3 ms·

Pretty sure TikTok and Instagram are sharing data somehow as well. My feeds are near identical.

by tkel 10mo ago

slg 10mo ago
I don't know, maybe they are colluding, but it is funny to default to that assumption over both platforms just delivering you the same content because you have the same behavior across both apps.
- witnesprotect67 10mo ago
  Not so laughable after working in big tech
  - bflesch 10mo ago
    So where is your book? You gotta spill the beans.
- tkel 10mo ago
  Notably, this started happening the day that I made my TikTok account public. My Instagram feed began to be a copy of my TikTok feed. The exact same videos. Even after changing my Tiktok back to private and deleting all of my followers, the feeds are still identical, every single day. My behavior is not. On Instagram, I follow and interact with very different accounts than on TikTok. It seems to me that Instagram is buying or accessing TikTok's data, and it is not through advertising providers, because the identical content is coming directly from Instagram/TikTok and not promoted ads.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    There are three possibilities though. One is Instagram copying TikTok, without their knowledge, the other is Instagram copying your TikTok feed with their knowledge but not their blessing, and finally Instagram copying your TikTok feed with TikTok's knowledge and their blessing. If we take a look at http://TikTok.com/robots.txt http://TikTok.com/robots.txt, it seems if you make your TikTok public, TikTok is happy to let Instagram take a look at it (but not a number of AI crawlers). What Instagram does with it is up to them, but it's in robots.txt.
    - tkel 10mo ago
      The simplest explanation would be that Instagram crawled my TikTok's account's followers and is curating my Instagram reels based on that point in time. However that's not what happened, because my "following list" is restricted to be viewable by "only me", even though my account was public. "Public" just means that you can view my videos without me accepting a follower request. And I don't have any videos anyway. So I can only deduce that setting it to "public" flipped some bit in either Instagram or TikTok's backend to where now they both are sharing the same or very similar data to curate my feeds.
      - bflesch 10mo ago
        In the book "careless people" it is highlighted that Facebook embedded spyware in their app which tracked other apps that were installed/used on the phone. This allowed them to figure out that so many of their users were installing WhatsApp, and enabled the legendary WhatsApp purchase. It is very much possible that Instagram is reading some sort of temporary files created by TikTok and extracts data using this method. Facebook/Meta has a proven track record of fetching all data from your phone, even when abusing security vulnerabilities to do so. And the clowns at Apple can't even fix RCEs in their network-exposed applications, I'm not convinced the separation between apps is flawless.
- yibg 10mo ago
  Not sure if they're explicitly sharing data, but there does seem to be something that's sharing data across the platforms. When I buy something from Tiktok, the ads for the same thing shows up on my instagram almost instantly. Doesn't necessarily mean they're directly sharing data of course, could be a third party too. But as a consumer that has very little difference for me.
  - aprilthird2021 10mo ago
    It's because you are the exact target demographic consumer for that product, and it's visible in your behavior patterns when using your apps combined with what they know about you (age, sex, location, demographics, etc.)
    - ehnto 10mo ago
      Much more likely an explicit retargeting ad network that doesn't realise they already bought it. Retargeting has been a thing for like 15 plus years now. Visit website for knives, ad network tracking cookie notes that down, same ad network later serves you ads for the same knives. Or some convoluted data sharing network that has the same outcome these days.
      - aprilthird2021 10mo ago
        It's not much more likely. People don't realize but demographic targeting works really well. When you are a certain age, certain gender, living in a certain area, with a few other inferred characteristics, you're very likely to be talking about, thinking about, and buying a small set of product types
        ehnto 10mo ago
        I think the OP knows best what happened to them, so I will leave it up to them to decide. But to get targeted for a product you just looked feels like pretty standard retargetting. I don't disagree with your point that demographics can be very good and sometimes uncanny, that aspect I agree with. It is just the timing that leads me to believe it is retargetting.
- ehnto 10mo ago
  They don't have to collude, the third party advertisers that collate and provide shadow profiles do that work for them.
  - vkou 10mo ago
    The advertisers don't get the raw data feeds necessary to do that.
    - ehnto 10mo ago
      What raw data do you mean? They get so much data, it's hard for me to imagine anything that might be missing relevant to this context to be honest.
      - vkou 10mo ago
        Do you work on ad platforms? If you did, that imagination would be reined in quite a bit. The gist of it is that the platforms carefully curate what data they provide to their customers. They don't want to give anything low level away, both for compliance reasons and because it would undermine their own business. Facebook makes money by charging for access to their users, not by giving away enough information about them for one of their customers to become a competitor. Almost all of the data the platforms provide is 'How well is your marketing campaign doing and among whom' - on a high level. There are issues with poor designs leaking information when the campaign only hit 20 people, but as a general rule of thumb, but that's an exception, not the rule.
  - Teever 10mo ago
    That's the collusion that the OP is talking about. It's just done through middlemen.
gruez 10mo ago
Why would two competing apps share data with each other?
- tkel 10mo ago
  If two profit-seeking organizations can profit more from collaborating, why wouldn't they? Increasing profit is not zero-sum.
- bflesch 10mo ago
  Facebook has a track record of abusing security vulnerabilities to snoop up information about other apps installed on your phone. It might be as simple as Instagram reading leftover temp files created by the TikTok app.

Pretty sure TikTok and Instagram are sharing data somehow as well. My feeds are near identical.

by tkel 10mo ago

Pretty sure TikTok and Instagram are sharing data somehow as well. My feeds are near identical.

slg 10mo ago

I don't know, maybe they are colluding, but it is funny to default to that assumption over both platforms just delivering you the same content because you have the same behavior across both apps.

witnesprotect67 10mo ago
Not so laughable after working in big tech
- bflesch 10mo ago
  So where is your book? You gotta spill the beans.
tkel 10mo ago
Notably, this started happening the day that I made my TikTok account public. My Instagram feed began to be a copy of my TikTok feed. The exact same videos. Even after changing my Tiktok back to private and deleting all of my followers, the feeds are still identical, every single day. My behavior is not. On Instagram, I follow and interact with very different accounts than on TikTok. It seems to me that Instagram is buying or accessing TikTok's data, and it is not through advertising providers, because the identical content is coming directly from Instagram/TikTok and not promoted ads.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  There are three possibilities though. One is Instagram copying TikTok, without their knowledge, the other is Instagram copying your TikTok feed with their knowledge but not their blessing, and finally Instagram copying your TikTok feed with TikTok's knowledge and their blessing. If we take a look at http://TikTok.com/robots.txt http://TikTok.com/robots.txt, it seems if you make your TikTok public, TikTok is happy to let Instagram take a look at it (but not a number of AI crawlers). What Instagram does with it is up to them, but it's in robots.txt.
  - tkel 10mo ago
    The simplest explanation would be that Instagram crawled my TikTok's account's followers and is curating my Instagram reels based on that point in time. However that's not what happened, because my "following list" is restricted to be viewable by "only me", even though my account was public. "Public" just means that you can view my videos without me accepting a follower request. And I don't have any videos anyway. So I can only deduce that setting it to "public" flipped some bit in either Instagram or TikTok's backend to where now they both are sharing the same or very similar data to curate my feeds.
    - bflesch 10mo ago
      In the book "careless people" it is highlighted that Facebook embedded spyware in their app which tracked other apps that were installed/used on the phone. This allowed them to figure out that so many of their users were installing WhatsApp, and enabled the legendary WhatsApp purchase. It is very much possible that Instagram is reading some sort of temporary files created by TikTok and extracts data using this method. Facebook/Meta has a proven track record of fetching all data from your phone, even when abusing security vulnerabilities to do so. And the clowns at Apple can't even fix RCEs in their network-exposed applications, I'm not convinced the separation between apps is flawless.
yibg 10mo ago
Not sure if they're explicitly sharing data, but there does seem to be something that's sharing data across the platforms. When I buy something from Tiktok, the ads for the same thing shows up on my instagram almost instantly. Doesn't necessarily mean they're directly sharing data of course, could be a third party too. But as a consumer that has very little difference for me.
- aprilthird2021 10mo ago
  It's because you are the exact target demographic consumer for that product, and it's visible in your behavior patterns when using your apps combined with what they know about you (age, sex, location, demographics, etc.)
  - ehnto 10mo ago
    Much more likely an explicit retargeting ad network that doesn't realise they already bought it. Retargeting has been a thing for like 15 plus years now. Visit website for knives, ad network tracking cookie notes that down, same ad network later serves you ads for the same knives. Or some convoluted data sharing network that has the same outcome these days.
    - aprilthird2021 10mo ago
      It's not much more likely. People don't realize but demographic targeting works really well. When you are a certain age, certain gender, living in a certain area, with a few other inferred characteristics, you're very likely to be talking about, thinking about, and buying a small set of product types
      - ehnto 10mo ago
        I think the OP knows best what happened to them, so I will leave it up to them to decide. But to get targeted for a product you just looked feels like pretty standard retargetting. I don't disagree with your point that demographics can be very good and sometimes uncanny, that aspect I agree with. It is just the timing that leads me to believe it is retargetting.
ehnto 10mo ago
They don't have to collude, the third party advertisers that collate and provide shadow profiles do that work for them.
- vkou 10mo ago
  The advertisers don't get the raw data feeds necessary to do that.
  - ehnto 10mo ago
    What raw data do you mean? They get so much data, it's hard for me to imagine anything that might be missing relevant to this context to be honest.
    - vkou 10mo ago
      Do you work on ad platforms? If you did, that imagination would be reined in quite a bit. The gist of it is that the platforms carefully curate what data they provide to their customers. They don't want to give anything low level away, both for compliance reasons and because it would undermine their own business. Facebook makes money by charging for access to their users, not by giving away enough information about them for one of their customers to become a competitor. Almost all of the data the platforms provide is 'How well is your marketing campaign doing and among whom' - on a high level. There are issues with poor designs leaking information when the campaign only hit 20 people, but as a general rule of thumb, but that's an exception, not the rule.
- Teever 10mo ago
  That's the collusion that the OP is talking about. It's just done through middlemen.

gruez 10mo ago

Why would two competing apps share data with each other?

tkel 10mo ago
If two profit-seeking organizations can profit more from collaborating, why wouldn't they? Increasing profit is not zero-sum.
bflesch 10mo ago
Facebook has a track record of abusing security vulnerabilities to snoop up information about other apps installed on your phone. It might be as simple as Instagram reading leftover temp files created by the TikTok app.