Hacker News Reader

Comment by dml2135 | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

>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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com