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An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

arxiv.org

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Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#21

Post by notfromhere »

ggus wrote: post #15
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #10

I don't understand how it works for people. I tried for what felt an eternity, and it kept showing me terrible content. So I removed it. Is there something that is not made to turn your brain into a sponge on tik tok ?

My experience exactly, and my friend's experience too. I'm inclined to think every "tiktok is soo great after you put time into it" comment I see is some form of Stockholm syndrome..

The content you like might not be very available on tik tok. From personal experience, it’s able to hone down on niches you like pretty quickly.

Most impressively, without having an account or liking specific videos, it can narrow down the information. Especially since they have to use some kind of algo to contextually understand videos without hashtags or subtitles.

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#22

Post by turkeygizzard »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13
bpodgursky wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience, while worth noting, is clearly atypical.

I understand that I probably have a niche taste, been a nerd and all, but still. Maybe I'm not the target? Do they have a lot of millennial users or is it mostly for the younger generation?

I found that my initial foryou feed was pretty terrible and I ended up in political content pretty quickly. Once I nudged the algorithm by searching for my own hobbies, my foryou feed has been pretty great. I think probably every now and then it gets stuck in some local optimum, but it's pretty responsive to when you search for a specific niche going forward IME. Ultimately though like other commenters have mentioned, the content can be pretty shallow compared to other media

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#23

Post by BiteCode_dev »

turkeygizzard wrote: post #22
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that I probably have a niche taste, been a nerd and all, but still. Maybe I'm not the target? Do they have a lot of millennial users or is it mostly for the younger generation?

I found that my initial foryou feed was pretty terrible and I ended up in political content pretty quickly. Once I nudged the algorithm by searching for my own hobbies, my foryou feed has been pretty great. I think probably every now and then it gets stuck in some local optimum, but it's pretty responsive to when you search for a specific niche going forward IME. Ultimately though like other commenters have mentioned…

> Ultimately though like other commenters have mentioned, the content can be pretty shallow compared to other media

My one time experience felt like browsing the youtube trending page continuously. Which I know must be something a lot of people like, because the videos in there have hundred of millions of views.

But this kind of content is the opposite of everything I enjoy. Does tik tok show a different face deep inside the algo tree?

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#24

Post by BiteCode_dev »

wongarsu wrote: post #4

> Through this approach we were able to test and analyse the affect of the language and location used to access TikTok, follow- and like feature, as well as how the recommended content changes as a user watches certain posts longer than others. Our results revealed that all tested factors have an effect on the way TikTok’s RS recommends content to its users. We have also shown that the follow-feature influences the r…

I wonder if it listen to audio or use the video feed to record noises you make, or your pupils dilatation and evaluation the autonomous nervous system arousal that emerges from the reaction to the content.

Because time spent, scrolling rhythm and likes seem like too weak of a signal.

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#25

Post by el-salvador »

RomanAlexander wrote: post #5

I wonder if the recommendation engines are different per country. For example in the US, you usually can't be recommended videos from accounts outside the US. Even with a VPN, spoofed geo location, system language, added video language you will be served only mostly videos based on your IMEI.

Have you tried without a SIM card? I think they use the SIM Card Country Code too.

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#26

Post by el-salvador »

notfromhere wrote: post #21
ggus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience exactly, and my friend's experience too. I'm inclined to think every "tiktok is soo great after you put time into it" comment I see is some form of Stockholm syndrome..

The content you like might not be very available on tik tok. From personal experience, it’s able to hone down on niches you like pretty quickly. Most impressively, without having an account or liking specific videos, it can narrow down the information. Especially since they have to use some kind of algo to contextually understand videos without hashtags or subtitles.

> Most impressively, without having an account or liking specific videos, it can narrow down the information. Especially since they have to use some kind of algo to contextually understand videos without hashtags or subtitles.

I think they use some kind of object recognition to sort videos . Like if you watch videos with one particular object, you are more likely to see videos with that object.

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#28

Post by bitshiftfaced »

I'd like to see them address videos that game the system. I'll see videos structured so that the beginning is very slow, and so you must wait to get to the meat of the content. People do wait, and so the video is algorithmically rewarded, but that doesn't mean the video is good. Some videos even have a "fake glitch" effect where the first few frames are from later in the video. It's as if to say "here's what the video's about, but first wait through this boring part so that my video gets rewarded for engagement."

I once watched a video over several times because I couldn't make out what was supposed to be "off" about it at the end. I finally realized that there was nothing strange or anything, but the video led you to believe there was. Therefore many people, like me, stupidly rewatched it in order to figure out that there was nothing interesting. And that's why it had a boosted signal!

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#29

Post by cormorant »

In Figure 6 (described in section 4.4), the content seen by "the control user 50" and "the active user 49" are both in large part by content creator "miakhalifa" (32.4% for the control, 68.6% for the active). The "experimental scenario" is "scenario 28", described as "Follow a random content creator".

Mia Khalifa is a porn actress. A quick search indicates that her TikTok posts are at least sexually suggestive.

I wish I understood what "control" meant in this paper, and what exactly this scenario tested. Does it really mean that a fresh user profile is going to see 1/3 of its feed coming from a porn star? I've never used TikTok so I don't know!

Re: An empirical investigation of personalization factors on TikTok

#30

Post by fragmede »

PaulHoule wrote: post #6
wongarsu wrote: post #4

> Through this approach we were able to test and analyse the affect of the language and location used to access TikTok, follow- and like feature, as well as how the recommended content changes as a user watches certain posts longer than others. Our results revealed that all tested factors have an effect on the way TikTok’s RS recommends content to its users. We have also shown that the follow-feature influences the r…

I wonder if there is a multi-arm bandit hidden in there somewhere. I guess the short form video and the "skip past it" culture lowers the risk of exploration -- it's kinda the opposite of that notorious Netflix optimization challenge.

It's hidden behind the 'live' button top left. Viewers buy emoji with real money and send them to creators, creators get money, and Bytedance takes a cut. Creators do all sorts of things, some show them working, at a farm, at a shipping warehouse, whatever. Others play bingo or scratch-off tickets. Still others sit and talk or play music with their viewers. Sending an emoji is highlighted and so are easier for creators to acknowledge the emoji/give a shout out to that particular username. Thing is, creators only sometimes shout out, encouraging multi-arm bandit behavior on the part of the viewer.
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