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Comment by derbOac | Hacker News Reader

Not disagreeing with you as TikTok obviously works for a lot of people, but its recommendation algorithm never came anywhere near working for me after several attempts at it over fairly long periods of time.

I can't say I like YouTube shorts a lot, but there's often some I find interesting in a long enough window of time — the problem there is more the signal to noise ratio than the volume of the signal. TikTok just feels like my personal signal is just nonexistent.

Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on under the hood. There's such a huge difference between how much people like TikTok and how I feel about the content, and I don't understand why TikTok would have such a hard time with me in particular.

In general I'm kind of souring on algorithmic-driven social media, or at least short format (video or text). I don't have anything against it in principle, I just find I enjoy longer format posts and articles more in experience.

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Tiktoks algorithm takes a while to get used to but it is pretty tameable. Quick way that works for me:

- avoid attempts based on "unliking" things, I'm pretty sure it treats it as engagement. Instead swipe bad content away.

- avoid "accidentally engaging", like replying to a comment you feel is wrong or watching something you don't like because you were trying to see where the speech was going. Disengage ASAP with unwanted.

- positive feedback for whatever video starts getting close to what you want.

- positive implies staying the whole clip, liking, viewing comments, commenting, liking comments and the strongest of all, sharing the video (you can send it to a telegram conversation with yourself or whatever, not sure if the link you shared ever being opened is accounted for but I think nope). Do this on purpose, like if a video is cool just open the comment section and like all comments without looking.

-try to "navigate". If you want to see tech and it's currently showing you music, maybe engage with music production or Spotify tricks when they appear. It might not be the tech you're looking for, but it's closer to tech than a teenage girl dancing. You'll eventually be shown things more relevant to you, at which point you grab that current.

Also do not try to rush the process. I think updating your interests is not instant, and session time might be a metric as well.

This is fascinating, I'm curious -- do you find yourself generally thinking in this way when using TikTok? Do you find that your peers that use TikTok do something similar?

This is just completely foreign to how I consume media. The idea that I need to try and "trick" an algorithm into showing me what I want is just completely unappealing. I'd much rather go somewhere else and actively seek out the content that I want, rather than trying to fight a system that seems like it would prefer me to be a passive consumer.

"Passive" not in the sense that I shouldn't be engaged, clearly, as the algorithm rewards engagement. But passive in the sense that I should not be seeking out what I want to see, I should just be reactive based on what I am shown, and then the platform will decide from that what I really want.

Like, no, this just makes me recoil completely. Why would I want to bother with that?

You don't have to do any of this. He's just explaining more about how the algorithm works.

To a first approximation, TikTok simply shows you more of what you watch. If you swipe away a lot of stuff in the first second or two, it stops showing you that kind of stuff. If you watch complete videos, it shows you more like that.

I'm aware that this is how the algorithm works, but the parent comment is not just explaining how it works, they gave suggestions based on things that "work for me".

So I am specifically trying to sus out how common it is among tiktok users to have this sort of strategic thinking around the algorithm, since it's not something I've heard much of before.

This is very common and I would even say a necessary part of using algorithmic social media now, basically awareness of the algorithm and interacting with content in a way that keeps your algorithm tuned to what you want. For example I avoid clicking anything political on YouTube because as soon as I do, my suggestions become full of political ragebait.

>do you find yourself generally thinking in this way when using TikTok? Do you find that your peers that use TikTok do something similar?

Yup. It was new to me, as I learned from younger friends. To them it's obvious it's ride or be taken for a ride - not doing this active navigation, they'd compare it with surfing reddit using just the default frontpage unlogged.

In fact people even troll each other, for example by sending someone a mormon speech or an untranslated meme from India to screw with their feeds.

I have to say that in a way it's way better than YouTube or Instagram, where you can't really tame the thing and it will suddenly decide for a month that you like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro because you watched a video about bodybuilding.

>Like, no, this just makes me recoil completely. Why would I want to bother with that?

Because a huge amount of interesting content is there. I also prefer the old style, but I'd rather begrudgingly adapt than be left behind in progressively decaying platforms - it is what it is.

My cynical take is that a lot of the people for whom the tiktok algorithm "didn't work" simply weren't pleased by what the algorithm (correctly) thought of them. It's like the 40 year old truck driver that complains it's just hot girls dancing. No, my dude, you just ALWAYS stay to watch the girls dance, you just don't want to admit it.

In general, it "just works" after a short period of maybe searching for specific terms just to "seed" the algorithm.

I don't think that's cynical, necessarily.

But if you're used to your media telling you who to be instead of having media be responsive to who you are, it might feel very disconcerting.

Or maybe it's precisely because one will just watch hot girls dance if given the opportunity, that one would not want a social media feed that caters to your most base desires.

I'm in your boat. I tried out TikTok out a few times, including making a new account, but it never showed me good content. I had maybe one or two longer sessions, but never felt the need to go back, like I (unfortunately) do with Reddit or Youtube. I could never understand why it was so popular, but maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.

I think that's part of why it's always been a little bit of a head scratcher for me — I didn't really go into it curmudgeonly, I was genuinely interested in it, people seemed to like it, and I was interested in something new. It just never worked out at all for me.

I even had people telling me in all seriousness "I must secretly like the content", as in the algorithm knows better than I do what I like. Which is kind of a weird and maybe even disturbing idea to buy into if you think about it.

I was told to keep at it, which I did. I'd put aside for a long time, go back to it, repeat the process over and over again. Eventually I just gave up. I always felt like it was targeting some specific demographic by default and never got out of that algorithmic optimization spot for me.

Anecdotally TikTok has the best content for me as well. I can’t even place my finger on why I like it more than IG. I don’t know if it’s the slight differences in the content if surfaces. Even if I am just looking through music on both apps (I play guitar) something about TikTok is more pleasant and I really am not sure what.

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