4 ms·

Could you elaborate on what makes it so addictive? Neither Tiktok nor YT Shorts seem to "work" on me, but I've heard from a lot of people, including intelligent

Could you elaborate on what makes it so addictive? Neither Tiktok nor YT Shorts seem to "work" on me, but I've heard from a lot of people, including intelligent & thoughtful people that I respect, that Tiktok's recommendation algorithm is unusually fantastic. I was a little skeptical that Tiktok had broken new ground in a _very_ well-trod space, and had chalked it up to the format and volume of content, which you'd expect to extend to YT shorts too. It sounds like you share this perspective, so I'd be interested to hear more about what you consider to be so addictive about the format. This isn't some slyly-boastful "what's the big deal, _I_ don't have any issue with it", comment. I assume that this particular hook just missed my brain, and there are others that grab me more (I'm def not thrilled with the amt that I use Twitter). I'm just genuinely curious about the details of what makes the format so hyper-addictive, and can't really explore it by experimenting with my own brain.

grog454 4y ago
I have this same question. I've tried using Tiktok twice. Both times I was as honest as I can be about my interests and both times it quickly devolves into stuff I simply don't care about and will never deliberately take time out of my day to seek out. Just had a thought... is there a psychology to "idle browsing" that I just don't have? I never browse the Google Play store for apps but more than 50% of users discover my apps this way. I never browse Netflix for recommendations. I almost never browse Youtube's recommendations unless I'm listening to a playlist and want to discover similar music (while doing something else). In almost all of these contexts I discover content through word of mouth or browsing discussion forums and search for exactly what I'm looking for.
- darkwater 4y ago
  From what you explain, you are clearly an outlier. If on one side of the bell curve there are the "whales", you are probably... a plancton?
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  I put a couple of cumulative hours into it, purely to seed/discover the supposedly-fantastic recommendation algorithm. I was drowning in videos of cute couples doing inane things until I started doing the couple extra clicks to indicate Not Interested. After that it got a bit more diverse, but I somehow don't seem to have left seemingly-generic content behind, and at no point did I get any inkling of the "just one more video" flow that I've heard about.
wyre 4y ago
Do you have experience with YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit holes? Try imagining that, but instead of a 5-20+ minute long video or an encyclopedia article, it is a saccharin video mill full of memes, music, fun facts, and anything else that can fit inside a one minute video while only requiring users to swipe their finger. The TikTok algorithm, to put it another way, is really good at delivering relatable content within an hour or two of app engagement (liking, commenting, subscribing). The work to reward ratio favors the user heavily. Most videos on tiktok are within 20 and 30 seconds so the user invests very little and can consume a lot with little time.
- pleb_nz 4y ago
  Firstly, Most things I'm interested in can't be consumed within 20 or 30 seconds. Secondly how can one present information and arguments supporting information in 20 to 30 seconds? You can't, it's purey gossip or similar at that speed. And then you'd have to follow up with further investigation, and you may as well have watched something longer format in the first place.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  > memes, music, fun facts The very things I try to avoid.
mrweasel 4y ago
I haven't tried TikTok, so I can't really comment, but I've heard the same in regards to their recommendations. YouTubes algorithm, is either fantastically broken, or really devious. Recommendation fall into two main categories, interspersed with a few good videos: Completely broken, as in presenting videos from 20 year old women making videos about how their boyfriend suck or complaining about things I can't relate to as a 40 years old dad. I mean the target audience is way off. The other category is an attempt to push evermore extreme toxic masculinity videos. Intermixed with the two categories are a few videos, which in my case are two military analysts, which I do enjoy. The thing is, you get a video that makes you think: "This is pretty good", then you're hit with either something that actually pisses you off or go "why the hell am I seeing this?". I believe that in my case it's a question of the going back and forth between: Hey this is interesting and then "why are you showing me this crap" and trying to make it learn to not show me junk content. And Shorts is MOSTLY junk, the majority of the videos are absolute garbage. So for me, it's 50% emotional rollercoaster and 50% technically curiosity. Liking and disliking videos does NOTHING for the recommended videos. It seems like the recommendation engine only understand genres or categories when doing recommendations, but not when you hit dislike on a bunch of videos of the same type. It works create for normal YouTube videos, but not on Shorts. I've resorted to a Firefox plugin that just removes Shorts from the YouTube sidebar and then removing the panel... Though YouTube tells me it will be back in 30 days, at which point I'll have to remove it again.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  Yea, I too get a mix of the inane 20-year-old girl crap and the hypermacho MMA/hustler entrepreneur stuff. I figure this is just the prior distribution, the stuff that hits the broadest audience. That's why I'm surprised that I haven't been able to meaningfully escape that rut, despite trying to feed the algorithm my disinterest. It almost feels like they don't know what to show me: the only stuff I see are other forms of undifferentiated crap crap, like handsome doctors overacting to videos about medical issues. I'm pretty confounded by the fact that it seemed so poor at exploring the space of possible videos

grog454 4y ago

I have this same question. I've tried using Tiktok twice. Both times I was as honest as I can be about my interests and both times it quickly devolves into stuff I simply don't care about and will never deliberately take time out of my day to seek out. Just had a thought... is there a psychology to "idle browsing" that I just don't have? I never browse the Google Play store for apps but more than 50% of users discover my apps this way. I never browse Netflix for recommendations. I almost never browse Youtube's recommendations unless I'm listening to a playlist and want to discover similar music (while doing something else). In almost all of these contexts I discover content through word of mouth or browsing discussion forums and search for exactly what I'm looking for.

darkwater 4y ago
From what you explain, you are clearly an outlier. If on one side of the bell curve there are the "whales", you are probably... a plancton?
wutbrodo 4y ago
I put a couple of cumulative hours into it, purely to seed/discover the supposedly-fantastic recommendation algorithm. I was drowning in videos of cute couples doing inane things until I started doing the couple extra clicks to indicate Not Interested. After that it got a bit more diverse, but I somehow don't seem to have left seemingly-generic content behind, and at no point did I get any inkling of the "just one more video" flow that I've heard about.

wyre 4y ago

Do you have experience with YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit holes? Try imagining that, but instead of a 5-20+ minute long video or an encyclopedia article, it is a saccharin video mill full of memes, music, fun facts, and anything else that can fit inside a one minute video while only requiring users to swipe their finger. The TikTok algorithm, to put it another way, is really good at delivering relatable content within an hour or two of app engagement (liking, commenting, subscribing). The work to reward ratio favors the user heavily. Most videos on tiktok are within 20 and 30 seconds so the user invests very little and can consume a lot with little time.

pleb_nz 4y ago
Firstly, Most things I'm interested in can't be consumed within 20 or 30 seconds. Secondly how can one present information and arguments supporting information in 20 to 30 seconds? You can't, it's purey gossip or similar at that speed. And then you'd have to follow up with further investigation, and you may as well have watched something longer format in the first place.
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
> memes, music, fun facts The very things I try to avoid.

mrweasel 4y ago

I haven't tried TikTok, so I can't really comment, but I've heard the same in regards to their recommendations. YouTubes algorithm, is either fantastically broken, or really devious. Recommendation fall into two main categories, interspersed with a few good videos: Completely broken, as in presenting videos from 20 year old women making videos about how their boyfriend suck or complaining about things I can't relate to as a 40 years old dad. I mean the target audience is way off. The other category is an attempt to push evermore extreme toxic masculinity videos. Intermixed with the two categories are a few videos, which in my case are two military analysts, which I do enjoy. The thing is, you get a video that makes you think: "This is pretty good", then you're hit with either something that actually pisses you off or go "why the hell am I seeing this?". I believe that in my case it's a question of the going back and forth between: Hey this is interesting and then "why are you showing me this crap" and trying to make it learn to not show me junk content. And Shorts is MOSTLY junk, the majority of the videos are absolute garbage. So for me, it's 50% emotional rollercoaster and 50% technically curiosity. Liking and disliking videos does NOTHING for the recommended videos. It seems like the recommendation engine only understand genres or categories when doing recommendations, but not when you hit dislike on a bunch of videos of the same type. It works create for normal YouTube videos, but not on Shorts. I've resorted to a Firefox plugin that just removes Shorts from the YouTube sidebar and then removing the panel... Though YouTube tells me it will be back in 30 days, at which point I'll have to remove it again.

wutbrodo 4y ago
Yea, I too get a mix of the inane 20-year-old girl crap and the hypermacho MMA/hustler entrepreneur stuff. I figure this is just the prior distribution, the stuff that hits the broadest audience. That's why I'm surprised that I haven't been able to meaningfully escape that rut, despite trying to feed the algorithm my disinterest. It almost feels like they don't know what to show me: the only stuff I see are other forms of undifferentiated crap crap, like handsome doctors overacting to videos about medical issues. I'm pretty confounded by the fact that it seemed so poor at exploring the space of possible videos