[HN Gopher] Inside TikTok's Algorithm [video]
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Inside TikTok's Algorithm [video]
Author : hardmaru
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-07-23 09:25 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| captainmuon wrote:
| I doubt TikTok's algorithm is really so awesome. It's a legend
| they promote to hype up their brand. I know I'm not their target
| demographic as I'm in my 30s, but it fails completely to show me
| interesting stuff. Instead, it shows what it thinks I could like.
| I get a lot of odd videos that start of sexualized and then turn
| into a prank (its a TikTok genre apparently). Or videos of
| woodworking. Or asian cooks. It is very odd and not very fun.
|
| Facebook videos does the same, I get a lot of videos about Resin
| art and Woodworking and Streetfood, which are at best mildly
| interesting. I also wonder who pays for that or what their
| business model is since I see no ads. But maybe resin and wood
| tools are so expensive that it pays off for them to promote the
| videos.
| rchaud wrote:
| The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm is in
| news pieces attempting to explain why it took off the way it
| did. For years we were hearing that social media startups were
| DOA due to FB and IG domination.
|
| And then BAM, TT swooped in sometime in 2018 and became huge.
|
| I'm in the same age group as you and TT is also not of interest
| to me. It's possible that I just don't get it for the same
| reason I didn't get the concept of 'subscribe to this
| Youtuber'. That kind of amateur video style where you're
| staring into a camera from your bedroom or your car is just not
| for me.
| icandoit wrote:
| Well they acquired musical.ly (buying it's very young
| audience).
|
| from the wiki:
|
| "TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most
| markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became
| available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social
| media service, Musical.ly, on 2 August 2018."
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > The only place I've ever heard about the TT algorithm
|
| It's talked about quite frequently on TT itself by people who
| are not programmers, and more well understood by those people
| then most people here on HN.
|
| I'd be wary of applying anything you think you know to the
| community of people using TT today. You aren't familiar with
| it enough to make any judgement. You don't get it, and it has
| nothing to do with your age or anything other than your
| unfamiliarity with TT.
| eunos wrote:
| Non Chinese in general didn't realize the ferocious
| competition between video apps companies like Bytedance and
| Kuaishou. When tiktok emerged it was already very strong.
| defaultname wrote:
| TikTok doesn't promote this "legend" whatsoever. Indeed, 99% of
| the time I've read about TikTok's algorithm, it has been
| naysayer conspiring about how it's an evil addiction engine.
|
| I've seen zero articles technically praising TikTok.
|
| Like everything, it probably isn't for everyone (as an aside --
| it seems like a considerable portion of TikTok's base now are
| middle aged...they aren't targeting any particular
| demographic), but personally I get a wonderful selection of FYP
| videos. I only use the app every week or so, but when I do it
| is one of the most interesting, entertaining digressions
| available.
| criddell wrote:
| I listened to a podcast recently (Reply All) where they spent
| quite a bit of time praising the TikTok recommendation
| engine.
| gabaix wrote:
| Here's some praise:
| https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-
| algo...
| scotty79 wrote:
| If you are watching them then it works.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Well I'm not anymore...
| winternett wrote:
| Social media algorithms are rather simplistic now, and only
| geared towards taxonomy, but things will get a lot worse if
| people don't begin to properly contextualize the process of
| mental manipulation that carries on behind these closed doors.
| Entire platforms, any of them, can become corrupt and geared
| towards encouraging very bad things.
|
| That statement is not geared towards TikTok specifically, all
| of them are already dedicated towards encouraging users to
| create content in hopes of success, but these platforms and
| even advertisers on the platforms can engineer massive
| campaigns that influence a lot of people to do potentially very
| bad things... They really don't care about independent content,
| and there's very little chance of being discovered, that
| content just allows them to cover up the underlying motives
| more perhaps.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| I wanted to provide a quick counter point here. For my use, the
| TikTok algorithm feels much better than anything I have used on
| other social media. I feel like I have to train it like a pet.
| You have so few, but useful feedback mechanisms that whenever
| you see something you don't like if you scoll (or long press
| "not interested") It seems to make a really big impact on the
| content.
|
| I get some funny stuff but most of it is some real deep in the
| weeds nerd stuff. Programming, Ops, Sci-Fi book reviews,
| Dungeons and Dragons tips. I've seen other people's TikTok's
| occasionally and it never looks like mine. Even a friend of
| mine who works in tech and has similar interests, his looks
| completely different.
|
| With all that being said it's at the cost of it being literally
| spyware. I've tried YouTube shorts. If someone could 10x that
| algorithm, or start a startup where it's TikTok but now with
| 20% less spying that would be awesome!
|
| Oh and it's hyper addictive like other social media. Although I
| will say for at least my feed it's much more positive than
| social media normally is. I don't feel terrible after using it.
| Just feels like I wasted my time. To that end I uninstall it
| when I'm done and try to use it only once a week or so. But at
| the end of the once a week session I usually have a list of
| books and new tech related concepts to look up.
|
| My experience of TikTok is essentially like a video hacker news
| that also cracks me up occasionally.
| codetrotter wrote:
| In the beginning I felt the same, like TikTok was able to
| figure out what kind of content I wanted from the signals I
| was giving it.
|
| But lately I'm getting bored with it. I feel like TikTok has
| put me into too narrow of a type of interests. And now for
| every fun or interesting video that I see, there is like five
| or ten videos that are too much of the same as what I've seen
| a million times already.
|
| Idk, maybe I've just been spending too much time on TikTok
| lately and it was bound to happen regardless. Maybe even it's
| not TikTok maybe it's just me. That I am tired of watching
| videos in general, except for the ones that I can use for
| something. I'm gonna take a break from TikTok.
| hash872 wrote:
| Maybe this isn't a substantive comment that really adds anything,
| but just wanted to echo a few other commenters- I don't find
| anything special about the TikTok algorithm, or TikTok in
| general. It's.... fine. I signed in via Apple ID initially, and
| it clearly didn't have much info on me, so it just served up what
| it thought I'd like based on my age & rural location at the time
| (basically, tractors & Trump). Later it got a little better, but
| I just don't see the 'scary' or 'addictive' algorithm that people
| rave about. It's.... it's just OK. Eg I liked one funny video of
| the Hispanic guy pronouncing various states, it now shows me a
| bunch more by the same guy- doesn't exactly seem like superhuman
| AI. YouTube has more relevant content for me, personally
| [deleted]
| thrwawytiktok wrote:
| For me tiktok is so depressing. I am single 25+ guy and seeing
| all those beautiful girls my age or younger makes me so sad. Than
| I can go to Tinder and match with pretty but not stunning girls
| and feel like I am getting robbed. And according to my friends I
| am easily in top 20% of attractiveness. Feel bad for rest of guys
|
| I guess this is life in 21 century. Governed by algorithms and
| feeling empty inside
| axaxs wrote:
| Quit judging partners by looks alone. Looks fade, character
| that clicks with you likely won't.
|
| The relationships I've had and hate most in my life are almost
| perfectly inversely proportional to how much time they spent
| trying to look 'beautiful.'
| mherrmann wrote:
| I think this is a huge problem for many people born in the past
| 30 years. We see all these amazing people on (social) media and
| compare ourselves to them if they're the same sex, or feel
| attracted to them. I can only imagine what it does to the body
| image of 14yo girls. In a somewhat similar vein, boys in
| puberty masturbate to porn that sets completely unrealistic
| expectations with regards to their partners and experiences in
| real life. It is a huge, and I think not often-enough talked
| about, problem. I hope we will find a solution some day, but I
| have no idea what it could be.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Really doesn't help that American porn imports a lot of the
| ideas from Japan, wager its not a coincidence they're dealing
| with a more severe version of the same "gender gap" issue
| here amongst people under 35.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Its not just tech companies fault. There are a lot of fathers
| that dont teach their sons about sex and relationships. Often
| they just hope for the best. That is not how you raise a son
| to be effective in the dating world.
| paulcole wrote:
| If the fathers are bad at sex and relationships maybe doing
| nothing and hoping for the best is the right idea?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Evolutionarily, can you consider them a failure though?
| They've procreated. That checks the box for being
| "successful" but it doesn't mean your offspring will be.
| hluska wrote:
| Fatherhood is way more than transferring genes. That's
| the fun part. The real work starts ~ 9 months later.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| That is my original argument. The parent to my recent
| comment is saying not teaching your kids is somehow going
| to make your kids more successful.
| hluska wrote:
| Oh shit, I'm sorry. I didn't do a very good job that
| comment.
| paulcole wrote:
| I mean look at the world. Evolutionarily we've all
| failed.
| [deleted]
| powerapple wrote:
| Sooner or later we just use algorithms to generate girls for
| you, so you can have whatever you wish to have.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Women and girls aren't objects to be generated by an
| algorithm on a whim to fulfill "whatever wish" a man may
| have. Women and girls are people.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| or a VR headset with an addon - or even better direct
| stimulation of the brain.
| thrwaway_tik wrote:
| Created throwaway account just to provide some insight. In
| terms of attractiveness, what you see on the internet is
| usually the top 1% of females, as there's strong effects of
| "winner takes all" when it comes to attention from the opposite
| sex. Now, highly ranking females on the internet are getting
| hit on by hundreds or even thousands of possible male suitors,
| and the ones with blue ticks, fame/money/clout are the ones
| taking those girls on dates. Again, winner takes all dynamic.
| On the flip side you can argue that it's not mentally healthy
| for those girls and their relationships, but internet addiction
| does bad things to ones brain. For young guys/girls it makes
| them depressed as it paints unrealistic standards and tricks
| the brain into believing lies. My humble advice for men is to
| work on themselves, improve one's sexual marketplace value and
| then look for a partner. My advice for attractive females is to
| be careful of capitalizing too much on their juvenile looks...
| Once accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, it's depressing when
| eventually one comes down from the pedestal.
| etherwaste wrote:
| Misogynistic incel behavior.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| My humble advice to you: start with reflecting on why you
| refer to women as "females".
| jsbdk wrote:
| What's the difference? Some people make a big deal out of
| males/females vs men/women and I don't get it.
| jfengel wrote:
| "Male" and "female" sound clinical; they're terms you
| apply to animals. When applied to humans, not only does
| it sound demeaning, but it sounds deliberate -- as if
| trying to present a false objectivity.
|
| If nothing else, note that words do have shades of
| meaning. Even if you don't know what they are, you should
| assume that people "making a big deal" out of it are
| being honest about it. If you start with the assumption
| that they're doing so just to hurt you, then that
| relationship is in a dangerous place before you've even
| begun it.
|
| They may not even be able to explain why they think the
| word is a problem. They mostly just know that they've
| heard the word before in unpleasant contexts. Look up any
| incel group and you'll hear them talk about "females" in
| a derogatory way, presenting them as the enemy -- as a
| separate group to be treated with distance. People know
| what words are used by people who dislike them, and that
| taints those words in other contexts.
|
| So whether you get it or not, just trust that they do.
| Use the words they prefer, and avoid the ones they don't.
| It's just friendly and polite. If corrected say, "Oops, I
| didn't mean to do that," and then move on with the word
| they've asked for. It doesn't have to be a big deal if
| you don't make it a big deal; it can be over with just a
| quick change. It becomes hostile if you assume it's
| hostile.
| stevewodil wrote:
| If you're really in the top 20% you should have no problems. Go
| out and try to game with girls.
| [deleted]
| bongoman37 wrote:
| The difference between pretty and stunning is a lot of work
| with makeup, lighting, dressing and so on. I dated a model
| briefly, she could change from and 8 to a 10 depending on how
| much effort and time she wanted to put in. This is true for
| guys too.
| axaxs wrote:
| Yeah I think the infamous Jenna Marbles video where she puts
| on makeup really was the first time it opened my eyes to it.
| She goes from average or less to amazing in short time.
|
| Link for those who haven't seen it. Can't believe it's been
| 11 years...
|
| https://youtu.be/OYpwAtnywTk
| etherwaste wrote:
| Tik Tok also automatically edits your appearance with default
| filters.
| rchaud wrote:
| And front-facing cameras now come with face-smoothing
| features right out of the box. I have a Galaxy A51 (2020
| phone) and even with the default settings, the FFC photos
| are much more generous in smoothing out your skin, than the
| regular rear camera.
| psychomugs wrote:
| There's an insidious element present even at the optical
| hardware level: the limited arms-length distance
| necessitates wide-angle lenses, which exaggerates the
| foreground elements and caused an uptick of people
| thinking their noses were bigger than they "actually" are
| (at typical viewing distances with our own organic
| eyeballs) [1]. Perhaps the aggressive smoothing is an
| attempt to rectify this, and I wouldn't be surprised if
| there's some automatic computational photography
| pincushion warping to compensate for the larger-than-
| reality nose effect.
|
| I sometimes ponder over the alternate timeline where
| front-facing cameras selfie cams were never invented.
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-
| health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Wait what, is this for real? Do phones automatically
| beautify photos taken with the selfie cam? Why is this
| legal?! Isn't this a surefire recipe to create a
| generation of adolescents with insecurity/body issues?
|
| Every time you take a selfie it subtly confronts you with
| what could be better about you. It's like a fridge that
| whispers "you're a fatty" every time you open it.
| rchaud wrote:
| I finally realized it after wondering why I looked
| 'worse' in photos with friends, when the rear camera is
| being used to take the picture. That's when I did a rear
| v front photo comparison.
|
| The face smoothing effect is subtle, but it's definitely
| there. It's not as extreme as "filters" that can
| basically change your skin tone and texture.
|
| And it's possible that Samsung does this and not others.
| My last Samsung phone had this as well, and I usually buy
| from them.
| hideo wrote:
| It's real. In some cases it's turned on by default and
| some are not https://blog.google/outreach-
| initiatives/digital-wellbeing/m... has some information
| (not affiliated, just found this a while ago) . I can't
| find any info right now about apple or samsung or any of
| the other big vendors.
|
| I think the impact is fairly damaging. I'm surrounded by
| people with body image issues, and the impact their
| issues are having on them is heartbreaking.
|
| Sadly when I discuss this with some folks from that
| industry they pushed me to an academic debate about "well
| everything is post-processed after the sensor anyway".
|
| There's probably some debate to be had again about
| whether this is creating issues, exacerbating existing
| body image issues, or actually just not having any impact
| one way or another. But I find myself believing that it
| is both creating and exacerbating.
|
| And for a while I thought these were "first world issues"
| but many, if not most, of my friends are not part of the
| "first world" and they still have them.
| etherwaste wrote:
| You're a gross person and should be ashamed.
| hluska wrote:
| At the risk of dating myself, can I give you some advice my Dad
| gave me in my early twenties? Shallowness is highly addictive
| and the more often you turn to it, the stronger the addiction
| gets.
| analyte123 wrote:
| The whole point of this post is that this is just TikTok
| reflecting your own desires back to you. Some part of you wants
| to obsess, ruminate over and feel bad about digitally enhanced
| and literally unattainable girls dancing to a camera on the
| other side of the world, you engage with Tiktok on that
| content, and then they show you more! The definition of a
| personal problem. Even though it is quite different than yours,
| my TikTok feed says a lot of things about me too, to the point
| that I am reluctant to scroll through it in someone else's
| presence.
| imbnwa wrote:
| This is partially why I trained my TikTok to be a nature
| channel, the other part obviously being a desire for
| exploraion.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| These responses get boring pretty quick. None of this is the
| real world. Start participating in the world off-screen. Start
| something new, drop bad habits and eventually you will fill
| that emptiness inside you.
|
| It's the same for everything people get hooked on, it changes
| you perception but in reality it's all in your mind.
| siscia wrote:
| Yeah it is not always simple, we need empathy when dealing
| with this kind of problem, not brushing off people that may
| be having difficult times.
| padastra wrote:
| I don't disagree with you on a personal level, but it is
| worth noting that "social disgust" is what has driven down
| tobacco rates as a population, even if it's perhaps less
| effective for any one individual than empathy, etc.
| etherwaste wrote:
| Boohoo he's having a difficult time because his ego is so
| high he feels entitled to perfect little 15 year old Tik
| Tok girls to the point where he thinks women who are
| interested in him are "beneath him."
|
| World's smallest violin for the gross pervert misogynist.
| rchaud wrote:
| It's not "brushing off" to suggest that someone use their
| phone less. If picking up the phone is an automatic
| behaviour to fill moments of dullness, then that's a
| problem.
|
| All the empathy in the world won't save anyone here. On one
| side of that screen is you, alone. On the other side are an
| army of designers, developers and behavioural experts whose
| job it is to keep you looking at the screen for as long as
| possible.
| [deleted]
| PrefixKitten wrote:
| in my past I have dated a women of a wide range of
| attractiveness and of all those girls the less attractive ones
| are actually the ones I'd put the most effort into getting back
| with...
|
| If the girl I'm with is pleasing to look at I'm content with
| that. _How_ pleasing hardly matters
| siscia wrote:
| Man I feel you!
|
| Don't fall in the trap of social media / social-relationship.
|
| Girls on TikTok are beautiful as actress are beautiful, it
| takes a tons of effort to look so attractive effortlessly!
|
| Similar deal on tinder, maybe even worse.
|
| Go out and bound with real people in real life! Do the effort
| of being the first one to reach out.
|
| Feel ok with having friends that are busy and that may not
| reply immediately.
|
| But meet people outside internet, and you will be happier.
| system16 wrote:
| I'm gonna go out on a limb but if this comment is reflective of
| your attitude, I don't think Tik Tok or algorithms are your
| biggest problem in establishing relationships with women.
| swiley wrote:
| You should get rid of your smartphone. They're designed to make
| you depressed so you respond better to ads.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| High expectations is the key to unhappiness.
| h0p3 wrote:
| I ran my own ghetto experiment. Despite resisting (I'm still not
| going to install it on mobile), it was Plebbit that brought me to
| Tiktok. Without having visited Tiktok, I've seen thousands of
| tiktoks that were scraped out and hosted on other platforms. Over
| the course of the year, I collected well over a hundred videos.
| https://philosopher.life/#:[search[tiktok.com]tag[Link%20Log]]
|
| I went back to the source for each of these and started Liking
| them. I'd check every so often to see if the "For You" feed
| improved. It did improve, considerably, but it still doesn't beat
| the signal-to-noise ratio of having humans pick them out for me.
| I can scroll through 200 videos on Tiktok and not find a single
| video worth a Like (I've found one so far from Tiktok's
| recommendations, and that was from a channel of a video I had
| previously liked). Perhaps I've misused the algorithm that does
| the real work for picking out content that will capture my
| attention, but I'm pretty disappointed. I bet the information
| they have about me does tell them a great deal, but it's not
| clear they're going to be able to keep me engaged.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| i'm not sure if this is some super duper AI. it look like TiTok
| just give you what you are interested in like YouTube.
|
| i watch a lot of YouTube video without logging into my Google
| account. if i watch a digital camera review then Youtube will
| server up a lot of camera related content on the front page.
| TikTok seem to do the same.
| adspedia wrote:
| Influencing dreams was one theme I read about that they are
| trying to pursue. But not only TikTok. Do you also feel like
| TikTok is making over-night buzz for relatively silly topics, vs
| Instagram and Facebook.
| zpeti wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Google and Facebook know the same. This isn't
| really news.
|
| Google Chrome's FLOC I believe sorts people into 5000 person
| groups with similar interests. I assume google picked this number
| for a reason. I imagine you can probably sort the world's
| population into groups of 5000 people with almost exactly the
| same interests and motivations.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Would love to meet my interest doppelgangers!
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| If that's what they've been doing with YouTube recommendations
| then it's definitely nowhere close to identifying interests or
| motivations. Whatever they started changing in 2016 has been
| making the recommendations less and less personally relevant
| and increasingly generic and boring. Probably helping a whole
| lot of people spend less time on YouTube though.
| mandmandam wrote:
| "We programmed bots to go down rabbit-holes. Watch as TikTok's
| algorithm makes our bots go down rabbit holes!"
|
| Not saying TikTok isn't spooky. But:
|
| The effort that went into making the viewer feel anxious while
| watching this was _extreme_ ; and the effort that went into
| actual explanation of the TikTok algorithm was minimal.
| mattbee wrote:
| Yes this was a disappointing watch - they seemed to have gone
| to some effort to simulate a lot of accounts with interests,
| and testing some _handwaving_ unspecified theories. But then
| they only detailed _one_ of those fake accounts, and it showed
| some pretty unsurprising results. If you hover over videos of
| X, it shows more of that - Kentucky, depression, romance etc.
|
| The only real discovery was the disparity between the TikTok
| spokesperson (who said that 7% of anyone's feed should be
| trying to broaden your interests) and their observation that
| those videos were in fact mostly adverts.
|
| And (sorta) that hitting Dislike doesn't seem to do much, if
| you counter than signal by watching/liking other videos. But it
| was all very vague given how much data they said they'd
| gathered.
|
| I agree I don't think the algorithm is particularly clever, or
| works towards any other goal than for users to spend more time
| with the app Which is the assumption I was starting from.
| winternett wrote:
| I think the underlying point is that platforms are gearing
| their algorithms towards manipulation, and that a new user
| account has a pre-set path towards being rabbit holed to
| where most of the content they see can trap them into certain
| mindsets...
|
| This worries me a lot, because people generally think they
| are choosing what they want to see, but the platform can
| shape the world views of many people all at once.
|
| If you trap someone in a room and play violent videos for
| them all day long, when you let them out, they might come out
| thinking they'll have to fight for survival, just as an
| example.
|
| Governments can encourage political chaos through subjecting
| people to certain types of videos through these platforms
| over time, and as another example, they can influence certain
| regions to start a riot or vote a certain way.
|
| Behavioral psychologists are involved in algorithm
| development now just as much as developers and that's a big
| problem that most of the world, especially government
| regulators are totally unaware of.
|
| I have a TikTok account, but only use it in really small
| doses because I found the suggestive content really was not
| good for my mental health. I hope more people realize that
| this is happening, and also understand the lies about
| potential for sharing independent work on platforms because
| the platforms are really not geared towards discovery of new
| content, they have very specific agendas and money making at
| the foremost behind them.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Perhaps it would be more useful if WSJ told us how they made
| "dozens of automated accounts". Everyone should be doing this.
| Why not. We could all be "investigating". Think of what we
| might learn. Automation is the future. Everyone should be
| learning it.
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