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So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation algorithm - suddenly you appear at the feed of millions of people, if the system finds your content v

So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation algorithm - suddenly you appear at the feed of millions of people, if the system finds your content viral enough? Or is there room for people to game the system? I.e. publish content, and pay click farms to make your stuff look legit?

rvz 4y ago
> So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation algorithm Yes they are. It's the same old situation with YouTube's algorithm, where it dictates what gets seen or unseen on people's feeds and which tags get blacklisted or not and that is all done by TikTok. Once you change it, it can be controlled by a single entity for any reason. Since they have done this previously, angering a large section of its user base, they have the power to do it again. > Or is there room for people to game the system? I.e. publish content, and pay click farms to make your stuff look legit? It already has been gamed, both by amateurs and professionally. In the professional case, it's already happened with the large advertisers, existing influencers and companies that have started to jump onto the platform. They have done it through promotional and backroom corporate deals, since they have enough money, influence to make sure that their content is pushed to the largest amount of users regardless. Hence this, all these systems have been gamed by this old tactic, and that includes this over glorified recommendation algorithm. This is how it will get ruined, and it is beyond the hype comments and boosters that you see here screaming about the number of views they have, reminding us of the basic near peak of the power law where the majority of the hype will deplete once the large companies, existing influencers, advertisers start aggressively pushing their posts, ads, etc for engagement farming and growth in another social network, that will appear regardless of TikTok's algorithm. Rinse and repeat.

rvz 4y ago

> So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation algorithm Yes they are. It's the same old situation with YouTube's algorithm, where it dictates what gets seen or unseen on people's feeds and which tags get blacklisted or not and that is all done by TikTok. Once you change it, it can be controlled by a single entity for any reason. Since they have done this previously, angering a large section of its user base, they have the power to do it again. > Or is there room for people to game the system? I.e. publish content, and pay click farms to make your stuff look legit? It already has been gamed, both by amateurs and professionally. In the professional case, it's already happened with the large advertisers, existing influencers and companies that have started to jump onto the platform. They have done it through promotional and backroom corporate deals, since they have enough money, influence to make sure that their content is pushed to the largest amount of users regardless. Hence this, all these systems have been gamed by this old tactic, and that includes this over glorified recommendation algorithm. This is how it will get ruined, and it is beyond the hype comments and boosters that you see here screaming about the number of views they have, reminding us of the basic near peak of the power law where the majority of the hype will deplete once the large companies, existing influencers, advertisers start aggressively pushing their posts, ads, etc for engagement farming and growth in another social network, that will appear regardless of TikTok's algorithm. Rinse and repeat.