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Does TikTok just have reams of content selectors deciding if certain posts are good or not? Otherwise I can't see how they could auto-decide to push out conten

Does TikTok just have reams of content selectors deciding if certain posts are good or not? Otherwise I can't see how they could auto-decide to push out content to large audiences without something they don't like getting out. Like, they'd only need to sift through a handful of videos to reward random publishers with thousands of views, perhaps even with fake numbers, and people would probably gobble it up.

Jensson 4y ago
Technically they could have thousands of content reviewers in China working fulltime rating videos based on emotions. With a minute a video, they'd each crunch through hundreds of videos a day, and language doesn't matter since you can feel emotion from any language. Add some basic algorithm to select videos to review (new creators and creators with a track record) and you'd get a "magical algorithm".
- unityByFreedom 4y ago
  Thousands? How about millions. Facebook employed 15,000 content reviewers in 2020, plus probably ten times that volunteering to mod their own FB pages. I'd expect China's state owned western-facing social media site to have far more.
OJFord 4y ago
I suppose I don't know about 'reams', but a concierge in London told me he'd taken a job there doing just that.
- OJFord 4y ago
  And perhaps I should add I know they earn ~Grad SE salaries, and actually he was trying to segue into SE, (self-studying in down-time, good on him) so it was presumably not merely a 'living wage' (the new minimum) 'gig'.
wongarsu 4y ago
TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a recommendation algorithm (instead of adding recommendations to an app, as everyone else did). As a result you get great recommendations. I imagine that also really helps with moderation and censorship: Identify videos you want to restrict, check which cohort gets recommended those the most, then concentrate your moderation efforts on videos that the algorithm wants to recommend these people. The recommendations and people's video interactions allow you to classify both people and videos.
- solalf 4y ago
  > TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a recommendation algorithm First time I hear of TikTok in those terms. Could you expand on what that means?
  - shep101 4y ago
    he just did
  - paulcole 4y ago
    I’m very curious how you’ve heard TikTok described in the past. The whole point of TikTok is that you don’t have to follow people or engage with your friends on the platform. You just open it up and it’ll show you videos that you’ll like. Obviously, there is a little bit of “training” involved. Within about 20-40 minutes it really started to zero in on things I liked.
  - rolisz 4y ago
    Here's an article discussing this at length: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algorithm https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algo...
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    The app is designed in a way that basically everything you do results in a strong positive or negative signal for a video that the recommendation algorithm can use. Take Youtube, a video site that added suggestions. If you're logged in, you get dumped on a homepage with an endlessly scrolling list of recommendations. You scroll until a thumbnail or video title catches your eye, you watch that video, might like or comment, then click one of ~10 recommendations. The algorithm gets a positive signal based on what you click and your watch-time, but the negative signal on anything you don't click is incredibly weak. Because you choose what you watch, positive signals are mostly driven by titles, thumbnails and familiarity, and negative signals are rare. As a result, most recommendations are stuff you know or things adjacent to it (people who watch this also watch this), and quickly get boring. The recommendations can't inject novelty or purposefully expand the algorithm's knowledge. Now on Tiktok: You open the app, you get a single video in full screen. Either you scroll on (negative signal) or you watch it until the end (positive), or you let it repeat (very positive). Or you might like or comment. After scrolling on, you get another video in full screen, same game again. The cost of a bad recommendation is low because videos are short and quick to judge, so the algorithm can occasionally give you videos it's uncertain about or that are selected completely randomly. Your reaction will give a signal, no matter what (either you watch till the end or you don't) and as a result the algorithm knows more about you and about the video.
psyc 4y ago
Yes. The users. TikTok is unique (afaik) in that every new video is shown to a sample group of real users, and its performance evaluated. If it does well in that group, it's shown to a larger group. If it continues to do well, it's shown to a still larger group, etc.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  You are forgetting TikTok mods tasked to shadowban from "For You" anybody they think is physically unattractive, poor, go political in livestreams, etc. (https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...) Don't have any illusions, they can easily control what goes viral if it matters to the mothership.
  - unityByFreedom 4y ago
    Yeah, keeping political content off the service must require a company-connected person to review every piece of content that reaches a certain level of exposure. I don't think they are successful at keeping off political content though, in the sense that denying political content is a political statement itself in favor of the status quo.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      It's not about them making political statements, but about their moderation policy. I almost think you are responding to a wrong comment.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    They are quite unsuccessful at it. I often get very political content on my for you page - for some of my friends that's the vast majority of the content they get, and a good third of it is from either non conventionally attractive people or very obviously poor people. The manual shadowbanning fight is one they will never win.
    - 4y ago

Jensson 4y ago

Technically they could have thousands of content reviewers in China working fulltime rating videos based on emotions. With a minute a video, they'd each crunch through hundreds of videos a day, and language doesn't matter since you can feel emotion from any language. Add some basic algorithm to select videos to review (new creators and creators with a track record) and you'd get a "magical algorithm".

unityByFreedom 4y ago
Thousands? How about millions. Facebook employed 15,000 content reviewers in 2020, plus probably ten times that volunteering to mod their own FB pages. I'd expect China's state owned western-facing social media site to have far more.

OJFord 4y ago

I suppose I don't know about 'reams', but a concierge in London told me he'd taken a job there doing just that.

OJFord 4y ago
And perhaps I should add I know they earn ~Grad SE salaries, and actually he was trying to segue into SE, (self-studying in down-time, good on him) so it was presumably not merely a 'living wage' (the new minimum) 'gig'.

wongarsu 4y ago

TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a recommendation algorithm (instead of adding recommendations to an app, as everyone else did). As a result you get great recommendations. I imagine that also really helps with moderation and censorship: Identify videos you want to restrict, check which cohort gets recommended those the most, then concentrate your moderation efforts on videos that the algorithm wants to recommend these people. The recommendations and people's video interactions allow you to classify both people and videos.

solalf 4y ago
> TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a recommendation algorithm First time I hear of TikTok in those terms. Could you expand on what that means?
- shep101 4y ago
  he just did
- paulcole 4y ago
  I’m very curious how you’ve heard TikTok described in the past. The whole point of TikTok is that you don’t have to follow people or engage with your friends on the platform. You just open it up and it’ll show you videos that you’ll like. Obviously, there is a little bit of “training” involved. Within about 20-40 minutes it really started to zero in on things I liked.
- rolisz 4y ago
  Here's an article discussing this at length: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algorithm https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algo...
- wongarsu 4y ago
  The app is designed in a way that basically everything you do results in a strong positive or negative signal for a video that the recommendation algorithm can use. Take Youtube, a video site that added suggestions. If you're logged in, you get dumped on a homepage with an endlessly scrolling list of recommendations. You scroll until a thumbnail or video title catches your eye, you watch that video, might like or comment, then click one of ~10 recommendations. The algorithm gets a positive signal based on what you click and your watch-time, but the negative signal on anything you don't click is incredibly weak. Because you choose what you watch, positive signals are mostly driven by titles, thumbnails and familiarity, and negative signals are rare. As a result, most recommendations are stuff you know or things adjacent to it (people who watch this also watch this), and quickly get boring. The recommendations can't inject novelty or purposefully expand the algorithm's knowledge. Now on Tiktok: You open the app, you get a single video in full screen. Either you scroll on (negative signal) or you watch it until the end (positive), or you let it repeat (very positive). Or you might like or comment. After scrolling on, you get another video in full screen, same game again. The cost of a bad recommendation is low because videos are short and quick to judge, so the algorithm can occasionally give you videos it's uncertain about or that are selected completely randomly. Your reaction will give a signal, no matter what (either you watch till the end or you don't) and as a result the algorithm knows more about you and about the video.

psyc 4y ago

Yes. The users. TikTok is unique (afaik) in that every new video is shown to a sample group of real users, and its performance evaluated. If it does well in that group, it's shown to a larger group. If it continues to do well, it's shown to a still larger group, etc.

throwaway290 4y ago
You are forgetting TikTok mods tasked to shadowban from "For You" anybody they think is physically unattractive, poor, go political in livestreams, etc. (https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...) Don't have any illusions, they can easily control what goes viral if it matters to the mothership.
- unityByFreedom 4y ago
  Yeah, keeping political content off the service must require a company-connected person to review every piece of content that reaches a certain level of exposure. I don't think they are successful at keeping off political content though, in the sense that denying political content is a political statement itself in favor of the status quo.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    It's not about them making political statements, but about their moderation policy. I almost think you are responding to a wrong comment.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  They are quite unsuccessful at it. I often get very political content on my for you page - for some of my friends that's the vast majority of the content they get, and a good third of it is from either non conventionally attractive people or very obviously poor people. The manual shadowbanning fight is one they will never win.
  - 4y ago