Comment by Liquix
15 hours ago
i think they could if they started with "show users content they like" instead of "keep users staring at the app for as long as possible". both result in more engagement and more ad dollars, but optimizing for the latter becomes a race to the bottom with increasingly extreme, polarizing, emotion-inducing content.
the blatant algorithm manipulation around elections and politics is just the icing on the cake. sure, china is probably doing this too, but they're either being more subtle or playing a longer game. meta et al may have come out ahead for a few quarters but what's that worth if user count is declining long term?
It's pretty simple, the Tiktok algorithm recognizes the value of long term user satisfaction of it's users, and all the American Tech Algorithms are blind to anything long term, and plus the "user" is not the customer in the American tech product, the advertiser is, American social media is a product for the advertisers and not for the users. This is clear as day.
TikTok's algorithm is also nearly instant.
From time to time it will show you content adjacent to what you watch. After three or so viewings your feed will add the content you watched/engaged with regularly.
Press "not interested" twice (or sometimes once), and content will disappear.
American social media effectively ignores any input from users.
so much this. tiktok can easily be trained to provide you pretty much exact content you desire from it while no other social media platform (is willing) can do the same
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