Comment by spandrew

YouTube essentially does what every big stupid US-based social media algorithm does: If you like cat videos, it serves you more and more cat videos.

Because YT is longform content and the UI isn't a scrolling feed it's OK. I appreciate the different-ness than TikTok (which is why YouTube shorts is kind of annoying actually)

TikTok's algorithm gives you more of what you like, too. But it also feeds you just... random stuff. Content adjacent to your hobbies. Or content that seems to be somewhat popular with people who frequent the niches you frequent. Feeding you a lot of uninteresting videos is low risk; user's still appreciate the variety even when the algo isn't on point.

"My algo has gone off the deep end" is a common trope amongst TikTok users. Bc every now and then TikTok would pull in a lot of new/unrelated stuff for you to check out. And you just scroll by the stuff that isn't of interest. This is how its algo gets good; it's a UX heuristic as much as an algo one.

It's an important distinction because it exposes users to new content, which is fun. YT doesn't do that as much, so YT's content recs can be dull as paint some times.