Free babysitting exists - why is it okay when it happens on Tiktok?

Free babysitter available! One who can sing and dance and entertain the kids for hours. Which soon also starts making a whole bunch of bad suggestions: Here, check out some super racist, misogynistic, violence-glorifying clips I've found for you.

Not many parents would feel comfortable letting such a type look after the children for several hours every day, not when you put it that way.

(Especially not if the person in question could also reasonably be suspected of gathering information for the Chinese Communist dictatorship.)

So why is it okay when this happens on Tiktok?

The alarms are sounding close, a selection just from the last few days:

Students who survived the school attack in Fagersta now receive videos mocking them and praising the killer in the Tiktok feed (P1 Morgon 22/9).

Svenska Dagbladet's fictitious 13-year-old only needs to do a search on the school killer's name to a few days later have a Tiktok feed consisting of one-third tributes to mass murderers, one-third neutral posts about mass murderers, one-third unrelated material (20/9).

And nine out of ten extreme clips with glorification of violence are allowed to remain, even if you report them (P3 Nyheter 19/9).

Add to that what we already know: that the algorithms are made to suck in the user and create a dependency. And then the general, half-founded feeling that the given format – short, rapping clips – saps memory, impulse control and concentration (The Atlantic 9/16).

I'm convinced that in the near future people will look at our handling of Tiktok as we ourselves now look at recent history's lax view of children and nicotine: Wait, were little kids allowed to buy cigarettes completely freely in the 90s? And there were smoking windows in the schoolyards?

"You can't clean up a room that's designed to be filled with shit"

Sure, there have finally been calls for regulation of Tiktok – yes, the equivalent of a smoke screen. But the basic problem will remain. To quote Carl Heath, senior researcher and leader of digital resilience at the state research institute Rise (SvD 20/9): "You can't clean up a room that is designed to be filled with shit."

Nor can you get it clean by indulging in partial demarcation, I would add.

"Here," entices the babysitter. “Take some crack.”

"Okay then, kids, do it," the adults sigh from the kitchen. “But only one!”