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Comment by robopsychology | Hacker News Reader

> When she opened the TikTok app on his iPad, she found a library of more than 3,000 videos her son had bookmarked, liked, saved or tagged as a favorite. She could see the terms he’d searched for: Batman, basketball, weightlifting, motivational speeches. And she could see what the algorithm had brought him: many videos about depression, hopelessness and death.

Horrific.

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The algorithm doesn’t work only on searches. Or even mostly. It is largely based on engagement. Which videos do you actually watch and comment on.

Almost nothing I search for is on my FYP. My FYP is almost all pranks, basketball, dancing in public, and Harry Mack.

I have noticed that if I watch a video all the way through I will get more of those videos pretty quickly. If this kid watched a depression video all the way through it will throw another at him shortly. If he watches that one then it can quickly change the algorithm to begin to favor those. The algorithm has a short memory.

Regardless, 'Motivational speeches' shows he was trying to help himself and I find that horrific.

(didn't downvote you though, I understand your point)

Yeah. I can imagine he was conflicted. The depression videos resonated with him, but he also knew he didn’t want to stay depressed.

What’s stupid is Facebook is getting very good at blocking this type of content through a mix of classifier systems, user and moderator intervention. TikTok has gotten a pass for it so far.

It's definitely all the batman searches that got him tthere /s

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