TikTok's Data Tracking Failures

And why politicians should embrace the platform

Allegedly, I am a social media expert. I currently work as a social media strategist (DM me if you are running for Congress anytime soon) and spent my undergrad working for Notre Dame’s athletic communications wing, Fighting Irish Media.

While this means that I get paid to scroll through Twitter and compose snappy captions for Instagram posts, it also means that I am required to be knowledgeable about emerging and developing social media platforms.

TikTok could hardly be classified as an emerging platform at this point. It was the most downloaded app in the world in 2021 and, last fall, likely surpassed YouTube as the platform with the highest average watch time per user.

What is very much still developing is how brands, especially more risk-averse brands like political groups, will make use of TikTok and its millions of potential viewers to promote their messages or products. This hesitancy is no surprise. While more established politicians like Hillary Clinton and John McCain were reluctant to expose themselves to the whims of the masses online, political scientists have long credited the 2008 Barack Obama campaign’s embrace of social media, especially Facebook, with propelling him past Clinton in the primary and then McCain in the ensuing general election. The junior senator from Illinois took a risk on the benefits of digital outreach and won both races, weaponizing social media to create an audience largely from scratch while his opponents relied on legacy media and their reputations to carry them.

Aw heck yeah the stock image people have Obama photos!

Today, the 44th president is still the most followed Twitter user in the world, with 131 million followers.

Obama does not, however, have a TikTok account of his own. Neither do President Joe Biden, former president Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, or Nancy Pelosi. Most of them have been on Twitter for over a decade at this point, but have been slow to pivot to what is, by far, the most popular digital platform for young people.

Seeing as knowing my way around the various social media channels is my literal job, and cognizant of the fact that I wanted to start proposing to clients that they add TikTok to their usual Facebook/Instagram/Twitter repertoire, I decided to do some research and try and figure out why legacy politicians and brands have been slow to launch TikTok accounts.

I was also curious about the platform’s data retention for a personal reason — my algorithm does not know me at all. A sample of the types of content TikTok routinely shows me includes: