Like the wildfire conditions in Los Angeles County, my “For You” TikTok page bounced back overnight.
I woke up last week to a phone screen filled with raging flames and video after video of destroyed homes, businesses and other structures. Influencers broke from their regular content cadence to film themselves packing a suitcase for evacuation; nameless accounts shared footage from streets I didn’t recognize, showing the devastation; newly created profiles asked for help finding their lost pets. Navigating TikTok is like trying to keep track of 1,000 live feeds at once, each urgent and terrifying in their own way.
What it all means is another question entirely. Although there is no content that escapes disaster, clips, comments, controls and images are not actually very useful. Our feeds are filled with too much and not enough information. Although it is not yet clear how these fires started, scientists say that climate change will only continue to exacerbate ongoing fires. Current weather conditions – including the severe lack of rainfall this year in Los Angeles – have created a light box in the region.
Questions like “Where are the shelters?” “Should I evacuate?” and “Where can I get a mask and other supplies?” remain unanswered in favor of chilling first-person accounts. And who can blame the residents of the Los Angeles area? This is who you are It is assumed to do on TikTok. What they can’t do is share a link to mutual aid resources or a news story about vital, up-to-date evacuation information. They can scroll endlessly on the algorithmic “About You” page, but they can’t sort the content to show the most recent updates first. TikTok simply isn’t built to deliver life-saving breaking news alerts. Instead, it’s filled with endless videos of news crews interviewing people who have lost everything.
The fire containment machine echoes a similar phenomenon from just a few months ago, when October’s Hurricane Milton tore through Florida, killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damage. Some of the most visible and viral content from the storm came from influencers and other content creators who stayed behind to make videos of their way through the event, racking up millions of views. So far, there isn’t the same risk-taking dynamic of viral content at play with the Southern California wildfires, but the overall experience isn’t all that different: a random infotainment feed where a video of a person almost misses any earthly possession. directly followed by someone testing a new makeup product. Media critic Matt Pearce put it best: “TikTok was largely indifferent to whether I live or die.”
Instagram seemed a little more useful, but only, I suspect, if you follow people who post relevant content. In times of crisis — during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 or the ongoing bombing of Gaza — Instagram Stories has become something of a bulletin board for redistributing infographics and resources. Linking to relevant announcements and news is really only possible through Stories, but at least you can. Instagram search, on the other hand, is a chaotic mix of user-generated infographics, fireball photos that have been photographed and re-uploaded multiple times, and unflattering selfies from bodybuilders wishing LA well.
Needless to say, depraved conspiracy theories once again spread at X, including from billionaire owner Elon Musk and other right-wing influencers, who falsely claimed DEI initiatives were responsible for the fires. Twitter, once functioning as a source of breaking news, is now filled with crypto spam and Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile, smaller, more specialized apps like Watch Duty, a nonprofit fire monitoring platform, have filled the gaps. At Bluesky, an X competitor, users have the ability to feed feeds based on trending topics, creating a custom landing page for LA Fire content.
We have more, not less, extreme weather events like storms and heat waves, and it’s worth asking ourselves if we’re prepared to do it again. The breakdown of the platform is even more apparent in times of emergency, when users are forced to wade through astronomical amounts of garbage: video content that scares us but doesn’t help us, news websites with so many pop-up ads that feel illegal, or clutter from tech elites looking for someone to blame rather than a way to help. In my estimation, our resources will return to regularly scheduled programming within five or so business days, and the devastation from these fires will be lost in a sea of comedy skits and PR stunts. Until the next one, of course.
