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Comment by 2c2c2c | Hacker News Reader

maybe I don't get it. I search "climbing". i assume there must be a lot of this kind of content being produced by 15-25yos but there's basically none. i've searched this term every couple of months for a year now and the same exact results are always on the first page

maybe this is too niche of a sport?

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You don't "hunt" for videos on tiktok, you "gather" them. Just relax and browse.

>Just relax and browse

our social media platform brings the soma to you!

We will tell you where to go today.

Great metaphor

tiktok's search sucks and doesn't seem to interact with their algorithm much. it's kind of silly but to bootstrap it you need to flip through the feed until you happen upon something you like, then like that video. you can also follow the person and scroll through their profile to like other of their videos. it takes a little while (couple days) but once it starts spinning up it gets really good at showing you what you want. i ended up uninstalling it since it was too tempting to waste time on (now i waste time on twitter, eh)

I think this is a strategic decision on TikTok’s part. It doesn’t want to be the place you go to view climbing content or whatever. It wants to be the place that keeps you up to date on everything, from your hobbies to random things that make you laugh, to your aspirations. Obviously some people will quit before it can figure them out like this, but eventually it gets pretty accurate

Yes, I've noticed this too. your best bet is to search for something, like the few videos that come up, and then hope that the algorithm catches on. I'm still new to TikTok, but I wish there were easier ways to "collaborate" with the algorithm to try to get it to feed you topics you know you're interested in instead of being limited to the for you page.

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