8 ms·

TikTok’s Secret Sauce

106 points by sebg 4y ago

amadeuspagel 4y ago
What makes tiktok different is not the algorithm, but the data that the algorithm has to work with. Do you like a tweet? Hard to judge from your behaviour, unless you explicitly hit like. With video, it's easy: Do you keep watching? Youtube's algorithm works great for the same reason. (The article does point out one important difference between youtube and tiktok: On youtube, you have to click on a video first. Meaning, the algorithm has to suggest not just videos you would enjoy, but also videos that you would decide to click on.)
- mullingitover 4y ago
  Their algorithm isn't very bright in my experience. I literally, for weeks, immediately selected "not interested" in every. single. video. that had any mention of crypto, and they still just poured in constantly. It wasn't until a pretty recent update where you can create blocklists for keywords that I was finally free of them.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    The "not interested" button does nothing.
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      That is not my experience.
      - Kiro 4y ago
        It hides that specific video locally but does nothing for the algorithm.
        nickthegreek 4y ago
        I normally use the the little arrow to the right to go into the sub menu and do not interested in user. That seems to remove that individual from my fyp. Which also seems to tailor the adjacent content.
_8j50 4y ago
TikTok reminds me of that woody allen movie (not a fan after hearing about him for the record) where they try to rob a bank by renting a store next door and tunneling to the vault. Except as a cover, they open up a bakery and eventually people liked their baking so much they became millionaires and didn't need to rob the bank anymore. A cop even catches them when they tunnel to the wrong place but he let them go for equity in the baking business. Tiktok just wanted your data for the CCP but they found out the true treasure is the friends and insane market domination they made along the way.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Is this just conjecture? It just doesn't make logical sense: how could it have worked as a data collection app for the CCP if people didn't like it and not many installed it?
  - _8j50 4y ago
    The scale is the point. There is popular and there is competing with youtube popular
- Kukumber 4y ago
  > Tiktok just wanted your data for the CCP Is it? Now that YouTube copied them with Shorts, shouldn't we be worried about YouTube having an influence over our youth with their secret algorithm too? Considering Google's origin partly lies within the CIA/NSA which is basically the US government [1] [1] - https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
  - _8j50 4y ago
    No, the CIA and NSA are not hostile towards westerners but the CCP is. But Chinese people and many other people outside the west should be concerned about that, if there is a good reason to believe YT can be lawfully or reasonably compelled to do CIAs bidding.
WallyFunk 4y ago
> Some users think of the algorithm as a divine force that guides them Very easy to enter an echo chamber and go down rabbit-holes you shouldn't really be going down. If it picks up you like videos about depression or eating disorders, prepare to get brainwashed and not even be able to process those videos properly. > A central challenge for any recommendation algorithm is the tradeoff between safe but somewhat boring recommendations that are similar to recommendations that worked well in the past And this just makes the platform gameable. So many videos with their intro as 'Wait to the end' or building up tension just to get engagement or snarky replies, giving the illusion the video is popular but it's wildly unlikeable.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  It's unbelievable how toxic the most viral TikTok videos are on so many subjects, dating/relationships and mental health among them. The algorithm seems to reward content that makes people feel worse.
  - xvector 4y ago
    You're the first person I've seen with this take: literally everyone else I've talked to says that TikTok videos are generally positive, empowering, fun, and non-toxic. Surprisingly so compared to other platforms.
    - henrikschroder 4y ago
      I agree, I generally never see bad and toxic videos in my own feed, but I do get a lot of snarky and/or informative takedowns of those videos where people are called out on their bullshit. And the duet feature of TikTok makes it trivial to make those kinds of videos, unlike other platforms where you instead get isolated bubbles and echo chambers.
- mullingitover 4y ago
  > Very easy to enter an echo chamber and go down rabbit-holes you shouldn't really be going down. Waiting for Google to sue them for infringing on their YouTube recommendations IP here.
tareqak 4y ago
It sounds like TikTok has the passive viewer aspect of TV, but with the always-on feedback loop of an app and a much wider library of content that is easier to create (no need for a studio and a channel willing to broadcast).
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Just someone explain to me why people are doing totally insane things in the videos like spilling 50-50 liters of ketchup and mayo on the cupboard and then sprinkle it with chocolate flakes? Or melting 10 kgs of butter to cook a steak? Or putting a glass of Nutella in a mortar with the glass in it too and mix it? Same insanity happening around youtube shorts. Are those view counts mean that much to people? btw the algo shows me the same videos even after one week. very little variation going on, it's a bit like yt that force feeds me things and doesn't want me to explore what's on the menu.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  The more I read about TikTok, the happier I am I deleted it from my phone. I'd like to get rid of Instagram too but I'm locked in as people communicate with me via messages.
  - navanchauhan 4y ago
    Have you thought about hosting a Matrix-Instagram bridge? I use all of Beeper’s open source bridges to host them myself because I never got off the waitlist
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      No but I will, thanks
- akomtu 4y ago
  Disturbing content attracts attention, and that's the most disturbing content the platform allows. Users are addicted to disturbing "content", the "content creators" manufacture the substance, the platforms stuff it with ads, advertisers produce the ads poison to make end users buy things they dont need.
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    How wonderful...
kirykl 4y ago
Secret sauce may be unaudited view/subscriber counts that can encourage engagement by appearing inflated
est 4y ago
From my observations, it's essentially: 1. subsidize creators, giving cash & traffic boost 2. recommender generously favors new creators This keeps the hype cycle growing and avoids the "power-user" problem. The Tiktok model is very punishing for "old" or full-time creators, you'll find a very tough up-hill battle to maintain the attractiveness. But overall it's good for consumers casual creators.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  TikTok pays almost nothing. That's why all the big TikTokers use it to promote their youtube, their random artisanal product, or some other monetization angle.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > 1. subsidize creators, giving cash & traffic boost As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen given the revenue numbers reported by creators[0], and from what I've heard they keep 70% or so of revenue from the 'gifts' people can give to creators during live streams. 0: https://searchengineland.com/tiktoks-history-of-low-creator-fund-payouts-has-some-leaving-the-platform-for-good-386656 https://searchengineland.com/tiktoks-history-of-low-creator-...
- rapsey 4y ago
  TikTok pays peanuts compared to youtube.
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    that's probably per view, that doesn't mean it's not easier to get new viewers which is where most people could use a subsidy if they want to get into the industry.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    Beena while since I came across the information, but I thought TikTok paid better than YouTube shorts, which is the direct comparison.
aaron695 4y ago
nowherebeen 4y ago
> The de-emphasis of subscriptions means that there are fewer superstars, and fewer parasocial relationships. This, in turn, has kept creators from getting too powerful or quite as invested What would be the motivation for being a creator then?
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  From what I heard from my friends who _have_ uploaded something to TikTok, it is very possible for a random creator to wake up one morning with 5 million views to their videos, much more so than Instagram or Youtube. Once that happens, I can imagine how people can keep chasing that high for a while, just to try recreate the success that was given to them once by the algorithm.
- warent 4y ago
  social validation / ego at the minimum. for many people it's a foot in the door to a modern entertainment career, getting sponsorships, etc
- lozenge 4y ago
  They still have fans and relationships, but they are in particular niches, rather than being "the" stars of the platform like Mr Beast or Markiplier are for YouTube. With Vine, famously all the stars were comedians and they basically unionised (some even moving in together) and the company didn't want to increase revenue share so they left the platform and the platform died with them.
alpark3 4y ago
People also forget the thirst traps on Tiktok. The Tiktok dance trends encourage attractive young women to post borderline softcore porn, and Tiktok is much more lenient about this type of content than any other platform. The average For You Page for teenage-young adults(males and females alike) from what I've seen consists of a mix of interesting/funny content and beautiful men/women. The ratio is just enough that there's the inherent sexual interest, without going too overboard and making the user feel like they're scrolling through something they shouldn't be on a regular basis.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  i think they've been cutting down on that. the softcore porn. at least I've been seeing less
  - izacus 4y ago
    They didn't, your algorithm just adjusted because you skipped that content.
- paganel 4y ago
  > and Tiktok is much more lenient about this type of content than any other platform. Facebook (the social platform) is already a middle-age retreat, so no soft prOn on there that I know of, but Instagram has had its ascent based exactly on photos of good-looking women. I didn't see any leniency coming from Meta (the company)
- silisili 4y ago
  Eh, every time I open YouTube, it recommends me 'Shorts', which are nothing but young women in scant dress doing something called a shuffle dance, all with 10s of millions of views. Not sure if TikTok started this crap, but as an old married man, I would have thought Google would have known better. I'd rather watch someone shape and sand wood at this point.
  - Dma54rhs 4y ago
    TikTok algo most certainly does give you that if you're willing to skip the dancing videos or softcore porn. It's creepy but very effective, at least for me.
idk1 4y ago
I feel like the filters need more attention when talking about it's secret sauce too. The tech became powerful enough on phones to give real time filters when editing, even a tool to add your own captions in an animated way is huge. I think it's a very underappreciated feature that makes it stand out too. Maybe it because most of us never end up on the video editing part of the app.
debarshri 4y ago
The article has an interesting take when they argue tiktok's recommendation system might actually be bad. If the recommendation system is bad, chances to giving a serendipitous recommendation is pretty high which makes exploration really interesting. If the recommendation system is good, the user might get saturated with similar content which might be annoying.
newbieuser 4y ago
Make it easy to produce low-quality content. and then serve it in an easy-to-consume ux. Tiktok is exactly that.
UncleMeat 4y ago
I think a big misunderstanding that people on other platforms have when discussing tiktok is that they only discuss the content from a consumption perspective. This makes sense. Somebody who isn't on tiktok isn't creating content on tiktok. All analysis is focused on the consumption angle. So you get people wondering what makes it different than youtube shorts or instagram or even vine. But this is folly. Tiktok has meaningfully different content creation tools. Ignoring this misses a huge part of the story. Entire new genres of content exist because they are nicely facilitated by the stitch and duet tools.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  As someone who isn't on Tiktok, could you elaborate on those "entire new genres"?
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Audio as a remixable meme is the most obvious one. TikTok lets you effortlessly use the audio of another video for your own. This leads to things like “Chrissy wake up” being remixed and repurposed in thousands of ways all from an initial viral piece of audio.
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      The duet system itself allows for remixing. You will have a tiktoker playing a guitar. Someone duets it and plays the drums, then someone else duets that and adds a trumpet. TikTok was bacially made so that anyone can interact with, copy or remix others content.
h4t 4y ago
And lets not forget the back button doesn't function as a back button. It moves on to the next video.
CharlieSweeting 4y ago
Arvind's making the case that the algorithm isn't particularly special and it's all about the system design which hooks users. It's definitely true that a huge part of their user retention isn't some magical algorithm, but they have made some genuine algorithmic/training improvements which are interesting. They published their methodology a few months ago (https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663 https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663), which wasn't referenced in the article (only an official blog post and a few reverse engineering attempts that I don't think are enough to conclude that their recommender is just run of the mill).
- mhh__ 4y ago
  A methodology or the methodology?
  - CharlieSweeting 4y ago
    It's not explicit, but I think it's reasonable to infer that publications of research from tiktok that are specific to recommender system for short form video, are "driven by observations of [their] application workloads and production environment" and are a "marked departure from other recommendations systems" contain ideas that are integrated into their products.
calltrak 4y ago
A little off topic, but if you are a TikTok content creator and you want to add multiple links to your profile. You can add multiple links with https://Bigger.Bio https://Bigger.Bio
flappyeagle 4y ago
Tiktok and Instagram are both dopamine slot machines that hijack their users’ attention. It’s sad to see them proliferate and take the minds and attention of 2 entire generations now. Addictive drugs by another name. Porn for the other part of your brain. Their secret sauce is they exploit human psychology with inhuman efficiency and feel no remorse about it.

106 points by sebg 4y ago

What makes tiktok different is not the algorithm, but the data that the algorithm has to work with. Do you like a tweet? Hard to judge from your behaviour, unless you explicitly hit like. With video, it's easy: Do you keep watching? Youtube's algorithm works great for the same reason. (The article does point out one important difference between youtube and tiktok: On youtube, you have to click on a video first. Meaning, the algorithm has to suggest not just videos you would enjoy, but also videos that you would decide to click on.)

mullingitover 4y ago
Their algorithm isn't very bright in my experience. I literally, for weeks, immediately selected "not interested" in every. single. video. that had any mention of crypto, and they still just poured in constantly. It wasn't until a pretty recent update where you can create blocklists for keywords that I was finally free of them.
- Kiro 4y ago
  The "not interested" button does nothing.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    That is not my experience.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      It hides that specific video locally but does nothing for the algorithm.
      - nickthegreek 4y ago
        I normally use the the little arrow to the right to go into the sub menu and do not interested in user. That seems to remove that individual from my fyp. Which also seems to tailor the adjacent content.

_8j50 4y ago

TikTok reminds me of that woody allen movie (not a fan after hearing about him for the record) where they try to rob a bank by renting a store next door and tunneling to the vault. Except as a cover, they open up a bakery and eventually people liked their baking so much they became millionaires and didn't need to rob the bank anymore. A cop even catches them when they tunnel to the wrong place but he let them go for equity in the baking business. Tiktok just wanted your data for the CCP but they found out the true treasure is the friends and insane market domination they made along the way.

aeternum 4y ago
Is this just conjecture? It just doesn't make logical sense: how could it have worked as a data collection app for the CCP if people didn't like it and not many installed it?
- _8j50 4y ago
  The scale is the point. There is popular and there is competing with youtube popular
Kukumber 4y ago
> Tiktok just wanted your data for the CCP Is it? Now that YouTube copied them with Shorts, shouldn't we be worried about YouTube having an influence over our youth with their secret algorithm too? Considering Google's origin partly lies within the CIA/NSA which is basically the US government [1] [1] - https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
- _8j50 4y ago
  No, the CIA and NSA are not hostile towards westerners but the CCP is. But Chinese people and many other people outside the west should be concerned about that, if there is a good reason to believe YT can be lawfully or reasonably compelled to do CIAs bidding.

WallyFunk 4y ago

> Some users think of the algorithm as a divine force that guides them Very easy to enter an echo chamber and go down rabbit-holes you shouldn't really be going down. If it picks up you like videos about depression or eating disorders, prepare to get brainwashed and not even be able to process those videos properly. > A central challenge for any recommendation algorithm is the tradeoff between safe but somewhat boring recommendations that are similar to recommendations that worked well in the past And this just makes the platform gameable. So many videos with their intro as 'Wait to the end' or building up tension just to get engagement or snarky replies, giving the illusion the video is popular but it's wildly unlikeable.

tomjakubowski 4y ago
It's unbelievable how toxic the most viral TikTok videos are on so many subjects, dating/relationships and mental health among them. The algorithm seems to reward content that makes people feel worse.
- xvector 4y ago
  You're the first person I've seen with this take: literally everyone else I've talked to says that TikTok videos are generally positive, empowering, fun, and non-toxic. Surprisingly so compared to other platforms.
  - henrikschroder 4y ago
    I agree, I generally never see bad and toxic videos in my own feed, but I do get a lot of snarky and/or informative takedowns of those videos where people are called out on their bullshit. And the duet feature of TikTok makes it trivial to make those kinds of videos, unlike other platforms where you instead get isolated bubbles and echo chambers.
mullingitover 4y ago
> Very easy to enter an echo chamber and go down rabbit-holes you shouldn't really be going down. Waiting for Google to sue them for infringing on their YouTube recommendations IP here.

tareqak 4y ago

It sounds like TikTok has the passive viewer aspect of TV, but with the always-on feedback loop of an app and a much wider library of content that is easier to create (no need for a studio and a channel willing to broadcast).

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

Just someone explain to me why people are doing totally insane things in the videos like spilling 50-50 liters of ketchup and mayo on the cupboard and then sprinkle it with chocolate flakes? Or melting 10 kgs of butter to cook a steak? Or putting a glass of Nutella in a mortar with the glass in it too and mix it? Same insanity happening around youtube shorts. Are those view counts mean that much to people? btw the algo shows me the same videos even after one week. very little variation going on, it's a bit like yt that force feeds me things and doesn't want me to explore what's on the menu.

bamboozled 4y ago
The more I read about TikTok, the happier I am I deleted it from my phone. I'd like to get rid of Instagram too but I'm locked in as people communicate with me via messages.
- navanchauhan 4y ago
  Have you thought about hosting a Matrix-Instagram bridge? I use all of Beeper’s open source bridges to host them myself because I never got off the waitlist
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    No but I will, thanks
akomtu 4y ago
Disturbing content attracts attention, and that's the most disturbing content the platform allows. Users are addicted to disturbing "content", the "content creators" manufacture the substance, the platforms stuff it with ads, advertisers produce the ads poison to make end users buy things they dont need.
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  How wonderful...

kirykl 4y ago

Secret sauce may be unaudited view/subscriber counts that can encourage engagement by appearing inflated

est 4y ago

From my observations, it's essentially: 1. subsidize creators, giving cash & traffic boost 2. recommender generously favors new creators This keeps the hype cycle growing and avoids the "power-user" problem. The Tiktok model is very punishing for "old" or full-time creators, you'll find a very tough up-hill battle to maintain the attractiveness. But overall it's good for consumers casual creators.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
TikTok pays almost nothing. That's why all the big TikTokers use it to promote their youtube, their random artisanal product, or some other monetization angle.
judge2020 4y ago
> 1. subsidize creators, giving cash & traffic boost As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen given the revenue numbers reported by creators[0], and from what I've heard they keep 70% or so of revenue from the 'gifts' people can give to creators during live streams. 0: https://searchengineland.com/tiktoks-history-of-low-creator-fund-payouts-has-some-leaving-the-platform-for-good-386656 https://searchengineland.com/tiktoks-history-of-low-creator-...
rapsey 4y ago
TikTok pays peanuts compared to youtube.
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  that's probably per view, that doesn't mean it's not easier to get new viewers which is where most people could use a subsidy if they want to get into the industry.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  Beena while since I came across the information, but I thought TikTok paid better than YouTube shorts, which is the direct comparison.

aaron695 4y ago

nowherebeen 4y ago

> The de-emphasis of subscriptions means that there are fewer superstars, and fewer parasocial relationships. This, in turn, has kept creators from getting too powerful or quite as invested What would be the motivation for being a creator then?

polygamous_bat 4y ago
From what I heard from my friends who _have_ uploaded something to TikTok, it is very possible for a random creator to wake up one morning with 5 million views to their videos, much more so than Instagram or Youtube. Once that happens, I can imagine how people can keep chasing that high for a while, just to try recreate the success that was given to them once by the algorithm.
warent 4y ago
social validation / ego at the minimum. for many people it's a foot in the door to a modern entertainment career, getting sponsorships, etc
lozenge 4y ago
They still have fans and relationships, but they are in particular niches, rather than being "the" stars of the platform like Mr Beast or Markiplier are for YouTube. With Vine, famously all the stars were comedians and they basically unionised (some even moving in together) and the company didn't want to increase revenue share so they left the platform and the platform died with them.

alpark3 4y ago

People also forget the thirst traps on Tiktok. The Tiktok dance trends encourage attractive young women to post borderline softcore porn, and Tiktok is much more lenient about this type of content than any other platform. The average For You Page for teenage-young adults(males and females alike) from what I've seen consists of a mix of interesting/funny content and beautiful men/women. The ratio is just enough that there's the inherent sexual interest, without going too overboard and making the user feel like they're scrolling through something they shouldn't be on a regular basis.

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
i think they've been cutting down on that. the softcore porn. at least I've been seeing less
- izacus 4y ago
  They didn't, your algorithm just adjusted because you skipped that content.
paganel 4y ago
> and Tiktok is much more lenient about this type of content than any other platform. Facebook (the social platform) is already a middle-age retreat, so no soft prOn on there that I know of, but Instagram has had its ascent based exactly on photos of good-looking women. I didn't see any leniency coming from Meta (the company)
silisili 4y ago
Eh, every time I open YouTube, it recommends me 'Shorts', which are nothing but young women in scant dress doing something called a shuffle dance, all with 10s of millions of views. Not sure if TikTok started this crap, but as an old married man, I would have thought Google would have known better. I'd rather watch someone shape and sand wood at this point.
- Dma54rhs 4y ago
  TikTok algo most certainly does give you that if you're willing to skip the dancing videos or softcore porn. It's creepy but very effective, at least for me.

idk1 4y ago

I feel like the filters need more attention when talking about it's secret sauce too. The tech became powerful enough on phones to give real time filters when editing, even a tool to add your own captions in an animated way is huge. I think it's a very underappreciated feature that makes it stand out too. Maybe it because most of us never end up on the video editing part of the app.

debarshri 4y ago

The article has an interesting take when they argue tiktok's recommendation system might actually be bad. If the recommendation system is bad, chances to giving a serendipitous recommendation is pretty high which makes exploration really interesting. If the recommendation system is good, the user might get saturated with similar content which might be annoying.

newbieuser 4y ago

Make it easy to produce low-quality content. and then serve it in an easy-to-consume ux. Tiktok is exactly that.

UncleMeat 4y ago

I think a big misunderstanding that people on other platforms have when discussing tiktok is that they only discuss the content from a consumption perspective. This makes sense. Somebody who isn't on tiktok isn't creating content on tiktok. All analysis is focused on the consumption angle. So you get people wondering what makes it different than youtube shorts or instagram or even vine. But this is folly. Tiktok has meaningfully different content creation tools. Ignoring this misses a huge part of the story. Entire new genres of content exist because they are nicely facilitated by the stitch and duet tools.

red_trumpet 4y ago
As someone who isn't on Tiktok, could you elaborate on those "entire new genres"?
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Audio as a remixable meme is the most obvious one. TikTok lets you effortlessly use the audio of another video for your own. This leads to things like “Chrissy wake up” being remixed and repurposed in thousands of ways all from an initial viral piece of audio.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    The duet system itself allows for remixing. You will have a tiktoker playing a guitar. Someone duets it and plays the drums, then someone else duets that and adds a trumpet. TikTok was bacially made so that anyone can interact with, copy or remix others content.

h4t 4y ago

And lets not forget the back button doesn't function as a back button. It moves on to the next video.

CharlieSweeting 4y ago

Arvind's making the case that the algorithm isn't particularly special and it's all about the system design which hooks users. It's definitely true that a huge part of their user retention isn't some magical algorithm, but they have made some genuine algorithmic/training improvements which are interesting. They published their methodology a few months ago (https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663 https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663), which wasn't referenced in the article (only an official blog post and a few reverse engineering attempts that I don't think are enough to conclude that their recommender is just run of the mill).

mhh__ 4y ago
A methodology or the methodology?
- CharlieSweeting 4y ago
  It's not explicit, but I think it's reasonable to infer that publications of research from tiktok that are specific to recommender system for short form video, are "driven by observations of [their] application workloads and production environment" and are a "marked departure from other recommendations systems" contain ideas that are integrated into their products.

calltrak 4y ago

A little off topic, but if you are a TikTok content creator and you want to add multiple links to your profile. You can add multiple links with https://Bigger.Bio https://Bigger.Bio

flappyeagle 4y ago

Tiktok and Instagram are both dopamine slot machines that hijack their users’ attention. It’s sad to see them proliferate and take the minds and attention of 2 entire generations now. Addictive drugs by another name. Porn for the other part of your brain. Their secret sauce is they exploit human psychology with inhuman efficiency and feel no remorse about it.