4 ms·

Its the recommendation engine. TikTok is exposing both Instagram and Youtube as pure garbage. They clearly tuned their content machines to make the most money a

Its the recommendation engine. TikTok is exposing both Instagram and Youtube as pure garbage. They clearly tuned their content machines to make the most money and censor the most content. The gap was wide open for someone to actually create a recommendation engine that rewards real grass roots content creators and gives users the content they want to see. This is a classic example of capitalism, the monopolistic technical choices of Google/FB/other media are getting torched

mattnewton 4y ago
As someone interests in recommendation systems I really need to spend some time with Tiktok fans and understand this. I spent about three weeks with the app and did not find almost any engaging content. The first week was just quickly scrolling past what looked like highschool girls dancing, then eventually I found some political content I was interested in watching to get a sense of the zeitgeist and tried engaging with that but it was buried again by reaction videos and more dances. I’ve seen TikTok content I am interested in show up recycled as YouTube shorts so I know it exists, but I was never able to find it on the platform. Universally I hear this recommendation engine is the best in the business. Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup, is a few weeks just too short of a time to build up what they need, or am I just a weirdo?
- bsaul 4y ago
  when did you try ? i had the feeling the number of "serious" videos has increased a lot in the past months. Or, maybe i just got bored watching pretty women dance after a while, and the algorithm detected it and adjusted.
- belval 4y ago
  > Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup Honestly from the description you wrote it just does not seem like TikTok is the right platform for you. What I like about it is the light-heartedness of it, I don't see political content at all and I wouldn't really be interested if I got any as it's a pretty terrible platform for news and hot takes. Instead, I get cooking/funny/cute/surreal meme videos that match the Gen Z humor. It distracts me from gloomy Twitter/Facebook feeds. It's not an app for serious content, it's a dopamine treadmill.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Oh don’t get me wrong, I like surreal gen z humor videos I’ve seen recycled as YouTube shorts. I just can’t get the TikTok algorithm to match me with them? It basically just shows an endless stream of young women lip syncing (not that there is anything wrong with that in the abstract, just definitely not personalized to me)
    - belval 4y ago
      Hmmm interesting, make sure to like more than once when some content is interesting to you. Additionally, follow and bookmark stuff that you enjoyed (that seems to play some role in the recommendation). TikTok also seems to do on-the-fly recommendation to match your mood, so for example if I take my girlfriend's account to browse it, I will usually have to spend 5 minutes skipping dance/hair tutorials before getting to the content I like. It seems similar to Spotify's random mode, where it is random but only to some extent within a genre and will "find" the genre that matches your current mood.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Try using the app’s search feature to seed it with content you do like.
- mike00632 4y ago
  Try scrolling past the political content?
- deanCommie 4y ago
  The engine can only do so much. Obviously dances and reactions are going to be more voluminous, and the # of unique political content is going to be less. Also, unlike YouTube where once it decides it learns what you like, it will recommend ONLY content it thinks you will like, the TikTok Recommendation engine tries to be more egalitarian: * It will highlight random new creators with very few likes or comments or engagement - arbitrarily. A lot of these will be misses, but you're helping train it and get in on the virality early on. The key with those is either to have an open mind and try them or a closed mind and scroll away immediately from anything that has a single digit like/comment count, but not be surprised or disappointed by it. * It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends and popular memes. In that sense, TikTOk is the absolute best way to stay connected to latest musical and internet trends of the youths, because it's not hidden to their circles but exposed to everyone. To me, these are both features. Even though I am an aging techie, who primarily likes more engaging content (politics, philosophy, film analysis). I get those TOO and when I want ONLY that content, I switch to my "Following" page to see only the stuff I explicitly signed up for. But I toggle back and forth because I like seeing what "the kids" are into. It doesn't matter if I agree. I think it's helpful to be aware of generational trends. The kids will grow up and will shape the culture. Since I exist in society, I want to know what that's going to look like, even if I plan to stick to my 90's rock musical taste into my own 90's. (Plus you get to discover that The Kids Are Alright, and are themselves influenced by my own musical genre preferences even today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUy2UmRxJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUy2UmRxJ0)
  - fragmede 4y ago
    > It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends I am not so sure it really accomplishes this. There are trend bubbles that I’ve never seen organically via the app, but have seen via friends or link aggregators.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
richiebful1 4y ago
Tiktok falls into the same censorship problem. From what I've seen, creators are constantly using code words to talk about sensitive subjects to avoid the censors. Often videos are arbitrarily deleted with little transparency. It is very much in the same camp as Youtube.
- FerociousTimes 4y ago
  The Chinese side of TikTok or the intl one?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rvz 4y ago
    Both of them.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    The Chinese side of TikTok is called Douyin and is, externally, a separate user database.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
You glossed over the implication of your logic. Insta, FB, etc are incentivized to make money. Whether that is good or bad is a fair debate. But TikTok is incentivized by the CCP to spy on dumb Americans and to make them even less intelligent. Easy to create the “perfect” viral product when you don’t care about making money.
rasz 4y ago
I bet downgrading "undesirables" (ugly, handicapped) and forcing beauty filters doesnt hurt tiktok either.
rvz 4y ago
It is no different to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc but with a different name. Their over-worshipped algorithm is nothing new but is in fact worse than Instagram which no-one has seen anything like the reality distortion in real time like this: [0] > The gap was wide open for someone to actually create a recommendation engine that rewards real grass roots content creators and gives users the content they want to see. The algorithm has already been gamed by large creators and corporations to make other creators lose out and to let the corporations and marketers ruin the platform. Every single platform that does this and allows ads, marketers and large companies will always negotiate via backroom deals for a spot on the platform to ruin it afterwards. The result is the same and the small grass roots creators lose all the time and get screwed first by the existing larger and early creators, even from other platforms. It is the same old power law being applied. Rinse and repeat. [0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-war-in-ukraine-to-russian-users-1.15921522 https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...

mattnewton 4y ago

As someone interests in recommendation systems I really need to spend some time with Tiktok fans and understand this. I spent about three weeks with the app and did not find almost any engaging content. The first week was just quickly scrolling past what looked like highschool girls dancing, then eventually I found some political content I was interested in watching to get a sense of the zeitgeist and tried engaging with that but it was buried again by reaction videos and more dances. I’ve seen TikTok content I am interested in show up recycled as YouTube shorts so I know it exists, but I was never able to find it on the platform. Universally I hear this recommendation engine is the best in the business. Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup, is a few weeks just too short of a time to build up what they need, or am I just a weirdo?

bsaul 4y ago
when did you try ? i had the feeling the number of "serious" videos has increased a lot in the past months. Or, maybe i just got bored watching pretty women dance after a while, and the algorithm detected it and adjusted.
belval 4y ago
> Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup Honestly from the description you wrote it just does not seem like TikTok is the right platform for you. What I like about it is the light-heartedness of it, I don't see political content at all and I wouldn't really be interested if I got any as it's a pretty terrible platform for news and hot takes. Instead, I get cooking/funny/cute/surreal meme videos that match the Gen Z humor. It distracts me from gloomy Twitter/Facebook feeds. It's not an app for serious content, it's a dopamine treadmill.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Oh don’t get me wrong, I like surreal gen z humor videos I’ve seen recycled as YouTube shorts. I just can’t get the TikTok algorithm to match me with them? It basically just shows an endless stream of young women lip syncing (not that there is anything wrong with that in the abstract, just definitely not personalized to me)
  - belval 4y ago
    Hmmm interesting, make sure to like more than once when some content is interesting to you. Additionally, follow and bookmark stuff that you enjoyed (that seems to play some role in the recommendation). TikTok also seems to do on-the-fly recommendation to match your mood, so for example if I take my girlfriend's account to browse it, I will usually have to spend 5 minutes skipping dance/hair tutorials before getting to the content I like. It seems similar to Spotify's random mode, where it is random but only to some extent within a genre and will "find" the genre that matches your current mood.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Try using the app’s search feature to seed it with content you do like.
mike00632 4y ago
Try scrolling past the political content?
deanCommie 4y ago
The engine can only do so much. Obviously dances and reactions are going to be more voluminous, and the # of unique political content is going to be less. Also, unlike YouTube where once it decides it learns what you like, it will recommend ONLY content it thinks you will like, the TikTok Recommendation engine tries to be more egalitarian: * It will highlight random new creators with very few likes or comments or engagement - arbitrarily. A lot of these will be misses, but you're helping train it and get in on the virality early on. The key with those is either to have an open mind and try them or a closed mind and scroll away immediately from anything that has a single digit like/comment count, but not be surprised or disappointed by it. * It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends and popular memes. In that sense, TikTOk is the absolute best way to stay connected to latest musical and internet trends of the youths, because it's not hidden to their circles but exposed to everyone. To me, these are both features. Even though I am an aging techie, who primarily likes more engaging content (politics, philosophy, film analysis). I get those TOO and when I want ONLY that content, I switch to my "Following" page to see only the stuff I explicitly signed up for. But I toggle back and forth because I like seeing what "the kids" are into. It doesn't matter if I agree. I think it's helpful to be aware of generational trends. The kids will grow up and will shape the culture. Since I exist in society, I want to know what that's going to look like, even if I plan to stick to my 90's rock musical taste into my own 90's. (Plus you get to discover that The Kids Are Alright, and are themselves influenced by my own musical genre preferences even today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUy2UmRxJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUy2UmRxJ0)
- fragmede 4y ago
  > It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends I am not so sure it really accomplishes this. There are trend bubbles that I’ve never seen organically via the app, but have seen via friends or link aggregators.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

richiebful1 4y ago

Tiktok falls into the same censorship problem. From what I've seen, creators are constantly using code words to talk about sensitive subjects to avoid the censors. Often videos are arbitrarily deleted with little transparency. It is very much in the same camp as Youtube.

FerociousTimes 4y ago
The Chinese side of TikTok or the intl one?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rvz 4y ago
  Both of them.
- fragmede 4y ago
  The Chinese side of TikTok is called Douyin and is, externally, a separate user database.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

You glossed over the implication of your logic. Insta, FB, etc are incentivized to make money. Whether that is good or bad is a fair debate. But TikTok is incentivized by the CCP to spy on dumb Americans and to make them even less intelligent. Easy to create the “perfect” viral product when you don’t care about making money.

rasz 4y ago

I bet downgrading "undesirables" (ugly, handicapped) and forcing beauty filters doesnt hurt tiktok either.

rvz 4y ago

It is no different to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc but with a different name. Their over-worshipped algorithm is nothing new but is in fact worse than Instagram which no-one has seen anything like the reality distortion in real time like this: [0] > The gap was wide open for someone to actually create a recommendation engine that rewards real grass roots content creators and gives users the content they want to see. The algorithm has already been gamed by large creators and corporations to make other creators lose out and to let the corporations and marketers ruin the platform. Every single platform that does this and allows ads, marketers and large companies will always negotiate via backroom deals for a spot on the platform to ruin it afterwards. The result is the same and the small grass roots creators lose all the time and get screwed first by the existing larger and early creators, even from other platforms. It is the same old power law being applied. Rinse and repeat. [0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-war-in-ukraine-to-russian-users-1.15921522 https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...