Yeah, there's definitely positives to the algorithmic / personalized approach. He mentions it in the thread, even: they were feeling pressure because there was

Yeah, there's definitely positives to the algorithmic / personalized approach. He mentions it in the thread, even: they were feeling pressure because there was only one homepage with ~15 slots, and getting on it was a big deal, but only a tiny fraction of sellers could get lucky. You either got super lucky and got a huge sales boost, or nothing, no middle ground. Compare that to, the other day I uploaded my first TikTok about some obscure bit of Lord of the Rings appendices minutiae[1] and got 1500 views. Not going to be the next John Green here, but it felt cool to just try something on a whim and have some success. The algorithm spread that viewership out and made things more "equal", I guess. Plus, it made the "niche lord of the rings content" genre possible, since it wouldn't merit 1/15th of all TikTok viewership in the "TikTok has a fixed Etsy-style FYP with 15 videos" alternate universe. I wonder what the most popular 15 videos on TikTok are right now... That's all to say, you should write that book (or essay!), I'd read it :-) [1] Middle-third-age Gondor looks a lot like a mirrored Tang dynasty China, and has other similarities