Inside TikTok’s Algorithm [video](wsj.com)
wsj.com
Inside TikTok’s Algorithm [video]
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/inside-tiktoks-highly-secretive-algorithm/investigation-how-tiktok-algorithm-figures-out-your-deepest-desires/6C0C2040-FF25-4827-8528-2BD6612E3796
84 comments
I wanted to provide a quick counter point here. For my use, the TikTok algorithm feels much better than anything I have used on other social media. I feel like I have to train it like a pet. You have so few, but useful feedback mechanisms that whenever you see something you don't like if you scoll (or long press "not interested") It seems to make a really big impact on the content.
I get some funny stuff but most of it is some real deep in the weeds nerd stuff. Programming, Ops, Sci-Fi book reviews, Dungeons and Dragons tips. I've seen other people's TikTok's occasionally and it never looks like mine. Even a friend of mine who works in tech and has similar interests, his looks completely different.
With all that being said it's at the cost of it being literally spyware. I've tried YouTube shorts. If someone could 10x that algorithm, or start a startup where it's TikTok but now with 20% less spying that would be awesome!
Oh and it's hyper addictive like other social media. Although I will say for at least my feed it's much more positive than social media normally is. I don't feel terrible after using it. Just feels like I wasted my time. To that end I uninstall it when I'm done and try to use it only once a week or so. But at the end of the once a week session I usually have a list of books and new tech related concepts to look up.
My experience of TikTok is essentially like a video hacker news that also cracks me up occasionally.
I get some funny stuff but most of it is some real deep in the weeds nerd stuff. Programming, Ops, Sci-Fi book reviews, Dungeons and Dragons tips. I've seen other people's TikTok's occasionally and it never looks like mine. Even a friend of mine who works in tech and has similar interests, his looks completely different.
With all that being said it's at the cost of it being literally spyware. I've tried YouTube shorts. If someone could 10x that algorithm, or start a startup where it's TikTok but now with 20% less spying that would be awesome!
Oh and it's hyper addictive like other social media. Although I will say for at least my feed it's much more positive than social media normally is. I don't feel terrible after using it. Just feels like I wasted my time. To that end I uninstall it when I'm done and try to use it only once a week or so. But at the end of the once a week session I usually have a list of books and new tech related concepts to look up.
My experience of TikTok is essentially like a video hacker news that also cracks me up occasionally.
In the beginning I felt the same, like TikTok was able to figure out what kind of content I wanted from the signals I was giving it.
But lately I’m getting bored with it. I feel like TikTok has put me into too narrow of a type of interests. And now for every fun or interesting video that I see, there is like five or ten videos that are too much of the same as what I’ve seen a million times already.
Idk, maybe I’ve just been spending too much time on TikTok lately and it was bound to happen regardless. Maybe even it’s not TikTok maybe it’s just me. That I am tired of watching videos in general, except for the ones that I can use for something. I’m gonna take a break from TikTok.
But lately I’m getting bored with it. I feel like TikTok has put me into too narrow of a type of interests. And now for every fun or interesting video that I see, there is like five or ten videos that are too much of the same as what I’ve seen a million times already.
Idk, maybe I’ve just been spending too much time on TikTok lately and it was bound to happen regardless. Maybe even it’s not TikTok maybe it’s just me. That I am tired of watching videos in general, except for the ones that I can use for something. I’m gonna take a break from TikTok.
TikTok doesn't promote this "legend" whatsoever. Indeed, 99% of the time I've read about TikTok's algorithm, it has been naysayer conspiring about how it's an evil addiction engine.
I've seen zero articles technically praising TikTok.
Like everything, it probably isn't for everyone (as an aside -- it seems like a considerable portion of TikTok's base now are middle aged...they aren't targeting any particular demographic), but personally I get a wonderful selection of FYP videos. I only use the app every week or so, but when I do it is one of the most interesting, entertaining digressions available.
I've seen zero articles technically praising TikTok.
Like everything, it probably isn't for everyone (as an aside -- it seems like a considerable portion of TikTok's base now are middle aged...they aren't targeting any particular demographic), but personally I get a wonderful selection of FYP videos. I only use the app every week or so, but when I do it is one of the most interesting, entertaining digressions available.
Here's some praise: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algo...
I listened to a podcast recently (Reply All) where they spent quite a bit of time praising the TikTok recommendation engine.
The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm is in news pieces attempting to explain why it took off the way it did. For years we were hearing that social media startups were DOA due to FB and IG domination.
And then BAM, TT swooped in sometime in 2018 and became huge.
I'm in the same age group as you and TT is also not of interest to me. It's possible that I just don't get it for the same reason I didn't get the concept of 'subscribe to this Youtuber'. That kind of amateur video style where you're staring into a camera from your bedroom or your car is just not for me.
And then BAM, TT swooped in sometime in 2018 and became huge.
I'm in the same age group as you and TT is also not of interest to me. It's possible that I just don't get it for the same reason I didn't get the concept of 'subscribe to this Youtuber'. That kind of amateur video style where you're staring into a camera from your bedroom or your car is just not for me.
> The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm
It's talked about quite frequently on TT itself by people who are not programmers, and more well understood by those people then most people here on HN.
I'd be wary of applying anything you think you know to the community of people using TT today. You aren't familiar with it enough to make any judgement. You don't get it, and it has nothing to do with your age or anything other than your unfamiliarity with TT.
It's talked about quite frequently on TT itself by people who are not programmers, and more well understood by those people then most people here on HN.
I'd be wary of applying anything you think you know to the community of people using TT today. You aren't familiar with it enough to make any judgement. You don't get it, and it has nothing to do with your age or anything other than your unfamiliarity with TT.
Well they acquired musical.ly (buying it's very young audience).
from the wiki:
"TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on 2 August 2018."
from the wiki:
"TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on 2 August 2018."
Non Chinese in general didn't realize the ferocious competition between video apps companies like Bytedance and Kuaishou. When tiktok emerged it was already very strong.
Bytedance spent a billion dollars acquiring Musically’s user base and burnt a couple more billion on marketing for TikTok to take off.
Social media startups are still DOA in my book.
Social media startups are still DOA in my book.
I'm in my 30s, and my TikTok feed is amazing. It's mostly STEM folks spreading their expertise, with the occasional funny/viral video. If you hold down on a video you don't like, you can select "not interested" to get less videos like that.
Social media algorithms are rather simplistic now, and only geared towards taxonomy, but things will get a lot worse if people don't begin to properly contextualize the process of mental manipulation that carries on behind these closed doors. Entire platforms, any of them, can become corrupt and geared towards encouraging very bad things.
That statement is not geared towards TikTok specifically, all of them are already dedicated towards encouraging users to create content in hopes of success, but these platforms and even advertisers on the platforms can engineer massive campaigns that influence a lot of people to do potentially very bad things... They really don't care about independent content, and there's very little chance of being discovered, that content just allows them to cover up the underlying motives more perhaps.
That statement is not geared towards TikTok specifically, all of them are already dedicated towards encouraging users to create content in hopes of success, but these platforms and even advertisers on the platforms can engineer massive campaigns that influence a lot of people to do potentially very bad things... They really don't care about independent content, and there's very little chance of being discovered, that content just allows them to cover up the underlying motives more perhaps.
Well the ones hyping the algorithm are the users here heavily addicted to the TikTok videos manufactured by the influencers on it. They are clever at crafting these videos as they take multiple attempts created at 'hype houses' and get their viewers addicted to wasting their time on it to the point where they think it is 'worth it'.
Replace 'TikTok' with 'Google' and the 'algorithm' is nothing more than 'personalisation' with mass data collection; Gamed by the influencers to compete for your attention and the same dark patterns used to track your actions and attention. No different to any other social network which the exception of the number of users on there. Nothing has changed.
They are all working for the algorithm and that governs whatever is seen or unseen on the platform. When TikTok decides to change that, well the users will complain once again as they did on other platforms.
Replace 'TikTok' with 'Google' and the 'algorithm' is nothing more than 'personalisation' with mass data collection; Gamed by the influencers to compete for your attention and the same dark patterns used to track your actions and attention. No different to any other social network which the exception of the number of users on there. Nothing has changed.
They are all working for the algorithm and that governs whatever is seen or unseen on the platform. When TikTok decides to change that, well the users will complain once again as they did on other platforms.
It's generally true for the first 30 min. Unless you show signs of interest at the videos you find uninteresting, it'll do a decent job of stabilizing over time.
I'm pretty sure Google and Facebook know the same. This isn't really news.
Google Chrome's FLOC I believe sorts people into 5000 person groups with similar interests. I assume google picked this number for a reason. I imagine you can probably sort the world's population into groups of 5000 people with almost exactly the same interests and motivations.
Google Chrome's FLOC I believe sorts people into 5000 person groups with similar interests. I assume google picked this number for a reason. I imagine you can probably sort the world's population into groups of 5000 people with almost exactly the same interests and motivations.
If that’s what they’ve been doing with YouTube recommendations then it’s definitely nowhere close to identifying interests or motivations. Whatever they started changing in 2016 has been making the recommendations less and less personally relevant and increasingly generic and boring. Probably helping a whole lot of people spend less time on YouTube though.
Would love to meet my interest doppelgangers!
"We programmed bots to go down rabbit-holes. Watch as TikTok's algorithm makes our bots go down rabbit holes!"
Not saying TikTok isn't spooky. But:
The effort that went into making the viewer feel anxious while watching this was extreme; and the effort that went into actual explanation of the TikTok algorithm was minimal.
Not saying TikTok isn't spooky. But:
The effort that went into making the viewer feel anxious while watching this was extreme; and the effort that went into actual explanation of the TikTok algorithm was minimal.
Yes this was a disappointing watch - they seemed to have gone to some effort to simulate a lot of accounts with interests, and testing some handwaving unspecified theories. But then they only detailed _one_ of those fake accounts, and it showed some pretty unsurprising results. If you hover over videos of X, it shows more of that - Kentucky, depression, romance etc.
The only real discovery was the disparity between the TikTok spokesperson (who said that 7% of anyone's feed should be trying to broaden your interests) and their observation that those videos were in fact mostly adverts.
And (sorta) that hitting Dislike doesn't seem to do much, if you counter than signal by watching/liking other videos. But it was all very vague given how much data they said they'd gathered.
I agree I don't think the algorithm is particularly clever, or works towards any other goal than for users to spend more time with the app Which is the assumption I was starting from.
The only real discovery was the disparity between the TikTok spokesperson (who said that 7% of anyone's feed should be trying to broaden your interests) and their observation that those videos were in fact mostly adverts.
And (sorta) that hitting Dislike doesn't seem to do much, if you counter than signal by watching/liking other videos. But it was all very vague given how much data they said they'd gathered.
I agree I don't think the algorithm is particularly clever, or works towards any other goal than for users to spend more time with the app Which is the assumption I was starting from.
I think the underlying point is that platforms are gearing their algorithms towards manipulation, and that a new user account has a pre-set path towards being rabbit holed to where most of the content they see can trap them into certain mindsets...
This worries me a lot, because people generally think they are choosing what they want to see, but the platform can shape the world views of many people all at once.
If you trap someone in a room and play violent videos for them all day long, when you let them out, they might come out thinking they'll have to fight for survival, just as an example.
Governments can encourage political chaos through subjecting people to certain types of videos through these platforms over time, and as another example, they can influence certain regions to start a riot or vote a certain way.
Behavioral psychologists are involved in algorithm development now just as much as developers and that's a big problem that most of the world, especially government regulators are totally unaware of.
I have a TikTok account, but only use it in really small doses because I found the suggestive content really was not good for my mental health. I hope more people realize that this is happening, and also understand the lies about potential for sharing independent work on platforms because the platforms are really not geared towards discovery of new content, they have very specific agendas and money making at the foremost behind them.
This worries me a lot, because people generally think they are choosing what they want to see, but the platform can shape the world views of many people all at once.
If you trap someone in a room and play violent videos for them all day long, when you let them out, they might come out thinking they'll have to fight for survival, just as an example.
Governments can encourage political chaos through subjecting people to certain types of videos through these platforms over time, and as another example, they can influence certain regions to start a riot or vote a certain way.
Behavioral psychologists are involved in algorithm development now just as much as developers and that's a big problem that most of the world, especially government regulators are totally unaware of.
I have a TikTok account, but only use it in really small doses because I found the suggestive content really was not good for my mental health. I hope more people realize that this is happening, and also understand the lies about potential for sharing independent work on platforms because the platforms are really not geared towards discovery of new content, they have very specific agendas and money making at the foremost behind them.
It was FUD from the first minutes: Look at it highlighting security cameras at ByteDance and the ominous music.
Perhaps it would be more useful if WSJ told us how they made "dozens of automated accounts". Everyone should be doing this. Why not. We could all be "investigating". Think of what we might learn. Automation is the future. Everyone should be learning it.
yeah I mean I pretty much already knew what it does is:
- see what videos you watch and how long you stay watching them
- show you more of the same
which is all it is really saying, just spread out over 10 minutes
edit:formatting
- see what videos you watch and how long you stay watching them
- show you more of the same
which is all it is really saying, just spread out over 10 minutes
edit:formatting
For me tiktok is so depressing. I am single 25+ guy and seeing all those beautiful girls my age or younger makes me so sad. Than I can go to Tinder and match with pretty but not stunning girls and feel like I am getting robbed. And according to my friends I am easily in top 20% of attractiveness. Feel bad for rest of guys
I guess this is life in 21 century. Governed by algorithms and feeling empty inside
I guess this is life in 21 century. Governed by algorithms and feeling empty inside
I'm gonna go out on a limb but if this comment is reflective of your attitude, I don't think Tik Tok or algorithms are your biggest problem in establishing relationships with women.
TikTok could be exacerbating this attitude in men who are already predisposed to feeling helpless in their dating efforts. I notice that I feel worse about my appearance when I've spent more time on TikTok. I also notice that I see more extremely conventionally attractive people on TikTok.
I see the issue being more so with dating app algorithms, though. Those companies/algorithms are incentivized to keep men in the dating pool and paying Bumble/Tinder for dates. The best way to do this is to make those men think that they need to pay to win the game and will lose otherwise.
I see the issue being more so with dating app algorithms, though. Those companies/algorithms are incentivized to keep men in the dating pool and paying Bumble/Tinder for dates. The best way to do this is to make those men think that they need to pay to win the game and will lose otherwise.
I think this is a huge problem for many people born in the past 30 years. We see all these amazing people on (social) media and compare ourselves to them if they're the same sex, or feel attracted to them. I can only imagine what it does to the body image of 14yo girls. In a somewhat similar vein, boys in puberty masturbate to porn that sets completely unrealistic expectations with regards to their partners and experiences in real life. It is a huge, and I think not often-enough talked about, problem. I hope we will find a solution some day, but I have no idea what it could be.
Really doesn't help that American porn imports a lot of the ideas from Japan, wager its not a coincidence they're dealing with a more severe version of the same "gender gap" issue here amongst people under 35.
> Really doesn't help that American porn imports a lot of the ideas from Japan
What now?
What now?
Its not just tech companies fault. There are a lot of fathers that dont teach their sons about sex and relationships. Often they just hope for the best. That is not how you raise a son to be effective in the dating world.
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If the fathers are bad at sex and relationships maybe doing nothing and hoping for the best is the right idea?
Evolutionarily, can you consider them a failure though? They've procreated. That checks the box for being "successful" but it doesn't mean your offspring will be.
Fatherhood is way more than transferring genes. That’s the fun part. The real work starts ~ 9 months later.
That is my original argument. The parent to my recent comment is saying not teaching your kids is somehow going to make your kids more successful.
Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t do a very good job that comment.
I mean look at the world. Evolutionarily we've all failed.
Man I feel you!
Don't fall in the trap of social media / social-relationship.
Girls on TikTok are beautiful as actress are beautiful, it takes a tons of effort to look so attractive effortlessly!
Similar deal on tinder, maybe even worse.
Go out and bound with real people in real life! Do the effort of being the first one to reach out.
Feel ok with having friends that are busy and that may not reply immediately.
But meet people outside internet, and you will be happier.
Don't fall in the trap of social media / social-relationship.
Girls on TikTok are beautiful as actress are beautiful, it takes a tons of effort to look so attractive effortlessly!
Similar deal on tinder, maybe even worse.
Go out and bound with real people in real life! Do the effort of being the first one to reach out.
Feel ok with having friends that are busy and that may not reply immediately.
But meet people outside internet, and you will be happier.
If you're really in the top 20% you should have no problems. Go out and try to game with girls.
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The whole point of this post is that this is just TikTok reflecting your own desires back to you. Some part of you wants to obsess, ruminate over and feel bad about digitally enhanced and literally unattainable girls dancing to a camera on the other side of the world, you engage with Tiktok on that content, and then they show you more! The definition of a personal problem. Even though it is quite different than yours, my TikTok feed says a lot of things about me too, to the point that I am reluctant to scroll through it in someone else's presence.
This is partially why I trained my TikTok to be a nature channel, the other part obviously being a desire for exploraion.
High expectations is the key to unhappiness.
These responses get boring pretty quick. None of this is the real world. Start participating in the world off-screen. Start something new, drop bad habits and eventually you will fill that emptiness inside you.
It's the same for everything people get hooked on, it changes you perception but in reality it's all in your mind.
It's the same for everything people get hooked on, it changes you perception but in reality it's all in your mind.
Yeah it is not always simple, we need empathy when dealing with this kind of problem, not brushing off people that may be having difficult times.
It's not "brushing off" to suggest that someone use their phone less. If picking up the phone is an automatic behaviour to fill moments of dullness, then that's a problem.
All the empathy in the world won't save anyone here. On one side of that screen is you, alone. On the other side are an army of designers, developers and behavioural experts whose job it is to keep you looking at the screen for as long as possible.
All the empathy in the world won't save anyone here. On one side of that screen is you, alone. On the other side are an army of designers, developers and behavioural experts whose job it is to keep you looking at the screen for as long as possible.
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I don’t disagree with you on a personal level, but it is worth noting that “social disgust” is what has driven down tobacco rates as a population, even if it’s perhaps less effective for any one individual than empathy, etc.
Quit judging partners by looks alone. Looks fade, character that clicks with you likely won't.
The relationships I've had and hate most in my life are almost perfectly inversely proportional to how much time they spent trying to look 'beautiful.'
The relationships I've had and hate most in my life are almost perfectly inversely proportional to how much time they spent trying to look 'beautiful.'
At the risk of dating myself, can I give you some advice my Dad gave me in my early twenties? Shallowness is highly addictive and the more often you turn to it, the stronger the addiction gets.
Sooner or later we just use algorithms to generate girls for you, so you can have whatever you wish to have.
Women and girls aren’t objects to be generated by an algorithm on a whim to fulfill “whatever wish” a man may have. Women and girls are people.
or a VR headset with an addon - or even better direct stimulation of the brain.
in my past I have dated a women of a wide range of attractiveness and of all those girls the less attractive ones are actually the ones I'd put the most effort into getting back with...
If the girl I'm with is pleasing to look at I'm content with that. How pleasing hardly matters
If the girl I'm with is pleasing to look at I'm content with that. How pleasing hardly matters
The difference between pretty and stunning is a lot of work with makeup, lighting, dressing and so on. I dated a model briefly, she could change from and 8 to a 10 depending on how much effort and time she wanted to put in. This is true for guys too.
Yeah I think the infamous Jenna Marbles video where she puts on makeup really was the first time it opened my eyes to it. She goes from average or less to amazing in short time.
Link for those who haven't seen it. Can't believe it's been 11 years...
https://youtu.be/OYpwAtnywTk
Link for those who haven't seen it. Can't believe it's been 11 years...
https://youtu.be/OYpwAtnywTk
Tik Tok also automatically edits your appearance with default filters.
And front-facing cameras now come with face-smoothing features right out of the box. I have a Galaxy A51 (2020 phone) and even with the default settings, the FFC photos are much more generous in smoothing out your skin, than the regular rear camera.
There's an insidious element present even at the optical hardware level: the limited arms-length distance necessitates wide-angle lenses, which exaggerates the foreground elements and caused an uptick of people thinking their noses were bigger than they "actually" are (at typical viewing distances with our own organic eyeballs) [1]. Perhaps the aggressive smoothing is an attempt to rectify this, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some automatic computational photography pincushion warping to compensate for the larger-than-reality nose effect.
I sometimes ponder over the alternate timeline where front-facing cameras selfie cams were never invented.
[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...
I sometimes ponder over the alternate timeline where front-facing cameras selfie cams were never invented.
[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...
Wait what, is this for real? Do phones automatically beautify photos taken with the selfie cam? Why is this legal?! Isn't this a surefire recipe to create a generation of adolescents with insecurity/body issues?
Every time you take a selfie it subtly confronts you with what could be better about you. It's like a fridge that whispers "you're a fatty" every time you open it.
Every time you take a selfie it subtly confronts you with what could be better about you. It's like a fridge that whispers "you're a fatty" every time you open it.
It's real. In some cases it's turned on by default and some are not
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/digital-wellbeing/m... has some information (not affiliated, just found this a while ago) . I can't find any info right now about apple or samsung or any of the other big vendors.
I think the impact is fairly damaging. I'm surrounded by people with body image issues, and the impact their issues are having on them is heartbreaking.
Sadly when I discuss this with some folks from that industry they pushed me to an academic debate about "well everything is post-processed after the sensor anyway".
There's probably some debate to be had again about whether this is creating issues, exacerbating existing body image issues, or actually just not having any impact one way or another. But I find myself believing that it is both creating and exacerbating.
And for a while I thought these were "first world issues" but many, if not most, of my friends are not part of the "first world" and they still have them.
I think the impact is fairly damaging. I'm surrounded by people with body image issues, and the impact their issues are having on them is heartbreaking.
Sadly when I discuss this with some folks from that industry they pushed me to an academic debate about "well everything is post-processed after the sensor anyway".
There's probably some debate to be had again about whether this is creating issues, exacerbating existing body image issues, or actually just not having any impact one way or another. But I find myself believing that it is both creating and exacerbating.
And for a while I thought these were "first world issues" but many, if not most, of my friends are not part of the "first world" and they still have them.
I finally realized it after wondering why I looked 'worse' in photos with friends, when the rear camera is being used to take the picture. That's when I did a rear v front photo comparison.
The face smoothing effect is subtle, but it's definitely there. It's not as extreme as "filters" that can basically change your skin tone and texture.
And it's possible that Samsung does this and not others. My last Samsung phone had this as well, and I usually buy from them.
The face smoothing effect is subtle, but it's definitely there. It's not as extreme as "filters" that can basically change your skin tone and texture.
And it's possible that Samsung does this and not others. My last Samsung phone had this as well, and I usually buy from them.
You should get rid of your smartphone. They're designed to make you depressed so you respond better to ads.
thrwaway_tik(2)
Influencing dreams was one theme I read about that they are trying to pursue. But not only TikTok. Do you also feel like TikTok is making over-night buzz for relatively silly topics, vs Instagram and Facebook.
What incentive is there to explicitly influence dreams versus other means of driving engagement and ad revenue? How do you measure 'dream influence'? Sure, it could be a bi-product, but I doubt this is something TikTok is trying to do.
I ran my own ghetto experiment. Despite resisting (I'm still not going to install it on mobile), it was Plebbit that brought me to Tiktok. Without having visited Tiktok, I've seen thousands of tiktoks that were scraped out and hosted on other platforms. Over the course of the year, I collected well over a hundred videos.
https://philosopher.life/#:[search[tiktok.com]tag[Link%20Log]]
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i'm not sure if this is some super duper AI. it look like TiTok just give you what you are interested in like YouTube.
i watch a lot of YouTube video without logging into my Google account. if i watch a digital camera review then Youtube will server up a lot of camera related content on the front page. TikTok seem to do the same.
i watch a lot of YouTube video without logging into my Google account. if i watch a digital camera review then Youtube will server up a lot of camera related content on the front page. TikTok seem to do the same.
Maybe this isn't a substantive comment that really adds anything, but just wanted to echo a few other commenters- I don't find anything special about the TikTok algorithm, or TikTok in general. It's.... fine. I signed in via Apple ID initially, and it clearly didn't have much info on me, so it just served up what it thought I'd like based on my age & rural location at the time (basically, tractors & Trump). Later it got a little better, but I just don't see the 'scary' or 'addictive' algorithm that people rave about. It's.... it's just OK. Eg I liked one funny video of the Hispanic guy pronouncing various states, it now shows me a bunch more by the same guy- doesn't exactly seem like superhuman AI. YouTube has more relevant content for me, personally
What's special about tiktoks algo is timing IMO. The general segmentation/profiling probably isn't as special as people suggest.
Like all social apps, the engagement is key. TikTok already has a simple UX, and there is zero burden for users to watch videos, vs figure out what tweet you want to write, or click through a bunch of pages on any other social app.
One swipe every however many seconds to 3min (used to be one min) is all you need for instant reward ... video plays.
TikTok needs to schedule some series of videos in advance,which includes video timing. Im sure videos themselves are a key part as well... videos where users lost interest within 3 seconds are probably ghosted.
TikTok has to keep all of this in mind along with the user profile. From there the user is being navigated by the algo which is trying to keep only one thing true -- keep the user engaged and measure the risk of a user leaving, when a user seems to be on the path of exiting the app, thats when you notice the algo throwing more random content out.
TBH ... Im not sure if TikTok cares about the information propagated. Its such a mix of culture, politics, whatever, and its all generally crowdsourced. A lot less innocent that Twitter.
Like all social apps, the engagement is key. TikTok already has a simple UX, and there is zero burden for users to watch videos, vs figure out what tweet you want to write, or click through a bunch of pages on any other social app.
One swipe every however many seconds to 3min (used to be one min) is all you need for instant reward ... video plays.
TikTok needs to schedule some series of videos in advance,which includes video timing. Im sure videos themselves are a key part as well... videos where users lost interest within 3 seconds are probably ghosted.
TikTok has to keep all of this in mind along with the user profile. From there the user is being navigated by the algo which is trying to keep only one thing true -- keep the user engaged and measure the risk of a user leaving, when a user seems to be on the path of exiting the app, thats when you notice the algo throwing more random content out.
TBH ... Im not sure if TikTok cares about the information propagated. Its such a mix of culture, politics, whatever, and its all generally crowdsourced. A lot less innocent that Twitter.
> TBH ... Im not sure if TikTok cares about the information propagated.
They don't care unless it affects the interests of the shareholders waiting for the IPO of the parent company ByteDance.
As for the algorithm itself, I won't be surprised to see the complaints from many users as a result of changing the algorithm down the line since it is already gamed by the large users on the platform; just like how YouTube was.
They don't care unless it affects the interests of the shareholders waiting for the IPO of the parent company ByteDance.
As for the algorithm itself, I won't be surprised to see the complaints from many users as a result of changing the algorithm down the line since it is already gamed by the large users on the platform; just like how YouTube was.
I mean, did WSJ even consider the sound? its a key part of the experience. Hashtags are very gamed on tiktok
I suspect given their emphasis on hashtags that was the primary transversal method.
When I watched the video my fist thought was "ok but how are their bots determining what kind of video they're watching?"
While maybe the best you can do in an automated way, I don't think it's representative of how a real human uses social media. ("I'm feeling depressed, guess I'll check out the depressed hashtag.")
When I watched the video my fist thought was "ok but how are their bots determining what kind of video they're watching?"
While maybe the best you can do in an automated way, I don't think it's representative of how a real human uses social media. ("I'm feeling depressed, guess I'll check out the depressed hashtag.")
Investigation: TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27925651
Facebook videos does the same, I get a lot of videos about Resin art and Woodworking and Streetfood, which are at best mildly interesting. I also wonder who pays for that or what their business model is since I see no ads. But maybe resin and wood tools are so expensive that it pays off for them to promote the videos.