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TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

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Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#111

Post by loxs »

sleepydog wrote: post #75
xnx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also found that TikTok does a good job of throwing in unexpected videos to test the waters of what the user is interested in. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it.

I wish youtube was better in this regard. The videos it shows me just keep getting more and more focused on what it knows I'm interested in, to the point that it's boring. I discover new things to watch through reddit instead.

Yeah, youtube is super boring. It just suggests my top N most watched channels, even years after I stop watching some of them, as I lost interest in the topic. For example I used to watch lots of vsauce, numberphille, veritasium etc but I gradually lost interest as they slowly morphed from genuine scientific shows into ads for their books or paid shows. Guess what, youtube still regularly recommends them, even though I rarely click some of these suggestions.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#112

Post by bobthepanda »

panopticon wrote: post #109
undefined1 wrote: post #73

TikTok is like a highly compressed version of YouTube. YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. So you get a lot of videos where you can skip the first 20%+ and not miss anything. The content is buried and spread out. 1 minute of content surrounded by 9 minutes of filler. TikTok removed those 9 minutes, so it feels very refreshing in that respect. There's n…

> YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. Given how popular obnoxious jump cuts are on YouTube, I would assume this wasn't the case. What part of YouTube incentivizes this? I always attributed the increased intros/outros/ad spot/filler lengths to the general trend of YouTube getting more "professional" than it did 10 years ago.

Mid-roll ads on Youtube require a minimum length of 8 minutes. So if you're making videos shorter than that you're losing a monetization opportunity.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#113

Post by deanCommie »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #85
xnx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also found that TikTok does a good job of throwing in unexpected videos to test the waters of what the user is interested in. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it.

A common comment I see on Tiktok videos is something like "I've finally made it to [niche interest] tiktok", it's something I've experienced myself when the algorithm started showing me videos from the crew on cargo ships as they talk about their favorite ports to dock at, or their experience going through E.G the Panama Canal. I don't know any other platform that emergently figures out that I have an interest in int…

Dude that sounds super interesting, can you share?

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#114

Post by theshrike79 »

sleepydog wrote: post #75
xnx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also found that TikTok does a good job of throwing in unexpected videos to test the waters of what the user is interested in. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it.

I wish youtube was better in this regard. The videos it shows me just keep getting more and more focused on what it knows I'm interested in, to the point that it's boring. I discover new things to watch through reddit instead.

What I really wish was that Youtube would show me videos related to the video I'm currently watching, not just related to my general watching history.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#115

Post by duskwuff »

panopticon wrote: post #109
undefined1 wrote: post #73

TikTok is like a highly compressed version of YouTube. YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. So you get a lot of videos where you can skip the first 20%+ and not miss anything. The content is buried and spread out. 1 minute of content surrounded by 9 minutes of filler. TikTok removed those 9 minutes, so it feels very refreshing in that respect. There's n…

> YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. Given how popular obnoxious jump cuts are on YouTube, I would assume this wasn't the case. What part of YouTube incentivizes this? I always attributed the increased intros/outros/ad spot/filler lengths to the general trend of YouTube getting more "professional" than it did 10 years ago.

> What part of YouTube incentivizes this?

Advertising placements. If a video is longer than eight minutes (formerly ten minutes), it's eligible for "midroll" ads and will earn the creator more money.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#116

Post by blueblisters »

wombatmobile wrote: post #44
xnx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much good meta-data (likes, comments, duration, sound used, views, like/view ratio, skips, loops, subscribes, etc.) that I'd be surprised if they were digging into the contents of the video at all right now.

> I'd be surprised if they were digging into the contents of the video at all right now. Why would you be surprised to learn TikTok is doing video content analysis?

It can be a) very expensive b) also very difficult to implement.

Video understanding is an active field of research and I'm not sure state of the art is there yet for capturing nuance like engagement potential, categories etc.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#117

Post by nxc18 »

coldcode wrote: post #6

Maybe I am just strange, but I find no appeal in TikTok, and would not like something that just shows me more of the same things. But I can see how it might appear to people who just want to be stimulated with stuff.

Things I've been sent by TikTok in the last few days:

* Cockpit walkthroughs by professional airline pilots

* A first-person plane crash and water evacuation that I had somehow missed from 2014 (and was very interested to see)

* Music theory videos explaining how current pop songs work

* Baking videos explaining how to make things I'd never thought of before

* Dermatology video showing laser skin retexturing in action (its amazing to see, not what I expected); helped me discover a new podcast that I now really enjoy

* Linguistic analysis of English and how certain grammar rules came to be

* A PSA about melatonin dosage (I already knew but discovered recently that most supplements are dosed too high)

* HIIT cardio routines you can do at home

* Planet Money TikTok (actually very solid and educational - e.g. economics of horror movie creation)

I think the site you're talking about is YouTube, which does in fact repeatedly show nonsense and never figures out how wrong it is.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#118

Post by lowwave »

xnx wrote: post #11
jakear wrote: post #8

It's a (seemingly) pretty simple matter of keeping track of how long someone looks at a video, and optimizing to show them videos they'll spend a long time looking at. It's pretty powerful too, I spend much more time looking at TikTok than any other digital content aggregator (to the extent I had to delete it from my phone). They also do some things like sprinkle in random fresh videos, potentially unrelated to your…

I've also found that TikTok does a good job of throwing in unexpected videos to test the waters of what the user is interested in. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it.

Wikipedia has Random article for ages now. All TikTik did was put on a nicer UI. Of course UI are important most user are suckers for that stuff. However I found there really aren't any new ideas left just implementations.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#119

Post by fpgaminer »

panopticon wrote: post #109
undefined1 wrote: post #73

TikTok is like a highly compressed version of YouTube. YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. So you get a lot of videos where you can skip the first 20%+ and not miss anything. The content is buried and spread out. 1 minute of content surrounded by 9 minutes of filler. TikTok removed those 9 minutes, so it feels very refreshing in that respect. There's n…

> YouTube incentivizes creators to make artificially long videos, resulting in a huge amount of filler. Given how popular obnoxious jump cuts are on YouTube, I would assume this wasn't the case. What part of YouTube incentivizes this? I always attributed the increased intros/outros/ad spot/filler lengths to the general trend of YouTube getting more "professional" than it did 10 years ago.

Historically YouTube would downregulate short videos in their algorithms. The cutoff was 10 minutes, if I remember correctly. So the biggest content creators got used to stretching out any video to at least 10 minutes. I think YouTube has relaxed that a bit recently.

Which is funny in the greater historical context, because in the early days of YouTube you couldn't upload videos longer than 10 minutes.

EDIT: As an aside, YouTube's algorithms also punish you if you aren't regularly uploading content. It was really a perfect storm of shitiness where content creators needed to pump out content constantly, while also ensuring those videos were all 10 minutes or longer. It drastically affected the YT landscape. Content creators like Noah Caldwell Gervais who only sporadically release content because they spend HUGE amounts of effort on what they do release were getting slammed by the algorithm. Again, the algorithm has gotten a little better in that regard over the years. Though it's gotten worse in other ways.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#120

Post by icelancer »

lowwave wrote: post #118
xnx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also found that TikTok does a good job of throwing in unexpected videos to test the waters of what the user is interested in. This diversity is one of my favorite things about it.

Wikipedia has Random article for ages now. All TikTik did was put on a nicer UI. Of course UI are important most user are suckers for that stuff. However I found there really aren't any new ideas left just implementations.

A new implementation is a new idea.
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