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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

I want to know what portion of the algorithm is responsible for, when you are given a new blank slate user, "tries" certain categories

like, let's present this user travel or cooking material, that's usually safe

then, let's try things like certain genres of music, we'll see what they like/don't like

what i don't get is... how does that first recommendation on the #foryoupage or discover or whatever it's called, starts recommending you the sex workers who try to post as close to NSFW material as possible, get you to land on their profile, in their bio is a link to their Instagram or Linktree, and then from there it's an OnlyFans link

does the system try to recommend a soft entry into this content and then just pivot away if the user doesn't like it?

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TikTok likely has enough information about others that it can begin to build a profile about you from the moment you login.

Let's use a hypothetical scenario: Someone states that they identify as a man, they're in the 20-25 year old age range, and based on phone location you can gather that they live in Texas. Now you're labeled as a 20-25yo Texas Man. Then you can look at others who fall in the "20-25yo Texas Man" category and show things you'd expect that group to like because chances are, you're more similar to others in the group than being a true outlier. If other people in the "20-25yo Texas Man" group have expressed interest in Apples, NSFW material, and lawn mowing videos, then since you're in that group, it's going to start off with that same material.

disclaimer: i've never signed up for tiktok and have no clue if this is how they do it.

You're correct, this is how they do it - or at least that's what they presented at a conference a few years back.

100% it is. I'm a 34 year old woman and have to be pretty aggressive about not wanting the mommy and wifey shit. I want cats, watching things explode, and the Zoomers' digital Dadaism.

The classic terminology for this in AI/ML is "explore vs exploit", i.e. striking a balance between trying new things (in hopes of finding a new favorite) vs going back to the tried-and-true.

I have noticed these types of videos slip into Facebook’s Reels late at night. It’ll switch from showing me people making candy and doing home improvement stuff - videos with tens of thousands of views and likes, then it will cut to a video with almost 0 views/likes that are basically the beginning of the Onlyfans sales funnel. Never when the sun is up!

We've reinvented television.

It probably just recommends a bunch of stuff that is popular at the moment for new users.

Or it tries to match you to an existing profile it has from some ad network data or something.

> It probably just recommends a bunch of stuff that is popular at the moment for new users.

I get that, but I feel like it starts with "known safe/neutral" material like cooking/traveling/photography/whatever

How can it detect "hey, this person might like if we introduce softcore porn into their timeline"? Like, do they have softcore porn identified on a scale and they introduce the really "safe" stuff and then gradually crank it up? Why are they presenting softcore porn at all? The Apple App Store is cool with that ToC wise?

I think you're overcomplicating it.

It's not trying to start with "safe" stuff, it's not trying to "gently introduce" softcore porn.

It's going "This video got a billion views in the last 30 minutes, people must love it, let's keep amplifying it to any account that hasn't explicitly rejected this category of content"

Presumably blank slate accounts are treated as open to anything, until people start curating.

during the curation process, how does it start to slowly introduce sex workers? because when I was on TikTok, it was a non-zero amount of the content

At the risk of going down a rabbit hole for no real reason, I don't use tiktok but when I speak to those that do I've not yet heard this softcore porn/sex worker thing.

For example, in my mind, not all ASMR content might lead to sexualized recommendations, but a girl in a bikini top with cat ears doing ASMR might generate both recommendations for ASMR and other more cam-girl like content. So I guess my question is, when you're starting off in tiktok seeing cooking videos, do you trend towards ones that feature 'sexier' hosts? They might not be sex workers to you, but they might be making tiktok think you're interested.

Also, what does tiktok know about you to start? What info do you have to give it to start an account?

so you agree that tiktok is able to classify "cooking videos" and "cooking videos with slightly sexualized hosts"? and that they "willingly" "try to push in recommendations" posts with higher "sexuality" attached content?

TikTok gives you the content you enjoy. When someone complains about TikTok content I basically assume they don't understand how good the algorithm is and that you just like that kind of stuff. I don't care whether you do or not but TikTok thinks you do because of the feedback you are giving the app. I mean, you clicked their profile and followed their links all the way to onlyfans. They have to assume you like it.

No, again, my assumption is that the user would trend towards that content. You don't need to push people towards it if you have a nuanced enough profile of each video.

(all things made up for this example)

cookinglady39 does a beach bbq recipe tiktok, in a bathing suit. You watch it. They give you another cookinglady39 video where she's back in the kitchen, you skip it, they give you a new cooking host also female, also dressed in summer attire cooking outside. You watch til the end. It gives you a man cooking outside, you skip. Nothing you've seen so far has been sexual, but tiktok is probably picking up on some trends that might lead them to give you more and more things done by women, then women in a certain setting, dressed a certain way and so on.

I think you are anthropomorphizing the algorithm. The algorithim likely isn't ranking sexuality. It just knows people really love this content.

You’re kind of outing yourself here.

All it’s doing is giving you more of what you show the most interest in.

Assuming we're starting with a blank slate, and a heteronormative male user that would happen to enjoy consuming that content on TikTok:

In the initial set of recommendations based only on overall popularity, there might be a video that's popular that incidentally contains a pretty woman. If the user skips most videos after barely a few seconds, but watches that one fully 3 times through, then the recommendation engine probably looks at users it does know more about that exhibit similar behavior and have higher engagement. It will then recommend videos that those users would probably watch a lot. Now the recommendations are shifted in the direction from "generally popular" to "contains pretty women". You repeat this enough times and the user ends up navigating the space of recommendations until they're maximally engaged (in theory). That means they might end up at softcore porn. Goodness knows that porn is popular if nothing else.

The recommendation engine doesn't even have to know anything about the content of the video. Just know what already high-engagement users that watched that video a lot also watched a lot.

That's at it's most basic really, I'm sure there's additional cleverness on top in practice.

So, in the old days, if you fall asleep in front of the TV you might have some weird infomercial-fueled dreams. But they’re purged when you wake up.

Now, if you fall asleep in front of your phone screen, it takes days or weeks to shake out that mistake?

Maybe, or maybe the system is good enough to low weight or completely discount hours long periods of non interaction.

My guess is that there is no "slowly introducing" anything.

It just sees that content made by sex workers is popular and puts it in your feed.

The point of the original poster was that those videos have zero views or low rating - not popular by any means - and they appear out of place in the stream.

Youtube does it too, and my best guess is that it is a form of supervised training and the real question is who's being trained.

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