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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

I doubt TikTok's algorithm is really so awesome. It's a legend they promote to hype up their brand. I know I'm not their target demographic as I'm in my 30s, but it fails completely to show me interesting stuff. Instead, it shows what it thinks I could like. I get a lot of odd videos that start of sexualized and then turn into a prank (its a TikTok genre apparently). Or videos of woodworking. Or asian cooks. It is very odd and not very fun.

Facebook videos does the same, I get a lot of videos about Resin art and Woodworking and Streetfood, which are at best mildly interesting. I also wonder who pays for that or what their business model is since I see no ads. But maybe resin and wood tools are so expensive that it pays off for them to promote the videos.

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I wanted to provide a quick counter point here. For my use, the TikTok algorithm feels much better than anything I have used on other social media. I feel like I have to train it like a pet. You have so few, but useful feedback mechanisms that whenever you see something you don't like if you scoll (or long press "not interested") It seems to make a really big impact on the content.

I get some funny stuff but most of it is some real deep in the weeds nerd stuff. Programming, Ops, Sci-Fi book reviews, Dungeons and Dragons tips. I've seen other people's TikTok's occasionally and it never looks like mine. Even a friend of mine who works in tech and has similar interests, his looks completely different.

With all that being said it's at the cost of it being literally spyware. I've tried YouTube shorts. If someone could 10x that algorithm, or start a startup where it's TikTok but now with 20% less spying that would be awesome!

Oh and it's hyper addictive like other social media. Although I will say for at least my feed it's much more positive than social media normally is. I don't feel terrible after using it. Just feels like I wasted my time. To that end I uninstall it when I'm done and try to use it only once a week or so. But at the end of the once a week session I usually have a list of books and new tech related concepts to look up.

My experience of TikTok is essentially like a video hacker news that also cracks me up occasionally.

In the beginning I felt the same, like TikTok was able to figure out what kind of content I wanted from the signals I was giving it.

But lately I’m getting bored with it. I feel like TikTok has put me into too narrow of a type of interests. And now for every fun or interesting video that I see, there is like five or ten videos that are too much of the same as what I’ve seen a million times already.

Idk, maybe I’ve just been spending too much time on TikTok lately and it was bound to happen regardless. Maybe even it’s not TikTok maybe it’s just me. That I am tired of watching videos in general, except for the ones that I can use for something. I’m gonna take a break from TikTok.

TikTok doesn't promote this "legend" whatsoever. Indeed, 99% of the time I've read about TikTok's algorithm, it has been naysayer conspiring about how it's an evil addiction engine.

I've seen zero articles technically praising TikTok.

Like everything, it probably isn't for everyone (as an aside -- it seems like a considerable portion of TikTok's base now are middle aged...they aren't targeting any particular demographic), but personally I get a wonderful selection of FYP videos. I only use the app every week or so, but when I do it is one of the most interesting, entertaining digressions available.

Here's some praise: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algo...

I listened to a podcast recently (Reply All) where they spent quite a bit of time praising the TikTok recommendation engine.

The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm is in news pieces attempting to explain why it took off the way it did. For years we were hearing that social media startups were DOA due to FB and IG domination.

And then BAM, TT swooped in sometime in 2018 and became huge.

I'm in the same age group as you and TT is also not of interest to me. It's possible that I just don't get it for the same reason I didn't get the concept of 'subscribe to this Youtuber'. That kind of amateur video style where you're staring into a camera from your bedroom or your car is just not for me.

> The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm

It's talked about quite frequently on TT itself by people who are not programmers, and more well understood by those people then most people here on HN.

I'd be wary of applying anything you think you know to the community of people using TT today. You aren't familiar with it enough to make any judgement. You don't get it, and it has nothing to do with your age or anything other than your unfamiliarity with TT.

Well they acquired musical.ly (buying it's very young audience).

from the wiki:

"TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on 2 August 2018."

Non Chinese in general didn't realize the ferocious competition between video apps companies like Bytedance and Kuaishou. When tiktok emerged it was already very strong.

Bytedance spent a billion dollars acquiring Musically’s user base and burnt a couple more billion on marketing for TikTok to take off.

Social media startups are still DOA in my book.

I'm in my 30s, and my TikTok feed is amazing. It's mostly STEM folks spreading their expertise, with the occasional funny/viral video. If you hold down on a video you don't like, you can select "not interested" to get less videos like that.

Social media algorithms are rather simplistic now, and only geared towards taxonomy, but things will get a lot worse if people don't begin to properly contextualize the process of mental manipulation that carries on behind these closed doors. Entire platforms, any of them, can become corrupt and geared towards encouraging very bad things.

That statement is not geared towards TikTok specifically, all of them are already dedicated towards encouraging users to create content in hopes of success, but these platforms and even advertisers on the platforms can engineer massive campaigns that influence a lot of people to do potentially very bad things... They really don't care about independent content, and there's very little chance of being discovered, that content just allows them to cover up the underlying motives more perhaps.

Well the ones hyping the algorithm are the users here heavily addicted to the TikTok videos manufactured by the influencers on it. They are clever at crafting these videos as they take multiple attempts created at 'hype houses' and get their viewers addicted to wasting their time on it to the point where they think it is 'worth it'.

Replace 'TikTok' with 'Google' and the 'algorithm' is nothing more than 'personalisation' with mass data collection; Gamed by the influencers to compete for your attention and the same dark patterns used to track your actions and attention. No different to any other social network which the exception of the number of users on there. Nothing has changed.

They are all working for the algorithm and that governs whatever is seen or unseen on the platform. When TikTok decides to change that, well the users will complain once again as they did on other platforms.

It's generally true for the first 30 min. Unless you show signs of interest at the videos you find uninteresting, it'll do a decent job of stabilizing over time.

If you are watching them then it works.

Well I'm not anymore...

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