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The "defaults" on TikTok are fairly terrible. However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and se

The "defaults" on TikTok are fairly terrible. However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well. I have - Learned several cooking recipes and some tricks - Cleaning advice I've actually put to use - How to use some woodworking tools. Also, general woodworking ideas - Cat behavioral advice In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") and the discovery is far easier than on YouTube.

Tomte 4y ago
"However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well." Can someone support that from Germany? I suspect that's highly locale-dependent. I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours searching for interesting stuff and liking things. I always get generic (and really bad) cooking videos and drunken people doing stupid things.
- overlordalex 4y ago
  Do you mean for content in German? There might just not be enough of it to be anything but low-effort junk - I never got anything useful in German and gave up after about 20 minutes. I'm based in Germany but view English content and I can at least echo your sentiments about the lack of good content. I've read multiple times about how amazing the TikTok algorithm is meant to be and how quickly it learns about what to show you, and yet that has not been my experience at all. Twice now I've spent an hour attempting to train the algorithm but it's just endless streams of trash. The worst part for me was coming across an interesting video, for example some industrial machine process, only to be subjected to the exact same video hosted by another user. Most times they have just overlaid some music, but sometimes they crop the original or add some useless text overlays. The part that also annoyed me was it felt like the algorithm gave up every 20-25 videos and tried to show me something sexual, even though I was not interested. I always found the subject transitions extremely jarring and annoying - I already have my porn channels sorted thank you very much, I'm looking for a different type of wood-working
  - Tomte 4y ago
    I don't expect much from German content. ;-) I meant English language content, but with my phone being in Germany. Thanks for telling your experience!
    - denkquer 4y ago
      make sure you set your languages of choice in the settings of the app.
  - kredd 4y ago
    Fun part is its deduction of locale by looking at your number/sim card. I usually get an eSIM while travelling, and the company seems to be based in Netherlands. Was in Mexico last time, and was getting a constant stream of content from Amsterdam. Took me a while to understand why.
    - belval 4y ago
      Pretty sure it uses regular geo information as well because we travelled to France and immediately saw a bunch of French tiktok even though the SIM card was Canadian. It's actually a fun quirk, you visit a country and you get to see their tiktok videos.
  - omgomgomgomg 4y ago
    Indeed, the best metric is some sort of cpa media buying experience. I have the following channels: - twitch, good roi, short lived - affiliate forums, long lived, breakeven roi - youtube, fb, ig, cant ever recover investment, only good for content creation - ad networks and tik tok , totally 0 conversion rate even at what appears to be tremendous amount of traffic. So yeah, if you arebin my niche a and a million views does not convert, then that algo and the platform are useless.
- PKop 4y ago
  >I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours Why would you do that lol? Do you really have FOMO for the next garbage social media dopamine machine that simply wants to hijack your attention to sell ads and get you addicted to zombie scrolling like every other instance before it? Why does it have to work for you? I think you have your answer at this point. It's just another garbage lowest common denominator mass content farm and memes. It doesn't have to be nor isn't something more profound than that, and in fact with it's short content length and more sophisticated AI it's just like everything before but worse. You can certainly just dismiss it and occupy your limited time doing something else more productive or fulfilling.
  - Tomte 4y ago
    If you need to know: last time I was stuck in a regional train with several hours still to go. Stop patronizing me.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    FWIW, I've tried doing the same thing with Twitter. People hold that site in the highest regards, and whenever I read/post I'm always having the most miserable time. The longer I spent, the less sense it made to me and eventually I had to just leave it alone once and for all. I get where they're coming from when they want to enjoy something but don't know where to start
- comfypotato 4y ago
  My comment doesn’t apply if you’re asking about videos for which the language is German. I assume you meant geographically based content regions for English videos. Just checking that you are using a mobile (android or iOS) version of the app. I may be totally wrong (I’m basically making this up based on intuition), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the internet site version of TikTok doesn’t support the same level of input to the algorithm. There is fine tuning to your interaction data that the mobile app supports (I’m sure that it bases decisions on how long you watch videos (regardless of whether you like or follow), and I think it might even base decisions of what sections of videos make you stop watching)). I hit it off right away with the mobile version. Off the bat: there were lots of half-nude women, gym rat videos, and other generic social content for my region. Within the hour, I was getting mostly finely curated comedy clips from standup comedians I liked (and not from others I didn’t like). It’s really amazing how well the algorithm works.
- _glass 4y ago
  Yes, working for me well, too in Germany. First boring content, then frighteningly well adjusted context. As I dislike most German content, it updated itself to mostly showing English/expat stuff. But also some German content that I like.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  I'm an English speaker, who is learning Japanese as a second language. I've found it difficult to get tiktok to recommend japanese-language videos to me - will usually only do so if I follow an account. I think there is a language switch somewhere high up in their algorithm that is hard to compete against with watch metrics.
tsss 4y ago
> In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") I find that very hard to believe (despite how god awful Reddit has gotten by now). Reddit is pretty much the last place on the internet where real people post long-form content that is not a single-issue niche forum. I can't imagine that the mode of TikTok with its short videos, algorithm-driven discovery and lack of community (commenting) encourages quality.
- preommr 4y ago
  It isn't. What they mean is a continuous churn of surface level stuff. E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. You're not going to have that on the top of the subreddit that many times - maybe once a year. On tiktok, that stuff will occasionally pop in, mixed with a bunch of other crap so the repetitiveness doesn't stick out in the short term. You also don't engage with it. There's almost no point to leaving a comment, it's all about mindlessly scrolling from video to video. This leads to lots of really easy to film but superficial stuff in large quantities.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    > E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. It's playing out exactly like elsewhere on the Internet: beginner content is best to produce because they are the biggest audience, and the algorithm snowballs that advantage further because it only sees engagement, not quality.
- britch 4y ago
  I've watched a few 5+ minute TikToks about various things (cars, video games, plants, politics) in the past month I don't think these are hugely popular but they reach some audience. A big video will have 500k to Millions of likes. These longer videos usually cap out at a couple thousand. They're out there but it's not searchable. TikTok has an incredible breadth of content but takes a few days to weeks to get the algorithm to show you what you want. When I use it the algorithm is something I'm actively trying to manipulate. "Up vote" stuff you to see by liking and saving. "Down vote" by quickly scrolling away from a video. Any engagement is a signal to show you more of that -- if you're tired of seeing one type of video, you should immediately scroll as soon as you know you don't want to watch it.
saiya-jin 4y ago
It seems we (well at least some) have come full circle re passivity when consuming content. TV is like this and was much worse. Back where I grew up, during forced socialism/communism there were 2 official TV channels and that was it. Then came computers and internet, me and many others and we greatly enjoyed that one felt in complete power what to do, what to see read etc. What you mention (maybe I don't get it since I never used tiktok and probably never will due to apparent addictiveness) sounds again like passive random consuming of whatever the other side decides is appropriate. You can tune it, and maybe it works a bit, hey its 2022. Surreal to me (and not in positive way), but to each their own.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  This matches what happened with advertising. We went from cable TV and broadcast radio with 12+ minutes of ads per hour to being able to choose what we watch/listen to "on demand" with few - if any - ads. And now we're heading back to increasing, unskippable ad load in popular audio and video formats.

Tomte 4y ago

"However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well." Can someone support that from Germany? I suspect that's highly locale-dependent. I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours searching for interesting stuff and liking things. I always get generic (and really bad) cooking videos and drunken people doing stupid things.

overlordalex 4y ago
Do you mean for content in German? There might just not be enough of it to be anything but low-effort junk - I never got anything useful in German and gave up after about 20 minutes. I'm based in Germany but view English content and I can at least echo your sentiments about the lack of good content. I've read multiple times about how amazing the TikTok algorithm is meant to be and how quickly it learns about what to show you, and yet that has not been my experience at all. Twice now I've spent an hour attempting to train the algorithm but it's just endless streams of trash. The worst part for me was coming across an interesting video, for example some industrial machine process, only to be subjected to the exact same video hosted by another user. Most times they have just overlaid some music, but sometimes they crop the original or add some useless text overlays. The part that also annoyed me was it felt like the algorithm gave up every 20-25 videos and tried to show me something sexual, even though I was not interested. I always found the subject transitions extremely jarring and annoying - I already have my porn channels sorted thank you very much, I'm looking for a different type of wood-working
- Tomte 4y ago
  I don't expect much from German content. ;-) I meant English language content, but with my phone being in Germany. Thanks for telling your experience!
  - denkquer 4y ago
    make sure you set your languages of choice in the settings of the app.
- kredd 4y ago
  Fun part is its deduction of locale by looking at your number/sim card. I usually get an eSIM while travelling, and the company seems to be based in Netherlands. Was in Mexico last time, and was getting a constant stream of content from Amsterdam. Took me a while to understand why.
  - belval 4y ago
    Pretty sure it uses regular geo information as well because we travelled to France and immediately saw a bunch of French tiktok even though the SIM card was Canadian. It's actually a fun quirk, you visit a country and you get to see their tiktok videos.
- omgomgomgomg 4y ago
  Indeed, the best metric is some sort of cpa media buying experience. I have the following channels: - twitch, good roi, short lived - affiliate forums, long lived, breakeven roi - youtube, fb, ig, cant ever recover investment, only good for content creation - ad networks and tik tok , totally 0 conversion rate even at what appears to be tremendous amount of traffic. So yeah, if you arebin my niche a and a million views does not convert, then that algo and the platform are useless.
PKop 4y ago
>I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours Why would you do that lol? Do you really have FOMO for the next garbage social media dopamine machine that simply wants to hijack your attention to sell ads and get you addicted to zombie scrolling like every other instance before it? Why does it have to work for you? I think you have your answer at this point. It's just another garbage lowest common denominator mass content farm and memes. It doesn't have to be nor isn't something more profound than that, and in fact with it's short content length and more sophisticated AI it's just like everything before but worse. You can certainly just dismiss it and occupy your limited time doing something else more productive or fulfilling.
- Tomte 4y ago
  If you need to know: last time I was stuck in a regional train with several hours still to go. Stop patronizing me.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  FWIW, I've tried doing the same thing with Twitter. People hold that site in the highest regards, and whenever I read/post I'm always having the most miserable time. The longer I spent, the less sense it made to me and eventually I had to just leave it alone once and for all. I get where they're coming from when they want to enjoy something but don't know where to start
comfypotato 4y ago
My comment doesn’t apply if you’re asking about videos for which the language is German. I assume you meant geographically based content regions for English videos. Just checking that you are using a mobile (android or iOS) version of the app. I may be totally wrong (I’m basically making this up based on intuition), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the internet site version of TikTok doesn’t support the same level of input to the algorithm. There is fine tuning to your interaction data that the mobile app supports (I’m sure that it bases decisions on how long you watch videos (regardless of whether you like or follow), and I think it might even base decisions of what sections of videos make you stop watching)). I hit it off right away with the mobile version. Off the bat: there were lots of half-nude women, gym rat videos, and other generic social content for my region. Within the hour, I was getting mostly finely curated comedy clips from standup comedians I liked (and not from others I didn’t like). It’s really amazing how well the algorithm works.
_glass 4y ago
Yes, working for me well, too in Germany. First boring content, then frighteningly well adjusted context. As I dislike most German content, it updated itself to mostly showing English/expat stuff. But also some German content that I like.
cwkoss 4y ago
I'm an English speaker, who is learning Japanese as a second language. I've found it difficult to get tiktok to recommend japanese-language videos to me - will usually only do so if I follow an account. I think there is a language switch somewhere high up in their algorithm that is hard to compete against with watch metrics.

tsss 4y ago

> In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") I find that very hard to believe (despite how god awful Reddit has gotten by now). Reddit is pretty much the last place on the internet where real people post long-form content that is not a single-issue niche forum. I can't imagine that the mode of TikTok with its short videos, algorithm-driven discovery and lack of community (commenting) encourages quality.

preommr 4y ago
It isn't. What they mean is a continuous churn of surface level stuff. E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. You're not going to have that on the top of the subreddit that many times - maybe once a year. On tiktok, that stuff will occasionally pop in, mixed with a bunch of other crap so the repetitiveness doesn't stick out in the short term. You also don't engage with it. There's almost no point to leaving a comment, it's all about mindlessly scrolling from video to video. This leads to lots of really easy to film but superficial stuff in large quantities.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  > E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. It's playing out exactly like elsewhere on the Internet: beginner content is best to produce because they are the biggest audience, and the algorithm snowballs that advantage further because it only sees engagement, not quality.
britch 4y ago
I've watched a few 5+ minute TikToks about various things (cars, video games, plants, politics) in the past month I don't think these are hugely popular but they reach some audience. A big video will have 500k to Millions of likes. These longer videos usually cap out at a couple thousand. They're out there but it's not searchable. TikTok has an incredible breadth of content but takes a few days to weeks to get the algorithm to show you what you want. When I use it the algorithm is something I'm actively trying to manipulate. "Up vote" stuff you to see by liking and saving. "Down vote" by quickly scrolling away from a video. Any engagement is a signal to show you more of that -- if you're tired of seeing one type of video, you should immediately scroll as soon as you know you don't want to watch it.

saiya-jin 4y ago

It seems we (well at least some) have come full circle re passivity when consuming content. TV is like this and was much worse. Back where I grew up, during forced socialism/communism there were 2 official TV channels and that was it. Then came computers and internet, me and many others and we greatly enjoyed that one felt in complete power what to do, what to see read etc. What you mention (maybe I don't get it since I never used tiktok and probably never will due to apparent addictiveness) sounds again like passive random consuming of whatever the other side decides is appropriate. You can tune it, and maybe it works a bit, hey its 2022. Surreal to me (and not in positive way), but to each their own.

AlexandrB 4y ago
This matches what happened with advertising. We went from cable TV and broadcast radio with 12+ minutes of ads per hour to being able to choose what we watch/listen to "on demand" with few - if any - ads. And now we're heading back to increasing, unskippable ad load in popular audio and video formats.