These TikTok influencers exploit trending topics and hashtags to get political

A young woman with envi‐ able dark lashes looks straight into the camera, holds a pink lash curler and offers her viewers a makeup tutorial.

"Hi guys, I'm going to teach you how to get long lashes," says Feroza Aziz.

But the TikTok video in‐ cludes a plot twist.

"So, the first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler, curl your lashes, obvi‐ ously. Then, you're going to put [it] down and use your phone that you're using right now to search up what's hap‐ pening in China," Aziz says. "They're getting concentra‐ tion camps, throwing inno‐ cent Muslims in there."

Aziz, 19, is referring to the reported internment of Uyghur Muslims in China. The video summarizes some of the alleged human rights violations China has commit‐ ted against Uyghurs, and Aziz tells her viewers to spread awareness about the issue.

WATCH | Some TikTok influencers sneak political content into their posts:

She disguised her activism in a makeup tutorial in order to attract viewers. And it worked: in two years, the video has amassed more than three million views on TikTok. (CBC News previously reported that the platform had temporarily removed the video for political reasons, but ultimately reinstated it.)

Aziz's reel was also circu‐ lated across other platforms, including X.

Aziz isn't the only social media influencer relying on trending hashtags and video formats across social media platforms to discuss other‐ wise serious issues such as war, LGBTQ rights and abor‐ tion access. In fact, it's be‐ come a popular strategy to entice people to watch politi‐ cal content they might not otherwise see.

Bait and switch

In another TikTok example, Emira D'Spain, the first Black transgender woman to walk in a Victoria's Secret fashion show, stares into the camera and says, "I'm in the middle of filming a 'get ready with me,' but I also want to tell you about a really important charity I'm working with for Pride."

D'Spain then explains that she is raising money for the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, an advocacy group for Black trans people, and tells view‐ ers how they can pitch in.

Brianna Wiens, an English professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies online activism, says this bait-and-switch tech‐ nique is all about "using the thing that's already popular and then using that popular‐ ity to redirect [attention]."

Valeria Shashenok, a 22year-old woman living in Ukraine, makes "day in the life" reels - a popular trend that takes viewers through a content creator's typical day to share tongue-in-cheek content about the war.

"It's the most clever way to spread information," she said over Zoom from the city of Chernihiv.

Capitalizing on trends

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Shashenok posted a TikTok reel with a caption reading, "My Typical Day in a Bomb Shelter." In it, viewers are in‐ troduced to Shashenok's par‐ ents and dog in their bunker, as well as the wreckage above ground.

It has been viewed 51.8 million times.

"I like videos … like, 'my daily routine in Mariupol now that it's occupied,'" Shashenok said, referring to the Ukrainian coastal city oc‐ cupied by Russia. "That's so interesting."

A similar vlog posted by creator @anat.international and viewed almost 400,000 times offers a day in the life in Gaza.

"Unfortunately, it's not a very pretty, relaxing influ‐ encer 'day in the life,'" the narrator says.

Politically motivated influ‐ encers have also woven their activism into viral content about the Barbie movie as well as trending dances and recipes.

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Evading restrictions

At times, influencers have to creatively package their con‐ tent so it gets around restric‐ tions set by the individual so‐ cial media platforms.

TikTok and Meta (which owns Facebook and Insta‐ gram) ban content consid‐ ered inappropriate, including sexually explicit content and graphic images. That can make it difficult to post about difficult themes such as abor‐ tion and war.

Multiple human rights groups have alsowarned that Meta has stifled pro-Pales‐ tine content since the war in Gaza broke out in October. CBC News also found iso‐ lated incidents of Israelis al‐ leging that platforms have si‐ lenced them.

"There is no truth to the suggestion that we are delib‐ erately suppressing voices," a Meta spokesperson told CBC News in an email.

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Joey Siu, a pro-democracy activist from Hong Kong cur‐ rently living in exile in the U.S., says she and her col‐ leagues stay off TikTok be‐ cause they believe the Bei‐ jing-owned company restricts posts that are critical of the Chinese government.

Both platforms told CBC News their guidelines are meant to keep users safeand that they don't arbitrarily block content. Meta and Tik‐ Tok also linked to their re‐ spective community guide‐ lines.

"Our principles are cen‐ tered on balancing expres‐ sion with harm prevention, embracing human dignity and ensuring our actions are fair," says TikTok's commu‐ nity guidelines site.

Some activists maintain some of their content has been "shadowbanned" - that is, put into a kind of invisible mode where only they, and not their audience, can see the content they post.

'A chilling effect'

Creators have to be strategic so they can get their content in front of as many viewers as possible, said Deja Foxx, a digital strategist based in Ari‐ zona who worked on U.S. Vice-President Kamala Har‐ ris's Democratic nomination campaign in 2020.

Foxx, who posts a lot of

content about reproductive justice, says she believes users who disagree with her posts have taken advantage of TikTok's algorithm to flag her content.

She said shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court over‐ turned the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision in June 2022, "I had all of these complaints from TikTok the app, flagging my videos for things like grooming, for things like the sale of illegal goods - when the content I had made was about repro‐ ductive care."

She said "it really had a chilling effect on what I was able to make and create and share at a time when people needed that information more than ever."

That hasn't stopped her and other influencers from getting creative in order to circumvent censors, real or perceived. Foxx says she will use a zero and an exclama‐ tion mark to replace the let‐ ters "o" and "i" in her TikTok reels. (Think "ab0rt!on" in‐ stead of "abortion.")

The point is to fly under the algorithm's radar.

Duets and 'hashbaiting'

Wiens has found other tac‐ tics that allow influencers to keep producing this content, including "duets."

In a duet, a content cre‐ ator splits the screen so that two videos play simultane‐ ously. In the politically min‐ ded version of this trend, one clip is uncontroversial hands making a cake, for ex‐ ample - while the other could be a rant about current even‐ ts or a human rights crisis.

Then there's what's known as "hashbaiting," in which creators post political content with unrelated but trending hashtags (e.g. #tay‐ lorswift and #GRWM) to con‐ fuse the algorithm and get their posts in front of more viewers.

Wiens says these tactics seem to be working in bring‐ ing political issues to the fore on social media.

According to Reach3, a market research consultancy, 77 per cent of TikTok users say the platform helps them stay up-to-date on politics and social justice. The same report found more than onequarter of TikTok users atten‐ ded a Black Lives Matter rally in person, compared to only 13 per cent of non-users.

Online activism is "one part of the kind of protest rhetoric that we see in the protest action - social media is a key way for learning more," said Wiens, who ad‐ mitted she enjoys a lot of this sneaky content herself.

She said her favourite trend across social media is the "girlhood aesthetic."

"They're drawing people into their TikToks by saying, 'Let's talk about the bare face trend,' and then say, 'Now that I've got your attention, we riot at midnight.'"