"We're not all construction workers": Algorithmic Compression of Latinidad on TikTok

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Latinx TikTok users experience algorithmic content curation, revealing how platform affordances both support positive identity expression and contribute to identity compression through algorithmic simplification.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of algorithmic identity compression, highlighting how sociotechnical systems flatten intersectional identities of Latinx users, impacting representation and cultural data.

Findings

Latinx users actively create positive identity content on TikTok.

Negative content disrupts Latinx identity feeds due to platform affordances.

Algorithmic identity compression leads to loss of cultural nuance.

Abstract

The Latinx diaspora in the United States is a rapidly growing and complex demographic who face intersectional harms and marginalizations in sociotechnical systems and are currently underserved in CSCW research. While the field understands that algorithms and digital content are experienced differently by marginalized populations, more investigation is needed about how Latinx people experience social media and, in particular, visual media. In this paper, we focus on how Latinx people experience the algorithmic system of the video-sharing platform TikTok. Through a bilingual interview and visual elicitation study of 19 Latinx TikTok users and 59 survey participants, we explore how Latinx individuals experience TikTok and its Latinx content. We find Latinx TikTok users actively use platform affordances to create positive and affirming identity content feeds, but these feeds are interrupted by negative content (i.e. violence, stereotypes, linguistic assumptions) due to platform affordances that have unique consequences for Latinx diaspora users. We discuss these implications on Latinx identity and representation, introduce the concept of \textit{algorithmic identity compression}, where sociotechncial systems simplify, flatten, and conflate intersection identities, resulting in compression via the loss of critical cultural data deemed unnecessary by these systems and designers of them. This study explores how Latinx individuals are particularly vulnerable to this in sociotechnical systems, such as, but not limited to, TikTok.