Academic studies of social media are often very hampered by tooling and data access and studying a moving target.
It's hard to even know if the methodology of the paper you cited (analyzing comment trajectories) is a good one, given YT is constantly tweaking their algorithms, including in response to public outcry, and this phenomenon does not show up in other analysis: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...
I assume the methodological questions are even trickier for TikTok which has many more creators than YT.
I would love to see someone actually study TikTok though, since people love to ascribe blame to platforms for radicalizing people rather than accepting that some users just have views we find unacceptable regardless of the platform.
It's hard to even know if the methodology of the paper you cited (analyzing comment trajectories) is a good one, given YT is constantly tweaking their algorithms, including in response to public outcry, and this phenomenon does not show up in other analysis: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...
I assume the methodological questions are even trickier for TikTok which has many more creators than YT.
I would love to see someone actually study TikTok though, since people love to ascribe blame to platforms for radicalizing people rather than accepting that some users just have views we find unacceptable regardless of the platform.