TikTok’s Secret Sauce | Hacker News Reader

TikTok’s Secret Sauce

knightcolumbia.org

106 pointssebg91 comments

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.

i think they've been cutting down on that. the softcore porn. at least I've been seeing less

They didn't, your algorithm just adjusted because you skipped that content.

> 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)

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.

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.

I've not had a single YouTube short of that type despite using it way too much at times.

It's mostly gaming related and meme videos in my feet, I've never found a way to significantly spice things up sadly so it's really quiet boring most of the time

On non-logged-in/no-history YouTube (e.g. a new private browsing window), there'll usually be 1-3 such shorts in the shelf on the homepage.

Logged in, I think it's tried to show me such a video just once, after I'd been scrolling for way too long. I hit 'dislike' and it hasn't tried again.

Ok, similar here. Normally I get crafts, programming/development and science stuff, and then I look at Youtube in incognito mode. It pushes shorts like crazy, and they're all young women/girls trying on outfits, shuffle dancing, or announcing their minutest feelings in a closeup of well uh, not just their faces, yet filmed very close ...

And if you go to a mcdonalds, open safari (which I never use) and look, it's 10x worse. The girls (and some sports) is the default thing youtube shows.

Try it with incognito on a VPN - I forgot I was on it and went to YouTube (usually logged in because of premium) - literally video suggestions like 10 hottest pornstars from X, thirst traps, "are you smart enough to figure this out" and similar crap.

Without VPN I get a bunch of regional crap music and stuff.

I've been watching shorts a bit because I'm curious about the algorithm and also I don't wanna install tiktok and some of those vids are legit quite amusing.

Most of what it suggests is inline with my youtube subscriptions, but it does consistently push two things I'm totally disinterested in: Andrew Tate interview clips and some weird spam channel that's just videos of attractive female athletes. Nothing I do in the UX to say "stop showing me these" seems to matter.

It's as old as time, but TikTok/Musicaly was the first modern entity to use that as an entry point. The app is a 'fun dance app' where kids would do meme-dances for each other. That's naturally adjacent to the 'thirst trap' content - either by design or by fruition, either way they went full in.

To be fair, the alg will move away from that quickly (or at least it did) if yo don't linger. My feed moved onto cat rescue, farm life, cute kids and really arcane bits of knowledge impressively quickly.

I'm not sour on TikTok - I've discovered interests I never knew I had and there is something to be said for it. And it's not 'directly toxic' like Twitter etc..

Everytime TikTok and it's algo pop up on HN, people can't help but tell on themselves.

Unsure if you're referring to me, but I assure you it's not the case. I've never even watched shorts!

I rarely use YouTube, mainly for tool reviews and an occasional song. When I open the app, I get one suggested video, then a strip of shorts.

Here's a screenshot:

https://i.postimg.cc/HLG4tFKF/Screenshot-20221217-232808-You...

You don’t have to watch shorts to get recommended shorts based on a Google profile which includes content-viewing, searches, etc — and may or may not be based on a device, user-login, IP, region, persona-profile, etc.

Basically, regardless if the recommendation was valid, there’s a reason content that niche was suggested.

This is explicitly YouTube trying to ape TikTok. TikTok started this.

> I’d rather watch someone shape and sand wood at this point.

https://youtube.com/@WoodworkingDIY

>> every time I open YouTube

Never seen anything like that, guessing Google has filtered content based on past views and tied it to browser cookies, device fingerprints, IP, etc.

This does not even have to be your viewing history, could be someone else on same IP and if you even click a video once it gets amplified and paired to the prior profile that produced that recommendation.

Why even assume personalisation like this when it's more likely just demographic based personalisation?

Not assuming anything related to what triggered the personalization, put it for sure is personalization and key is to understand how to feed YouTube so it recommends content you want.

For example, if a friend sends you a video that you’re going to watch because they’re your friend, but you’re not actually interested — do not view it in a way that’s easily tied to your name profile.

its weird that people don't see this as softcore porn, which is what most of it is

Isn't soft core porn full nudity but no depictions of sex? I wouldn't classify these ad porn in the same way I wouldn't call the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue soft core porn, though the purpose of both is titillation.

It depicts sex but there’s no visible penetration (and none occurs)

They all have links to OF pages in their bios as well (sometimes via hosted link pages).

There’s something to be said for giving said teenagers what they want without going “too overboard”.

The posts on HN about the FBI saying TikTok is a security risk (and other general dislike here) has shifted me to Instagram reels (basically the same thing with a slightly less cutting-edge algorithm).

My TikTok feed was 95% stand up comic bits and golden retrievers (with the occasional other cute dog breed). It’s really a marvel of the modern world how closely and relatively-wholesomely the algorithm matches you with what you want to see.

It’s not like the people you’re mentioning are sheltered from NSFW subreddits and other less wholesome content on the internet. The dance trends and generally beautiful people are just what they want to see. That being said, I think the surface-level encouragement of cosmetic surgery that TikTok’s focus on beauty encourages is definitely a hugely negative influence on youth. Just a specific example of popular culture placing undue focus on beauty standards.

> borderline softcore porn

This feels very .. Iranian morality police? It's just dancing, and people who do actually overstep into nudity get banned. Wherever you place the line for "unacceptably sexually suggestive", people are going to walk right up to it.

It's way down on any sensible person's list of "content likely to cause harm".

At least in my view, this isn't a matter of demureness but the intent. Music videos have been doing the same for several decades. Sometimes there is artistic depth or purpose to it but more often than not, it's just "sex sells" - possibly at the cost of the artist's dignity.

If it would be adults nobody would care but the problem is that a major part of the tiktok userbase is quite young, many under 16 yo. Children or teenagers shouldnt get incentivised to dance in a very sexualized way (twerking just for example).

Just dancing is fine, and there certainly are many Tiktoks, perhaps even the majority, where dancing is the primary focus. It's fun, and the movements look cool and make for good content. But some trends lead to Tiktoks that clearly focuses on the sexualization of whoever's on camera, minor or not, and that's also the content that sometimes "hits" on the algorithm and goes viral.

I don't know enough or have enough data to suggest a concrete solution, but thinking about these angles for the popularity of the platform itself can reveal insights that people don't normally think about, in my opinion.

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.

As someone who isn't on Tiktok, could you elaborate on those "entire new genres"?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

No but I will, thanks

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.

How wonderful...

Anyone on YouTube getting hundreds of thousands of views are making waaay more money from the views than anything they destroy filming it.

I hung out with a guy who would do donuts offroad in a brand new Ferrari he just bought because it got millions of views. The damage to the Ferrari was a tiny fraction of the money he made from that video...

The algorithm observes what you pay attention to. You might get stuck in areas for a while, but the faster you swipe away on a type of video the faster you get away from that area.

I've spent a lot of time on tiktok, never got stuck in anything involving 50 liters of ketchup. I do have the occasional video of very beautiful cooking preparation.

> I've spent a lot of time on tiktok, never got stuck in anything involving 50 liters of ketchup. I do have the occasional video of very beautiful cooking preparation.

There’s this weird trend on Facebook/Instagram reels at the moment where people are cooking cheese pasta by putting a block of cheese in a pan, with pasta, dumping a ton of cheese, cheese, stock, spices, cheese, then baking it, and then mixing it together.

It looks disgusting…

content homie

I was wondering that as well and recently came across this long article in the Economist [0] which goes quite into depth how precisely engineered those videos are to capture attention

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221109233539/https://www.econo...

That really is fascinating and well worth a read. The sums of money are amazing, love the network that builds up to produce these.

It would be great to surf inside other people's minds who consume these videos.

Companies are probably promoting stunts that would encourage young naive people to buy their products in mass for dubious recipes and experiences

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

YouTube wished they were as good as TikTok at recommending videos

YT is good but TikTok is great

Some people see the devil in that, which might be true, but from my experience TikTok is the best in class at giving you what you want to see

I just happen to want to see nerdy science videos and hyper local recommendations in my city. Others might see outlets in more destructive hobbies like politics and whatever zoomers get up to these days. But for me it’s all plus side.

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.

> 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-...

TikTok pays peanuts compared to youtube.

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.

Beena while since I came across the information, but I thought TikTok paid better than YouTube shorts, which is the direct comparison.

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.

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).

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), 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).

A methodology or the methodology?

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.

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.)

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.

The "not interested" button does nothing.

That is not my experience.

It hides that specific video locally but does nothing for the algorithm.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

social validation / ego at the minimum. for many people it's a foot in the door to a modern entertainment career, getting sponsorships, etc

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

The scale is the point. There is popular and there is competing with youtube popular

> 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-ci...

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.

TikTok’s algorithm in China promotes more “socially positive” content than in the west. For example, you don’t see “steal a car” challenges go viral there.

> TikTok’s algorithm in China promotes more “socially positive” content than in the west.

Because China literally has a law that states that apps for kids must provide educational content. The USA can do the same if it wants that.

blatant lie

Tate and Rogan and the likes all originate from Youtube/Instagram, Youtube is known for tasteless prank videos, it's full of politic content

On TikTok it's people dancing, DIY tutorials, travels, cooking stuff and cats

Send me a screenshot of your TikTok homepage vs your Youtube trending homepage ;)

Can someone summarize what would make the sort of data TikTok generates useful to the CCP?

I could assume there are a few needles in the haystack-- capturing location data from some new recruit who is filming in a secure location, or some 16-year-old gets mom's patent application in frame while twerking. But it's a huge and very expensive haystack to create and search. I'd think most nonclassified-level insights they could get are also easily obtained from commercial data brokers.

It would be interesting to try to leverage "cool" for military/political advantage. I can't really imagine it working in anything but a terribly cringy way.

On a broader level, I feel like there must be people in PLA research labs saying "Okay, so American teenagers are even more embarrassing, shallow and petty than our prior data indicates."

Not the data, but one concern is that China may decree certain topics boosted/diminished. My understanding is in the Chinese version of the app educational content is boosted for instance, and things having to do with Hong Kong are essentially shadow banned.

This seems like it's difficult to pull off in a competitive market though. If you have too hard of a moderating hand, it's going to drive users away.

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