I Trained My TikTok
metastable.org
metastable.org
I appreciate the screenshots because they show a side of TikTok I wasn't aware of.
I've still up to this point managed to avoid ever installing or browsing TikTok. The few tiktoks I've seen were clips forwarded to me. I'm sure, like Twitter, it's full of awful content by default that you can learn to filter and fine tune until it feeds you good content, but that's exactly why I'm avoiding it. I never even had a twitter account until 2020(that I started following out of covid lockdown boredom) and 3 months later I was becoming really heated politically and felt like America was collapsing. Reading about a new social network is like reading about a new flavor of crack. I'm sure it feels nice but No Thanks!
On Twitter, no amount of curation, mutes, or blocks will save you from screenshots of content you don’t want to see.
On Reddit, you rely entirely up to the mods of a subreddit. Once a subreddit gets too popular, the submission rate overwhelms volunteer resources.
Facebook is just garbage.
Everything about TikTok's algorithmic malleability can be said about YouTube, so I am confused as to why this is news to anyone.
One difference is that YT also has longer videos. Unlike fixed-length blurbs of TT, this increases the challenge for recommendation algorithms, but I welcome this heterogeneity.
Personally am using it through web only.
I wish we didn't need to reverse-engineer recommendation algorithms.
Last year I spent an insane amount of hours watching what I thought was a mix of entertainment and educational videos but everything is entertainment on YouTube or as it seems in all the social networks. I’m not against entertainment but I want to be in control when I seek it, not letting myself be hooked by those algorithms all the time every day. They are so scary because they work too well.
The other thing it does, is continuously offer people extreme content of whatever genre because it thinks it can get high engagement. Whether it's UFOs, alt-right radicalizaion, or conspiracy theory of the day it constantly serves up content from the extremes of society because the people that do watch it typically become obsessive. The behavior of the people most susecptible to the fringes, because they watch so much youtube has enormous impact on what the majority of us see. YTs algorithm is absolute trash.
There is a bunch of amazing content on Youtube, but I never find it due to recommendations. Only due to external pages that link to it which then show links to other related items. YT native recommendation is terrible.
Watch a video and get recommendations for 30 other videos posted by that person, and 15 other videos on almost the exact same topic covering what you just saw. And then mixed in a few "Top 40" style videos from the genere you're in. Ie something barely unrelated, but is obviously popular. Absolute trash.
I dislike YouTube but not as much as TikTok. One makes you choose what to watch, but the other has no long-form content whatsoever. One of is motivated by greed, but the other is backed by CCP.
During pandemic at some point I started indiscriminately watching more YouTube while logged in, and do I regret it. It responded after my viewing habits changed. It seems possible to change it back gradually, but it takes some effort I wish I didn’t have to take.
Second-order volition (“want to want to”) plays a big role in allowing yourself to evolve, i.e. you can force yourself to do something until you become interested in it. In this sense recommendations become a self-fulfilling prophecy, an automatic labeling system that makes you behave the way it thinks you should behave, which is approximately how you behaved before (ideally; we set aside the issue of algorithmic manipulation).
This is true for any platform that has recommendations, and I am highly suspicious of the ones that don’t allow anonymous viewing.
Youtube's recommendation algorithm is absolutely terrible.
EDIT: Also, Tiktok allows videos of up to ten minutes now, and still works well with that length.
2. If you don't want to register a video, you can remove it from your watch history, or you can watch it anonymously. What about TikTok?
3. I know TikTok has a 10 minute limit now, I meant 40 minutes and up. Where in the world do 10 minutes count as "long"?
2/ you can dislike the video and tell it not to recommend it (unlike YouTube), and you can watch the videos on their website anonymously
3/ are you seriously watching 40+ minutes on your phone? They have two different goals, and that's fine.
And do you personally ever do that? How exactly? The crippled slow 'online viewer' that doesn't allow you to even do a simple search and blocks you with a login wall after a couple of minutes?
> are you seriously watching 40+ minutes on your phone? They have two different goals, and that's fine.
Yes, why not? An informative hands-on engineering workshop or an interview with a screenwriter easily run hours. If you will say 'TikTok is not designed for that', well that's my point, YouTube has equally great recommendation system and is designed for that equally as well as it's designed for 30-second cute animal videos.
> 10 year old account
Sorry to hear that YouTube is broken for you. I just can't imagine using TikTok for anything informative, like TFA suggests, when something like YouTube exists.
Also, perhaps visiting a streamer’s profile, as a form of interacting with content, is training the algorithm to give you more live streams like this.
Then suddenly a few weeks ago it totally stopped working. I'd click "don't recommend this channel" then refresh and the channel would be right there.
I researched and the recommendation to fix this is to clear your watch history. So I did that, and it cleared all my recommendation building entirely. "don't recommend this channel" works again but I'm starting from scratch and no doubt it'll stop working in the future again.
Whenever I see any video in my feed I don't want to watch I just do that, and since it runs out of things then it has no choice but recommend new and different things.
I'm only aware about the "Not Interested" menu option, but I doesn't reliably remove the video from my feed. It would probably get removed for a particular viewing session, but I usually found it gets recommended again after some days.
Is there anyways to remove the video permanently ?
If your recommendations are currently absolute trash it might even be best to clear your watch history altogether and start from scratch.
But FWIW... it's absolutely worth it. The YouTube recommendation algorithm, when trained, works REALLY well and is a gold mine of useful content.
If you search you'll find this is extremely common - I think there was even a HN post about it a few weeks ago.
So true about Twitter - I cannot for the life of me let it know I don't like sports.
Right now it just removes toxic crap from the sidebar, but it'd be pretty simple to make it remove tweets as well. Biggest missing feature is custom filter lists.
Control over one’s thoughts—metacognition, or thinking about your thinking—is an essential tool for advancing your life. It’s a huge focus of the formal education system, why teachers insist on “showing your work” and not just writing the answer down by itself. Understanding science is not just knowing that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but understanding the system of thinking that led scientists to that conclusion.
It’s also a huge focus of therapy, getting patients to recognize their own patterns of thinking so that they can decide whether or not to change them. Even corporate “EQ” training starts with getting people to recognize when they are feeling strong emotions and then think about why.
Does TikTok by itself teach these skills? To me the answer seems obviously “no.” One can bring an analytical mind to TikTok, but does TikTok encourage analytical thinking? I don’t see how. It seems to me it is built to deliver an experience that is the exact opposite of analytical thinking.
And this is why we worry about the kids on TikTok. Metacognition is one of the later patterns of thought to develop, and therefore something most kids struggle with in general.
> If a video seemed repetitive or shallow or snacky in any way, I skipped it, and I tried hard to do this within the first few seconds..... if a video seemed nourishing or worthwhile, but was a bit slow-paced or challenging, I stuck with it... Quickly my For You page was transformed. I saw long thoughtful videos...
I haven't seen teenagers dancing or prank videos for months, and while it's far from perfect (in particular, they have some moderation problems), I learn a lot from the videos I watch and get a lot of value from it.
Is there a name for this behavior in which a company decides how their system should work to make it easier for the user, but actually makes usage harder, and the company stands with its arms crossed for years never understanding what the user really needs, like in this case a simple "don't show me more/I want more" buttons and a little history list to up/down vote? Usage blindness? Distortion field?
Human interests are versatile, but that’s what you look at first time opening it. I think youtube does the same – my decade old feed is nothing like rage/news/pop/teens – but most of us have no patience to train it.
Ideally I’d prefer switching between “moods” on the frontpage, where predefined options would be like “I feel like astronomy”, “I feel like laughing” or “I feel like watching teen girls dancing”. All in good time. The problem is the stupid algos think that I’m an invariable blockhead 24/7, because some ai counter says so.
But yeah, to get there it takes discipline and deliberate action. Any action (full view, like, share, favorite) is now a mix of "is it worth having this in my feed", "does the creator deserves a like", "do I enjoy this enough to like" and yeah, a good measure of keeping the fun in the mix.
It would be fun to follow these 'models' instead of the actual Algorithm, so I can easily view the world through this individual (or businesses ;) ) "lens".
The TikTok/Twitter/Instagram that I know is totally different than the version you’re familiar with. Dropping into your feeds would give me a totally different impression of what those platforms are
Basically, the way everyone mentally models and perceives these platforms is unique. YouTube in my brain is literally a different application than the YouTube in your brain
We’re probably really underestimating the impact of these differences on the way we view the world around us
I don't think we're really underestimating it that badly. If you participate in the discourse around these platforms you'll find a discussion that very much understands and centers the mechanism over the outcome. You'll find researchers replicating what their subjects see on TikTok, or lamenting the tendency of the YouTube algorithm to lead people down the alt-right pipeline.
When you see people complaining about specific content. It's either a surface level analysis, or rooted in wanting to puncture the pipeline. I think It's pretty clear that interested experts are very much aware of the uniquely multifaceted nature of these mega-brands. Even if the general public is yet to catch up completely.
Very big difference from Amazon videos and YouTube, where I feel that they are trying to shove the content, they want me to see, down my throat. This is one of the main reasons I completely cancelled Netflix.
I ended up buying $600 worth of long-form products from the TikTok content providers that I watch, without any advertising from them. I am guessing that letting customers watch what they want works out as a business model.
I suspect that my experience is not the norm, though.
A tool or a toy? I don’t have tiktok and am suspicious whether folks itt mistake a good algorithm for a good content, or is it really helpful to your interests. I mean, if youtube or twitter had it, would you still stick to tiktok? What does it deliver apart from fragmented “shorts” erudition?
I’d even force myself to watch videos I didn’t like if the subject was highly interesting me and I wasn’t getting enough of that type of content. Using TikTok in this way frequently inspires me to be better
The type of content I receive with this account is extremely different than another that I use when I’m on “autopilot.”
Its not yours its theirs. it might sound like just a way of speech or semantics but its a fundamental difference.
That users think the application is their own creation is an intentional effect from the developers.
It's like Apple in a way. A brand is not just a thing, it's part of your identity. Tiktok becomes a (e.g. small, frivolous) part of your very self.
I think this boils down to a desire for connection, rather than creation, and is part of a decade-long consumer shift toward seeking individual relationships and bucking corporate brands. TikTok, Twitch and YouTube are the primary channels for this, and it's on display 24/7. There are millions of people throwing mountains of money at individuals, not just for sharing their thoughts or talents, but by creating a genuine connection and community around that content. And that's the reason humans won't stop creating content no matter how great AI gets -- because it was never really about the content to begin with.
However, AI will assuredly become the dominant form of entertainment at some point, as the predictive capabilities alone would allow for flawless content suggestion for any given situation. And that's before the inevitability of generating content indistinguishable from anything Hollywood or Nashville can produce, including online personalities that mimic human behavior well enough to create the same "genuine" connections I mentioned in the first paragraph.
Some people are almost becoming friends with AI already
Twitter is constantly trying to trigger me with some 'bait' statement by someone on the side of an issue.
Our entire media/political class seems to want to make statements that 'pop' which is basically 'taking a strong stand' on something.
'Base TikTok' - untrained and just the popular stuff is really trashy 'Island Boys' and 'Johnny Depp' - but 'trained' TT is reasonable.
There's a lot of very interest creators out there.
Maybe the hurdle of making a video is just that much higher than typing in a few angry words?
It's China, they don't like political agitation.
I thought Instagram was bad.
Trained or not, there is nothing good about scrolling through stuff for every moment when you're bored.
Boredom is nature's way of making the universe go forward. And it's best when its channeled into creative, industrious or thoughtful pursuits. Instead we have channeled Boredom into watching barely clad teens dance, or women complain about dating misadventures.
And the paradoxical thing about it. Is that the creators vs viewers ratio is still 99% viewers to 1% creator. Creators are the ones that have channeled their boredom (however misplaced) into something that others watch.
But then all of this is human nature anyway. And perhaps I'm railing about nothing. Flame away!
OP here. TikTok doesn't mandate you use it every moment you are bored, that's a choice made by the user. However I agree it is very potent entertainment technology, and I have read about people using it 8 hours a day, and hating what it's doing to them. I have not read the book, but it brings to mind Infinite Jest, a film "so entertaining that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die." The premise of my post is it can be used for good instead of evil, but it does require discipline.
And I really mean it; if you're the sort that has an interest in figuring out how things work, which is clearly the case here - you will find it effortless and fascinating reading.
I'd like to read the book, though. I've never paid much attention to media studies but now with AIs powering things it's becoming more interesting to me. And I know people have been talking about it since the 1960s.
The structure and exposition of his arguments is what makes the text particularly engrossing, and I am loath to try to summarize what is best experienced within its intended context.
But I'll give you some copied paste from Wikipedia to get you started:
> McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.
but I also think its possibly the lowest of the low when it comes to the dominant prevailing culture. Even ignoring that awful synthesized voice.
That being said I'm not sure whether this is just an insight into what I'm now going to literally call the "unwashed masses".
I spend most of my time on the internet in niche communities full of smart people, even shitposters have an intellect to them, most normal people do not, hence awful TikTok spam.
I absolutely could not stand it. Not for intellectual content. Not for entertainment. I will never use it again and will recommend everyone to avoid this epic and monumental failure of human enterprise.
It makes me sad about the human species. This is what most people like to do.
TikTok is a triumph, especially in the light of the big social network outrage machines. Even at its worst it still can do things like introducing people to Chopin in a manner rarely seen since the Beethoven ‘Fur Elise’ McDonalds commercial in the 80s.
Why?
Writing TikTok off as dancing or dating misadventure stories is exactly what the article shows isn’t necessarily correct.
There are TikToks on eigenvectors, Taylor series expansions, making butter blocks for traditional layered pastries, calculus, Kubernetes and how to exit vi.
There are all kinds of creators whose content is worthy of consumption on TikTok: musicians, visual artists, comedians and dancers.
There are book reviews, hints for authors, demonstrations of music theory, memorization tricks, Japanese pitch accent, notes on philology/philately/phillo dough.
It doesn’t have everything, and plenty of interesting topics that are just grist for simple comedy, but it can get better.
.
This is both inspiring and terrifying to me. We're working toward AI that can almost read your mind and show you videos that are extremely relevant and impactful with nothing more than watch time measurements.
If we gave that kind of power a goal like "make them better people/help them achieve more/find happiness" we could usher in a new golden age of achievement, fulfillment, and mental health.
Unfortunately, right now we've only figured out how to give this power a single goal, "increase watch time/engagement," and I don't want to be turned into a zombie optimized for ad consumption.
TikTok content is short and typically pretty interesting. You can typically tell within the first 5 seconds whether the video is for you and unlike YouTube you don't have to sit through long introduction paragraphs or sponsorships. They also added a progress bar that you can scrub through so if a video seems longer than it needs to then you can skip through it to the interesting part.
You just need to train your brain to put TikTok down instead of constantly scrolling which takes a little self control (but what in life doesn't?)
You most definitely can't. The vast majority of TikTok's are extremely clickbait-y and entice you to watch till the end without you knowing if there will be a payoff.
When I first started using TikTok I felt like I was constantly getting scammed of my time.
I think TikTok is the worst social media platform. It's extremely easy to waste a large amount of time on it and come away with nothing.
TikTok added a progress bar so you can skip to the end in those cases and save yourself the time now.
Or, you can just scroll past those videos. Again, the reason they're clickbaity is because your brain thinks there's going to be a payoff, but if you train you brain to instantly scroll past those videos then you'll also train the algorithm to show less of those kinds of videos.
So? It's still limited by the ADD format of TikTok and you'll forget about it 3 seconds later. It's garbage.
Sure, this isn’t always good, because then you can have 1000 snowclones of something uninteresting, but it isn’t particularly invasive to the general experience.
YouTube just bumps you to the next video. That’s worse if you’re trying to retain info. Coursera courses usually have short snippets of video throughout the lesson, there’s nothing particularly ‘ADD’ about that.
It’s very common for people to memorize TikToks and I remember the content plenty of the ones I have looked at, despite being diagnosed with ADHD.
Why exactly would I retain information less from TikTok than from a Khan Academy video?
>Why exactly would I retain information less from TikTok than from a Khan Academy video?
Unless you are watching some sort of structured course type thing that is broken down into... 100's of 3 minute videos? I don't see the point.
I was in a computer science theory class at a prestigious university, and a number of otherwise extremely intelligent CS majors had a curious difficulty understanding the Pumping Lemma. They would ask the teacher to explain it. This happened a few times since attendance wasn’t mandatory and not everyone was present.
The resulting explanation from the instructor would absolutely fit into a three minute TikTok, plus it would be rewatchable. Unfortunately, there’s no video there that explains it today, but that could be remedied.
I generally agree with your comment but no, this is a ridiculous piece of scientism.
not to mention when people use it around me its just so annoying to listen to in the background. the stupid synthesized voice or loud dumb music just one after another is annoying to say the least.
Back in the early 2010s it mainly consisted of hip - actually cool photography feeds.
I don’t recall TikTok not being a cesspool since its early days of operation.
I don't know if there's a paradox here, TikTok has hundreds of millions of users and therefore (1%) millions of creators making content people enjoy.
I'm not saying that it doesn't have issues, and it does feel like it's trying REALLY hard to keep me hooked in some pretty morally ambiguous ways, but it's not as toxic as the media would like you to believe.
I assume you also don't go on Twitter or watch TV or movies when you're bored since then you're not "pursuing" anything. People are allowed to just chill and turn their brain off for a bit.
But (not having deliberately tried to "train" TikTok), it also shows me plenty of content I find depressing or juvenile. And I am firmly convinced that the experience of continuous scrolling through very short videos damages my brain and attention span much more than watching a traditional TV show or movie.
When I had TikTok for the first time - I was like, “is this really for everyone? I don’t get it. I’m getting endless videos of hot women dancing or showing off their figure. I could see why teenage boys get into this but women???” I didn’t even watch many of them but you watch a few (cause boobs) then it can sometimes think that’s the only thing it should show you until forever.
It’s not a perfect algo by any stretch. I was not the only guy who fell victim to this pattern and was interested in TikTok at first but gave it up for a bit because it was showing nothing but booba.
Same with a lot of videos. You watch a few and it decides you should see them forever even if you just had an interest for a few minutes one particular day. It requires specifically saying you’re not interested in order to get it to go away. It requires adjusting.
And it might contain creative things but enough is very repetitive.
Secondly, I've been told it takes 20 minutes of browsing and it would train automagically. Well after 30 minutes that I regret spending, it was still showing me the most terrible content humanity has ever produced and my eye were bleeding.
I uninstalled the app and won't touch it again. It feels like being a teen forcing oneself to start smoking cigarets.
Bruh, get real. TikTok is filled with women complaining about dating. Why not just admit what is staring you in the face? There is an entire segment of the universe that just responds to those videos.
And there is plenty on TikTok that is good.
But even if you can "train" it, the problem is that it's scientifically engineered to keep your scrolling. I think that part you missed.
Watch Wall-E where everyone sits in special "TikTok" chairs, have food delivered to them and the screen continually scrolls. That movie was before its time man.
Watch here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw7WAq_GZY8]
Unfortunately, you will not get the message until you have to go out with friends that are tuned out to you because they're constantly scrolling TikTok on their phones.
(And yes, I have installed TikTok for weeks and months at a time and always ended up deleting it and washing down my phone. Even after "Training" it.)
I’ve never see a video with a woman complaining about dating on TikTok. In years of use.
I’m not saying you are not seeing them, just that I have not seen one.
Maybe you need better friends. Or you could try being more assertive and saying something like, "when you are looking at your phone instead of paying attention to me, I feel ignored. If you continue to do that, I will leave and do something else." And then ACTUALLY leave if they don't stop! They will learn quickly that if they want to enjoy your company (if it is indeed enjoyable) then they will need to have self restraint.
If this is what you see on your TikTok, it's because those are the videos you lingered on the longest. Pro-Tip: Never 'hate watch' on TikTok.
Edit: Not sure why I was downvoted, but I really can't get into TikTok. I went there, the default feed was 100% uninteresting, I wont wade through that for a week looking for videos that might be there. I searched for some topics, for example "Warhammer", it is a very popular topic and it would be interesting to find more of that, but the search didn't turn up a single video about it. So I don't really see what I am supposed to do then, I am sure they have at least some warhammer videos but if it takes hours or days or weeks of work to find them then I don't see why I should bother with TikTok at all.
TikTok does not have anything fundamentally different than other forms of social media. But sure, please keep ranting about how anything you dislike is somehow literally cancer.
I think the saddest thing is how addicted people have become to it. Instagram too.
Just read through the comments on this post, so many people defending it even though the content is just user-generated hot takes with catchy quotes and people saying things they want to hear and want to agree with.
It’s poison.
Be careful. If all you get is what you want to hear, you aren’t training TikTok, TikTok is training you!
And you keep coming back to the feeding tube for more.
If they were their own apps you would appreciate it
Most bored people do nothing creative. And the creative ones get inspiration by things like TikTok.
On the other hand there's an entire class of dopamine fasting, knowledge graph generating busybodies who have not output one meaningful thing in their entire career. If anything I feel like this kind of behavior and scoffing at mass entertainment is inversely correlated with having built anything at all.
That aside I found the crew of a cargo container ship vlogging on TikTok who were shipping stuff around central Asia and following them was by far one of the most interesting things I've seen on social media.
This would also explain why people has so wildly different views on the site here.
There's a search icon (magnifying glass) in the top right of your home feed.
I’m just wary of entertainment that’s engineered to be addictive. Simple, bite-sized, all sugar and salt, served in a bottomless bag.
I don’t bring certain snacks into my house because I can’t trust myself to snack responsibly. TikTok is the same, but with the flavour expertly tailored to my weaknesses.
I truly bemoan the HN algorithm that made you do this for karma.
For the most part, yes. Though I find it pretty useful while brushing my teeth. You don't need any audio. And my brush time has gone up a bit since I started this viewing habit.
Clearly, this is working very well, and more of this is the solution to all of the problems that we're facing as a result of hooking four or five of every single person on the planet's belongings to the internet and connecting them all together.
I feels to me a bit like watching stand-up in basements in the 90s. Loads and loads of raw comedic talent and a platform to them to do whatever they want quickly.
I, like some others here, am in the minority. HN is my only social network and I consider this more a forum. I am not on any social network as my opinion about them is they are tools to spy on you and waste your time.
I am not disputing that there isn't some good stuff on these networks just that I'm not interested in being a product or wasting my time looking at trivial pish; I would also include training a social media AI system in this too.
All power to you if you find benefit in these networks but I'm yet to come across anything worth the effort on them.
You can see this firsthand by not following/subscribing/etc to anyone on these platforms and seeing the algorithm train and change as you slowly consume content.
At a certain point, you will even have your default feed settings changed as if you were following a modest amount of people.
Many platforms hide these feed settings by default so that you consume without realizing it. Some notable examples of this are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You won't even notice you're being manipulated until you check your settings again. Ever wonder why certain things like stories, shorts, or reels all of a sudden are being shown from people you don't care about? Well, now ya know.
The one thing I believe is "uplifting" about TikTok is that the power is being shifted to the individual creator rather than the big six media conglomerates. Instead of a couple hundred channels, there's thousands. But the problem with that is there is an infinite amount of content to be entertained with. America is already a big shopping mall with everyone holding out their credit cards. This makes more of these channels advertise even more shit we don't need in our lives with the impression that it's personal or everyday when the creator simply needs to survive and put food on the table too.
Most social apps right now are run like bad casinos, where people get exploited often for money and time... They prey on users in stealth from many angles, and now they even hand select who wins and who doesn't.
Ask yourself why these companies need so many employees (psychology experts, PR teams, Lobbyists, Lawyers, Moderators, Product Owners, Developers, Financial Experts, etc) if the algorithm is the key factor at play...
The algos are made with non transparent bias that we simply can't see, and that bias and disposition can be changed at any time to cover it's tracks... Bias which is often toxic and geared towards company profit over doing what's right. We only understand how damaging that bias is when it becomes a trend of kids destroying school bathrooms or when we find out people who projected an image of fame and wealth were actually completely faking the persona and unfortunately harming themselves as a result.
I often rant about social media because it's really a system of rewards for bad behavior where only the platform ends up profiting most... It can also destroy respect and disregard cultures and encourage danger and self harm for others.
The reason why most are complacent is because everyone is having a different experience on it... If you're suicidal, the algorithm floods you with dark content that makes you into a profitable news worthy story. If you're an "influencer", the algorithm floods you with tips to keep you working hard within the platform and encourages you to buy "essential" gear to boost your career (that pays VERY LITTLE in comparison to the time and money you spend on the influencer pursuit).
In my opinion as a developer, most of the major app (TikTok, Instagram, FB, etc...) social algos are not designed any more with the intent of making sure you're entertained online, and they're bent on maximizing engagement and ad revenue for these companies at any cost...
Understanding that first is the way to stay sane when using any of these apps/sites. Other than that I do enjoy doom scrolling through memes when I'm bored, it's kind of like a video game you don't have to really invest much into.
I have the app. I only open it to upload videos. Then I ignore it and its notifications.
Instagram works well for me. I have “trained” it to recommend fitness, football, & comedy. I go to search, watch what’s on the first page without scrolling, and then I’m out.
https://liveinnovation.org/dopamine-more-than-pleasure-the-s...
I figure a big challenge for TT is they must send you less good stuff to rate it. They probably hold off doing that until you appear hooked. You wouldn’t want a new user to get a bizarre/lame video with 5 views.
The tool helps to download posts and videos from TikTok for a given set of hashtags over a period of time.
Users can create a growing database of posts for specific hashtags which can then be used for further hashtag analysis.
It uses the tiktok-scraper Node package to download the posts and videos.
tiktok-scraper : https://github.com/drawrowfly/tiktok-scraper
Instead of shouting, "Boo!" Why not talk about how to engage well?
Videos that make you smile or laugh might be a hard criteria for it to learn. Compared to specific interests like “wood working” or “astronomy”.
Unlike TikTok’s one video at a time with YT I’m scanning through dozens of thumbnails for what to watch.
You can say just about anything about the content on TikTok. There's vapid stuff. There's funny stuff. There's informative stuff. There's insightful stuff. It's all there and you can easily shape your feed to whatever you want.
But there's also a lot of really dark stuff. And by that I mean how TikTok themselves interact with people. I once got suspended for updating my profile to say I liked Star Trek. I'd randomly get content warnings and videos removed for "sexual" content for videos that didn't even contain any people. And I was only experiencing the tip of the iceberg. I saw several popular accounts get banned, often for "sexual content" or "harassment", of people who did nothing of the sort.
And of course, appeals for review were always useless.
There are a lot of hidden anti-features in TikTok, too. User accounts exist in different classes, based on follower count (undocumented, naturally). Certain features don't get unlocked until you hit a certain number of followers. I got high enough that I could post 3 minute videos, but I never got high enough that I was allowed to put a link to my website in my bio (that got me another suspension). New accounts get spread further, more often, to give you a dopamine boost of attention that you end up chasing with no insight into why your viewership is dwindling even though you're learning and posting better videos. Various hidden rate limits are in place that can trigger account suspensions if you do something like edit your bio too many times in a row (like, maybe cuz you're fixing a typo). There are shadow suspensions, too, where going over a certain quota of posts means your subsequent posts won't show up in anyone's feeds, which can happen easily if you're having fun with making reply chains.
And always. Always the complete lack of human review. It became really clear that the "report user" button is being abused to brigade people off of the app. As I said, I saw several popular accounts get banned for trumped up charges, with some extremely worrying patterns emerging regarding the race, sex, and sexual orientation of said accounts (and never any of their content, that I could ever tell).
TikTok is an amazing app and community. But TikTok is also an extremely terrible company. For that reason, I gave up on it, and I strongly discouraging getting started with it.
I think the game they are playing is hoping new users and creators pour in faster than burned and burned out ones leave. Which is sad, but from an economic angle makes some sense.
In a way they are promising a service they can’t possibly deliver on. It would (presumably) be unaffordable to have top-notch moderation and customer service.
I think some day we might decide it’s not legal to run a site so big you cannot possibly police it.
I'm tend to not follow. I'm not sure how that factors in, except obviously it populates your Following page.