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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

#171

Post by 0xy »

blackrock wrote: post #169

It’s rather comical, how for the past 20 years, Americans have been claiming themselves to be the pinnacle of creativity and innovation. And at the same time, denouncing the Chinese as a bunch of copycats-but-can-never-innovate. And they said the same thing about the Japanese a generation earlier. Even Carly Fiorina, the witch CEO that burned down HP, said that the Chinese cannot innovate. [1] And here you have a pri…

Huawei had a systematic campaign to steal American IP while offering direct cash incentives to employees who stole it.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#172

Post by zamadatix »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #105
sbilstein wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had data on the average length of youtube videos over time. I swear 5 years ago an explainer video or a game review would be less than 5 minutes consistently, which is what I personally want from a platform like youtube, a digestible snack of information. Nowadays career youtubers are often pushing well over 10 minutes which just occupies too much of my time to be worth the distraction.

The answer, of course, is ads. You get more roll time if you hit the 10 min mark, even if its just slightly over

Can someone explain to me why this comment was flagged dead? It's also my understanding that the inflation of video times to certain intervals was driven by how many ads were allowed at a given video length.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#173

Post by sudosysgen »

0xy wrote: post #170
erklik wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the first tech social app i.e. Facebook, MySpace and the like from China, a country that is not America. That is all there is to it. America realizes that China is catching up, and considering there are a billion Chinese, it is inevitable that China will be a foremost power that either competes with or simply overtakes America. The current foremost power, America, doesn't like that. At the very least, this whole…

Why should principles be given to countries that do not reciprocate? All major American tech companies are banished from China, and the only ones left are ones who agreed to transfer IP to be stolen by the CCP.

The US never had any such principles. Whenever any country competes with American cash-cows, the US "discovers" a reason to ban them. TikTok is not the first one, see what happened with Bombardier for an example closer to home.

Or, when Canada was threatening the US superiority in engine tech, after which the US government threatened to embargo Canada from avionics if they proceeded with the Arrow program. They do the same with the Swedish Gripen, they put an embargo on their avionics if Sweden sells them to a country which is also considering the F-35.

American tech compamies are banned from China unless they store data on Chinese servers and comply with Chinese law; there is no need to transfer IP. Do you think Google would have transfered Search IP under Project Dragonfly? Do you think Facebook has given their Ad IP?. Why wouldn't the US use the same standard of requiring full compliance with US law as enforced by a liaison and data being on US soil?

Because the question isn't of reciprocity, it is of dominance. That's why TikTok was banned under the Joker of "National Security", not under any other standard. The US is simply scared of losing it's advantage in tech to China. Which of course will likely happen anyways.

In any case, the average person isn't harmed by TikTok anymore and indeed less so than Facebook.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#174

Post by johnisgood »

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.

Yeah, oddly enough all the recommendations are videos I have already watched, even liked. I remember when recommendations on the right side were "similar" music to the one I was listening to, this way I could find music. I cannot do this anymore. :/

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#175

Post by kevindong »

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…

Generally when I stumble upon a minute long video, it's either really, really good or clickbait that's completely uninteresting. It tends to be the latter. The sweet spot for videos in my opinion is 15 seconds or so. Short enough that I can't possibly get bored but long enough to have a meaningful tidbit of content.

Finding subsequent parts of a multi-part series generally isn't worth the effort.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#176

Post by nl »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #45
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 actually think it's got much more to do with the training data. Given that you are watching a video, you need to either swipe away from it, or finish watching it. This provides either a 1 or 0 for the video classification model. The important contrast here is with FB/IG feed where you can scroll aimlessly without engaging, leaving you with perhaps 1 engagement out of 10 (or whatever). The attached doc suggests that…

> The attached doc suggests that they are only using unsupervised learning, which I find very hard to believe, to be honest.

Where are you seeing that?

I see:

> Recommendations are based on a number of factors, including things like: > User interactions such as the videos you like or share, accounts you follow, comments you post, and content you create. > ...

and

> A strong indicator of interest, such as whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end...

which indicates the opposite

https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-vide...

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#177

Post by allenu »

erklik wrote: post #160
jrockway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watch a lot of YouTube and haven't really noticed any artificially long videos in my bubble of channels. I agree that intros are annoying (I have no idea why people do them), but other than that... it's just the usual video stuff. The nature of the format is that a one page blog post becomes a 10 minute video. People talk slower than they read, so it's somewhat unavoidable. There are also YouTubers that are really…

Really? I feel like I could easily most of the videos I watch and still understand what the video is about. The first few minutes are the intro, a message that the video is sponsored and we will find out about them later, last 3/4 minutes is always the "Like, Subscribe" and a sponsorship message usually. This means that both the front-and the back can be cut out easily without any affect on the actual content.

I agree. I’m slowly starting to realize that a lot of videos are filler myself. Because there are so many videos out there and I find they are often too long, I just skip skip skip ahead until they get to the point. That or just drop out of the video to find another one that does get to the point.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#178

Post by wombatmobile »

blueblisters wrote: post #116
wombatmobile wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

State of the art where? College? Silicone Valley? Bangalore? Shanghai? Beijing? Hangzhou?

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#179

Post by darepublic »

Aromasin wrote: post #141
tshaddox wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing happens for me on YouTube, although I guess YouTube doesn't start with an auto-playing random sequence of videos to quick-start the search for videos you find interesting. Still though, I end up in very odd niches that I never specifically searched for.

One thing I will say is that I feel YouTube doesn't do this to nearly as large of degree as TikTok. YouTube might suggest me videos that are outside my cluster of interests occasionally, but normally only those with a reasonably high view count. They will recommend low view count videos that are within my interests however. TikTok on the other hand will sometimes show me a video with almost no views, that is complete…

seems like the missing ingredient is being able to recognize high quality vids with low view count. Recognizing quality before the masses do.

Re: TikTok reveals details of how its algorithm works

#180

Post by 0xy »

sudosysgen wrote: post #173
0xy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should principles be given to countries that do not reciprocate? All major American tech companies are banished from China, and the only ones left are ones who agreed to transfer IP to be stolen by the CCP.

The US never had any such principles. Whenever any country competes with American cash-cows, the US "discovers" a reason to ban them. TikTok is not the first one, see what happened with Bombardier for an example closer to home. Or, when Canada was threatening the US superiority in engine tech, after which the US government threatened to embargo Canada from avionics if they proceeded with the Arrow program. They do th…

>there is no need to transfer IP

Provably false. [1]

>comply with Chinese law

Chinese law requires companies to hand over root access and data, and also effectively forbids E2E encryption. This is IP transfer. [2]

>The US is simply scared of losing it's advantage in tech to China

The US has several tech companies with market caps more than double Tik Tok.

>National Security

There's evidence Tik Tok has been promoting CCP propaganda. [3]

>the average person isn't harmed by TikTok anymore and indeed less so than Facebook

Depends if you trust your data with the same government who regularly disappears journalists, I guess.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/forced-tech-transfers-are-on-th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOlu624glKw

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