kapustin with the “Picture” advertising agency.
Kapustin, speaking in an interview on non-State-owned Russian TV station Rain, named the “public organization for youth affairs” as an advertiser.
“Talking points on offer were: ‘criminal charges could be brought against protesters,’ ‘you might end up in jail and then not find well-paid jobs,’ and ‘Navalny’s children are studying in America,’” he said in the interview.
In some cases, the virality tricks that TikTok is known for have been used by protestors to turn some of those pro-government campaigns around.
After a wave of people created videos based on the same clip of music that repeats in a deep voice that TikTok is not a place for politics, it’s a place for [fill in a fun and non-political activity/video here] — the audio and hashtag were hijacked by protestors seeking to encourage people to embrace free speech and not silence their voices.
TikTok declined to comment for this story, but in general the company has made it a policy not to wade into partisan politics, or to make a space for political advertising, turning its platform into a commercial opportunity to get political points across.
It declined to comment on whether it was taking down videos that might be reported as possible paid advertising by viewers, nor would it comment on whether it had responded to any government requests to remove videos. It periodically publishes transparency reports where some of that detail, and its subsequent actions, can be found, after the fact. (It judges each request individually.)
One thing that the Navalny situation has exposed is that there is a strong appetite among younger people to be more politically engaged, and for the moment, TikTok is emerging as their preferred place to do that.
Khodasevich, the food blogger, thinks TikTok can replace Twitter as a platform of choice for the opposition in Russia.
“Thanks to its clever algorithms, TikTok can show your video to a bigger audience than YouTube or Instagram, even if you don’t pay for promotion,” he said in an interview. “TikTok representatives told me political videos without direct calls for protests will not get banned.’’
It means that, with a bit of creativity — and a very heavy dose of opportunism and cynicism — both sides might still be able push forward with their political agenda. Boris Kantorovitch agrees.
“Authorities will change their strategy and become more subtle,” he said. “They acted in haste. Probably they thought of TikTok as a good breeding ground for loyalists. Now, the only way to stop people talking about politics on TikTok is by banning access to this platform.’’
Or, if you can’t beat them, join them? The last few days have seen government organizations the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations joining the platform to give the public a glimpse into how they, too, can roll with it.
@mchs.russiaВы только посмотрите, что могут наши сотрудники! Отправляйте свою реакцию в комментариях!Спасибо за предоставленное видео @@anatoly.doletsky♬ оригинальный звук – МЧС России
Some of the content is not exactly subtle — the Foreign Affairs almost immediately used its new account to post a TikTok discrediting Navaly — but more generally, these are signs that the government is all too aware of the impact the platform is having to galvanize people against it, and it’s trying various things to fight that.
So did TikTok really manage to bring a considerable number of young people to rallies? Are we witnessing a birth of a new protest movement or yet another example of one click activism?
According to a poll conducted on 23 January by TV Rain in Moscow, 44% percent of protesters took to the streets for the first time ever. Only 10% of respondents were under the age of 18, with an average age of protesters hovering around 31 years old, showing an overlap with the audience using TikTok in the country.
Other major movements (such as last year’s run of BLM activism) point to 18-34 being the biggest age demographic among protestors (albeit, worth noting strong participation among other ages, too).
With that in mind, it seems that both authorities and opposition in Russia will try to use the social media platforms most popular among that age group to recruit their new foot soldiers.
Social media might even take on a bigger role in coming months, as the wave of physical, outdoor protests have died down amid the Russian winter weather and the police response, giving people a moment to regroup.
In the meantime, Navalny supporters are planning to stand outside their homes on Sunday evening, February 14, from 8.00 – 8.15 pm, holding up their telephone flashlights, taking photos and uploading them to social media using a new hashtag: #ЛюбовьСильнееСтраха (Love is Stronger than Fear).
The Kremlin may well oppose these, too. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said that that “in the event of a violation of the law, all our law enforcement officers will bring those responsible to justice.”
Of course, as with everything on social media, it’s sometimes hard to figure out everyone’s actual agenda. As Khodasevich said, some political posts are genuine, some could be attributed to “news jacking.” But ultimately, they are sparking a lot of attention that the government is now mobilizing to counteract.
And with another critical Navalny hearing coming up on February 15th, as well as the September 2021 state Duma elections being only months away, the stakes are high for whatever political battles come next.
NEWS
OpenAI Introduces Fine-Tuning for GPT-4 and Enabling Customized AI Models
OpenAI has today announced the release of fine-tuning capabilities for its flagship GPT-4 large language model, marking a significant milestone in the AI landscape. This new functionality empowers developers to create tailored versions of GPT-4 to suit specialized use cases, enhancing the model’s utility across various industries.
Fine-tuning has long been a desired feature for developers who require more control over AI behavior, and with this update, OpenAI delivers on that demand. The ability to fine-tune GPT-4 allows businesses and developers to refine the model’s responses to better align with specific requirements, whether for customer service, content generation, technical support, or other unique applications.
Why Fine-Tuning Matters
GPT-4 is a very flexible model that can handle many different tasks. However, some businesses and developers need more specialized AI that matches their specific language, style, and needs. Fine-tuning helps with this by letting them adjust GPT-4 using custom data. For example, companies can train a fine-tuned model to keep a consistent brand tone or focus on industry-specific language.
Fine-tuning also offers improvements in areas like response accuracy and context comprehension. For use cases where nuanced understanding or specialized knowledge is crucial, this can be a game-changer. Models can be taught to better grasp intricate details, improving their effectiveness in sectors such as legal analysis, medical advice, or technical writing.
Key Features of GPT-4 Fine-Tuning
The fine-tuning process leverages OpenAI’s established tools, but now it is optimized for GPT-4’s advanced architecture. Notable features include:
- Enhanced Customization: Developers can precisely influence the model’s behavior and knowledge base.
- Consistency in Output: Fine-tuned models can be made to maintain consistent formatting, tone, or responses, essential for professional applications.
- Higher Efficiency: Compared to training models from scratch, fine-tuning GPT-4 allows organizations to deploy sophisticated AI with reduced time and computational cost.
Additionally, OpenAI has emphasized ease of use with this feature. The fine-tuning workflow is designed to be accessible even to teams with limited AI experience, reducing barriers to customization. For more advanced users, OpenAI provides granular control options to achieve highly specialized outputs.
Implications for the Future
The launch of fine-tuning capabilities for GPT-4 signals a broader shift toward more user-centric AI development. As businesses increasingly adopt AI, the demand for models that can cater to specific business needs, without compromising on performance, will continue to grow. OpenAI’s move positions GPT-4 as a flexible and adaptable tool that can be refined to deliver optimal value in any given scenario.
By offering fine-tuning, OpenAI not only enhances GPT-4’s appeal but also reinforces the model’s role as a leading AI solution across diverse sectors. From startups seeking to automate niche tasks to large enterprises looking to scale intelligent systems, GPT-4’s fine-tuning capability provides a powerful resource for driving innovation.
OpenAI announced that fine-tuning GPT-4o will cost $25 for every million tokens used during training. After the model is set up, it will cost $3.75 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. To help developers get started, OpenAI is offering 1 million free training tokens per day for GPT-4o and 2 million free tokens per day for GPT-4o mini until September 23. This makes it easier for developers to try out the fine-tuning service.
As AI continues to evolve, OpenAI’s focus on customization and adaptability with GPT-4 represents a critical step in making advanced AI accessible, scalable, and more aligned with real-world applications. This new capability is expected to accelerate the adoption of AI across industries, creating a new wave of AI-driven solutions tailored to specific challenges and opportunities.
This Week in Search News: Simple and Easy-to-Read Update
Here’s what happened in the world of Google and search engines this week:
1. Google’s June 2024 Spam Update
Google finished rolling out its June 2024 spam update over a period of seven days. This update aims to reduce spammy content in search results.
2. Changes to Google Search Interface
Google has removed the continuous scroll feature for search results. Instead, it’s back to the old system of pages.
3. New Features and Tests
- Link Cards: Google is testing link cards at the top of AI-generated overviews.
- Health Overviews: There are more AI-generated health overviews showing up in search results.
- Local Panels: Google is testing AI overviews in local information panels.
4. Search Rankings and Quality
- Improving Rankings: Google said it can improve its search ranking system but will only do so on a large scale.
- Measuring Quality: Google’s Elizabeth Tucker shared how they measure search quality.
5. Advice for Content Creators
- Brand Names in Reviews: Google advises not to avoid mentioning brand names in review content.
- Fixing 404 Pages: Google explained when it’s important to fix 404 error pages.
6. New Search Features in Google Chrome
Google Chrome for mobile devices has added several new search features to enhance user experience.
7. New Tests and Features in Google Search
- Credit Card Widget: Google is testing a new widget for credit card information in search results.
- Sliding Search Results: When making a new search query, the results might slide to the right.
8. Bing’s New Feature
Bing is now using AI to write “People Also Ask” questions in search results.
9. Local Search Ranking Factors
Menu items and popular times might be factors that influence local search rankings on Google.
10. Google Ads Updates
- Query Matching and Brand Controls: Google Ads updated its query matching and brand controls, and advertisers are happy with these changes.
- Lead Credits: Google will automate lead credits for Local Service Ads. Google says this is a good change, but some advertisers are worried.
- tROAS Insights Box: Google Ads is testing a new insights box for tROAS (Target Return on Ad Spend) in Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns.
- WordPress Tag Code: There is a new conversion code for Google Ads on WordPress sites.
These updates highlight how Google and other search engines are continuously evolving to improve user experience and provide better advertising tools.
Facebook Faces Yet Another Outage: Platform Encounters Technical Issues Again
Uppdated: It seems that today’s issues with Facebook haven’t affected as many users as the last time. A smaller group of people appears to be impacted this time around, which is a relief compared to the larger incident before. Nevertheless, it’s still frustrating for those affected, and hopefully, the issues will be resolved soon by the Facebook team.
Facebook had another problem today (March 20, 2024). According to Downdetector, a website that shows when other websites are not working, many people had trouble using Facebook.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has had issues. Just a little while ago, there was another problem that stopped people from using the site. Today, when people tried to use Facebook, it didn’t work like it should. People couldn’t see their friends’ posts, and sometimes the website wouldn’t even load.
Downdetector, which watches out for problems on websites, showed that lots of people were having trouble with Facebook. People from all over the world said they couldn’t use the site, and they were not happy about it.
When websites like Facebook have problems, it affects a lot of people. It’s not just about not being able to see posts or chat with friends. It can also impact businesses that use Facebook to reach customers.
Since Facebook owns Messenger and Instagram, the problems with Facebook also meant that people had trouble using these apps. It made the situation even more frustrating for many users, who rely on these apps to stay connected with others.
During this recent problem, one thing is obvious: the internet is always changing, and even big websites like Facebook can have problems. While people wait for Facebook to fix the issue, it shows us how easily things online can go wrong. It’s a good reminder that we should have backup plans for staying connected online, just in case something like this happens again.
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