Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 190 posts

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#121

Post by pjc50 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #114
sleepydog wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does for me? The ones which are history driven say "recommended for you" next to them, but most seem to be related to the video itself. Maybe this is due to almost exclusively using it for music.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#122

Post by return1 »

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…

Like Twitter v Facebook

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#123

Post by cblconfederate »

jbverschoor wrote: post #80

I never really understood why TikTok is such a threat Except for maybe collecting too much data, but that’s any app, and luckily Apple is taking their measurements for certain things

It s a company the US can easily block without impact in other business. Instead shutting down huawei or other big chinese companies causes major reshuffling

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#124

Post by andrewla »

One more tilt at the old windmill.

This is not an algorithm; this is a heuristic. An algorithm is (loosely) a method or procedure for achieving some specified end.

"... avoid redundancies that could bore the user, like seeing multiple videos with the same music or from the same creator" is the goal, and they have heuristics to try to work towards that, and algorithms and software that implement those heuristics.

I think the ship has sailed on this, but when you are in circles where both heuristics and algorithms are in play, this blurring of lines makes for very confusing conversations.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#125

Post by jordache »

Semaphor wrote: post #84
jordache wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i had an account for a few weeks.. followed a few folks. However my assessment is a video has much less revisit value than still images. The nature of a video requires much more time investment. Audience has to remain focused on a video for a period of time to achieve full reward. Unlike a still image, where a quick glance can gain satisfaction. These platforms can not sustain on pure novel content. The model of user…

> However my assessment is a video has much less revisit value than still images. I would say the same, only for text versus images. and yet for some reason I'll never understand besides being only in my early 30ies, people prefer images. and videos even more.

text and videos, I group into the same category due to the full consumption of the content is over a period of time that is much greater than an instant. Consuming text obviously is a much less passive pattern than video, so they diverge greatly in that respect.

Images, for the mass consumer audience, require orders of magnitude less time to fully consume.

The dynamic is very much different.

The Tiktok vs Vine comparison is very apt.. there is hardly any differences between them in terms of the process of content creation, and how compelling they are to a mass market audience

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#126

Post by lowwave »

icelancer wrote: post #120
lowwave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah, personally a new idea is a new idea. Personally nothing is new. Everything has being done before.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#128

Post by pizza »

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.

I wish the recommendation algorithm had knobs users could manipulate. eg

- show me things that have - reduce the weight of popular channels

- don't send me into a political content feedback loop

- prefer to show me short videos

- show me something wildly outside my tastes every now and then

I just got the Youtube Music app and it had very crude music recommendation options. You have to pick from a pre-selected list of artists. If you click on an artist, it adds another row of tangentially-related artists, but only sometimes.

Suppose you like electronic music, but only niche electronic music. Basically you have to click on Daft Punk, and hope it gives you something closer to what you like, leap-frogging towards e.g. Actress.

It doesn't even let you just type in what you like.., music that you know is already available on Youtube. If I had to guess, that's probably because of stupid copyright shit, but if that's the case, then why can I listen to the probably-violating-the-TOS music in the app if I just search for it myself?? Makes no sense...

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#129

Post by novaRom »

The main reason for me why YouTube is out of choice is too many Ads interruptions and absence of Portrait mode video support. Even Telegram supports Vertical videos - you can zoom into any horizontal video, and I can move that window so that I can watch full screen on my phone.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#130

Post by hamolton »

What's been funny is how there's been so many trends that relate to exploiting the engagement stats. For a long time, there were a lot of videos begging for likes or claiming that the heart would be purple on the particular video; this seemed to lead to a de-emphasis of likes. There's a lot of videos/sounds that involve a long build up leading to a short reveal, making sure the viewer finishes the video. One-frame image reveals encourage downloads and replays, and content hidden behind the interface can often lead to many downloads. Videos explaining how to repeatedly hit the share link button will sometimes have more shares than views. There's endless numbers of alternative spellings of words like sex and porn to avoid the edgy content filters, but I suppose that's a given. The hashtags are weird to me since #xyzcba seemed to actually have an effect for a while.

The things I didn't know in this article were the stuff about device type (what is that used for?) and the initial 8 videos. Perhaps the next trend I'll see is flexing on having an unlocked, AT&T-branded Samsung G892A.

Post reply on HN