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When Twitter forced the algorithmic timeline on people, someone tweeted: "Is the algorithm based what everyone else likes, or what I like? Because I hate what

by gdulli 4y ago

When Twitter forced the algorithmic timeline on people, someone tweeted: "Is the algorithm based what everyone else likes, or what I like? Because I hate what everyone else likes, and I don't know what I like."

shmatt 4y ago
I don't have TikTok, but for 2 years this is what I've been hearing from people who love it. They figured out a way to show you exactly what you're interested in, without you giving them any specific input There have been many articles about the phenomenon of the "For You Page"[1][2]. But the funny part is Meta sees this and figures - people are looking at videos, we'll do videos. And not - people are seeing what they specifically like, lets do that [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg... [2] https://repeller.com/tiktok-algorithm-bisexual/ https://repeller.com/tiktok-algorithm-bisexual/
- alexb_ 4y ago
  I think one of the biggest things TikTok does is that it shows completely random videos from time to time. I often get videos with 0 views that were just randomly shown to me. So the platform actually has some randomness that can spontaneously find something interesting instead of having people build up a base first.
- fluidcruft 4y ago
  I think that's probably exactly it. I don't know whether the ad ratio is different, but you're just far more likely to see something new and interesting on TikTok vs scroll pass mountains of uninteresting or meh things until something comes along. I dunno in terms of where you'd see more ads and who knows you probably do see more ads in the low-reward boring app that you have to scroll forever on. But when your thumb is hovering between launching two apps, it's not rocket science where it's going to learn to land. And I agree with the other commenter that TikTok is good at finding novelty in ways the other is not. Things like YouTube or whatever will just show you endless variations of the things you've already liked. TikTok will throw you things you like from way out of left field.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  TikTok quickly learns what you don't like and the homepage becomes a mix of your subscriptions, new content that you might like and very new kind of content that you haven't been exposed or stuff that you outgrew but you might like to revisit. Learning the things you don't like is important. It's much more pleasant experience when you are not exposed to the stuff you don't like. Unlike Twitter, the stuff you don't like doesn't mean things you disagree with. You very well might not like politics, TikTok keeps you out of the culture war then.
  - indiv0 4y ago
    Interestingly it also seems to mix your content with content your friends tend to view. Or at least it does so tentatively, to see if you share the same interest. When I friended a pilot friend of mine on TikTok, I immediately started seeing pilot/plane content. This is after having had an account since forever and not once having seen pilot content on my For You page before. It's an interesting way to broaden your horizons, but it does turn a little common denominator, depending on what your friends like. Similarly (and I have no way of proving this, but I believe it 100%), TikTok seems to alter your feed to incorporate videos from other people watching TikTok near you. My friends and I have made a game of this where we cast TikTok to a TV, watch videos, and try to guess which of us the video was intended for. I've never once had a "oh wow that's a neat content discovery method" moment from Facebook/Instagram/YouTube but it has happened multiple times with TikTok. I'm not saying TikTok is the end-all-be-all of social media, but it's a good window into what social media could be, if they stopped chasing ad revenue and anger-driven content.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      Oh it definitely keeps track of you social circle and shows similar content. Bedtime browsing on the same phone often yields some "I've seen this before" reactions.
  - winternett 4y ago
    Most political things don't generate huge amounts of platform advertising money probably on TikTok... The autopilot ad revenue is easy for them to make on political content as well because right now, there's only a few different aspects competing with each other... It's likely that a lot of users don't primarily go to TikTok for political content, it's primarily music and social influencer based as well... This is why TikTok allows users to avoid political content, it's not a "cash cow" niche for them.
- foobarian 4y ago
  Maybe they will figure out how to not show me ads for months for the item I just purchased.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  > They figured out a way to show you exactly what you're interested in, without you giving them any specific input They optimized their primary user interaction to provide specific input! By distilling user choice down to {watch time} or {swipe}, and preferentially promoting short pieces of content that generate more swipes, they get unambiguous and frequent input. Which isn't to lessen their achievement, but is to highlight that they engineered their entire experience to provide their algorithms more and cleaner feedback.
- password4321 4y ago
  Yes, TikTok must do per-user model tweaking to whatever degree they can afford, right?
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Yep, TikTok learns really fast and after it has learned it shows you mostly stuff it knows you like. Then - maybe one video in 20 or something - you get stuff that's either completely different, completely new (under 100 likes/views) or related to something you liked a long time ago. And then the next one is again something you actually like. The Instagram model is just shoving "recommendations" to every 3rd slot on my screen. And every 4th one is an ad.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  There was a talk I went to a few years back where the speaker (Genevieve Bell) discussed the idea of "systems of delight" - that most recommendation engines fail because they just tell you things that you know, or that someone wants to sell. What they're bad at is working out what you don't know what you want: the example that she gave was: you land in a new city, you're on your way somewhere. A recommendation engine might already know that you drink coffee and point out the cafes on the way to where you're going - but will it "know" to suggest that there's a public sculpture and that you wouldn't think to look at ordinarily, but you would be happy to see. TikTok seems much closer to that notion of "systems of delight". (However, for a great deal of social media I want to be running what I look at anyway.)
jsemrau 4y ago
What I like also changes frequently. I think that is the magic of TikTok that they adjust quickly to what I want to see and now like Twitter / YT / etc what I have looked at in the past

by gdulli 4y ago

shmatt 4y ago

I don't have TikTok, but for 2 years this is what I've been hearing from people who love it. They figured out a way to show you exactly what you're interested in, without you giving them any specific input There have been many articles about the phenomenon of the "For You Page"[1][2]. But the funny part is Meta sees this and figures - people are looking at videos, we'll do videos. And not - people are seeing what they specifically like, lets do that [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg... [2] https://repeller.com/tiktok-algorithm-bisexual/ https://repeller.com/tiktok-algorithm-bisexual/

alexb_ 4y ago
I think one of the biggest things TikTok does is that it shows completely random videos from time to time. I often get videos with 0 views that were just randomly shown to me. So the platform actually has some randomness that can spontaneously find something interesting instead of having people build up a base first.
fluidcruft 4y ago
I think that's probably exactly it. I don't know whether the ad ratio is different, but you're just far more likely to see something new and interesting on TikTok vs scroll pass mountains of uninteresting or meh things until something comes along. I dunno in terms of where you'd see more ads and who knows you probably do see more ads in the low-reward boring app that you have to scroll forever on. But when your thumb is hovering between launching two apps, it's not rocket science where it's going to learn to land. And I agree with the other commenter that TikTok is good at finding novelty in ways the other is not. Things like YouTube or whatever will just show you endless variations of the things you've already liked. TikTok will throw you things you like from way out of left field.
mrtksn 4y ago
TikTok quickly learns what you don't like and the homepage becomes a mix of your subscriptions, new content that you might like and very new kind of content that you haven't been exposed or stuff that you outgrew but you might like to revisit. Learning the things you don't like is important. It's much more pleasant experience when you are not exposed to the stuff you don't like. Unlike Twitter, the stuff you don't like doesn't mean things you disagree with. You very well might not like politics, TikTok keeps you out of the culture war then.
- indiv0 4y ago
  Interestingly it also seems to mix your content with content your friends tend to view. Or at least it does so tentatively, to see if you share the same interest. When I friended a pilot friend of mine on TikTok, I immediately started seeing pilot/plane content. This is after having had an account since forever and not once having seen pilot content on my For You page before. It's an interesting way to broaden your horizons, but it does turn a little common denominator, depending on what your friends like. Similarly (and I have no way of proving this, but I believe it 100%), TikTok seems to alter your feed to incorporate videos from other people watching TikTok near you. My friends and I have made a game of this where we cast TikTok to a TV, watch videos, and try to guess which of us the video was intended for. I've never once had a "oh wow that's a neat content discovery method" moment from Facebook/Instagram/YouTube but it has happened multiple times with TikTok. I'm not saying TikTok is the end-all-be-all of social media, but it's a good window into what social media could be, if they stopped chasing ad revenue and anger-driven content.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Oh it definitely keeps track of you social circle and shows similar content. Bedtime browsing on the same phone often yields some "I've seen this before" reactions.
- winternett 4y ago
  Most political things don't generate huge amounts of platform advertising money probably on TikTok... The autopilot ad revenue is easy for them to make on political content as well because right now, there's only a few different aspects competing with each other... It's likely that a lot of users don't primarily go to TikTok for political content, it's primarily music and social influencer based as well... This is why TikTok allows users to avoid political content, it's not a "cash cow" niche for them.
foobarian 4y ago
Maybe they will figure out how to not show me ads for months for the item I just purchased.
ethbr0 4y ago
> They figured out a way to show you exactly what you're interested in, without you giving them any specific input They optimized their primary user interaction to provide specific input! By distilling user choice down to {watch time} or {swipe}, and preferentially promoting short pieces of content that generate more swipes, they get unambiguous and frequent input. Which isn't to lessen their achievement, but is to highlight that they engineered their entire experience to provide their algorithms more and cleaner feedback.
password4321 4y ago
Yes, TikTok must do per-user model tweaking to whatever degree they can afford, right?
theshrike79 4y ago
Yep, TikTok learns really fast and after it has learned it shows you mostly stuff it knows you like. Then - maybe one video in 20 or something - you get stuff that's either completely different, completely new (under 100 likes/views) or related to something you liked a long time ago. And then the next one is again something you actually like. The Instagram model is just shoving "recommendations" to every 3rd slot on my screen. And every 4th one is an ad.
rodgerd 4y ago
There was a talk I went to a few years back where the speaker (Genevieve Bell) discussed the idea of "systems of delight" - that most recommendation engines fail because they just tell you things that you know, or that someone wants to sell. What they're bad at is working out what you don't know what you want: the example that she gave was: you land in a new city, you're on your way somewhere. A recommendation engine might already know that you drink coffee and point out the cafes on the way to where you're going - but will it "know" to suggest that there's a public sculpture and that you wouldn't think to look at ordinarily, but you would be happy to see. TikTok seems much closer to that notion of "systems of delight". (However, for a great deal of social media I want to be running what I look at anyway.)

jsemrau 4y ago

What I like also changes frequently. I think that is the magic of TikTok that they adjust quickly to what I want to see and now like Twitter / YT / etc what I have looked at in the past