How TikTok Sees Inside Your Brain

A new video investigation by the Wall Street Journal finds the key to TikTok's success in how the short-video sharing app monitors viewing times. From a report: TikTok is known for the fiendishly effective way that it selects streams of videos tailored to each user's taste. The algorithm behind this personalization is the company's prize asset -- and, like those that power Google and Facebook, it's a secret. WSJ created a batch of individualized dummy accounts to throw at TikTok and test how it homed in on each fake persona's traits. TikTok responds most sensitively to a single signal -- how long a user lingers over a video. It starts by showing new users very popular items, and sees which catch their eyes.

TikTok doesn't see inside my brain

[Known Nutter]

Hate to be "that guy" but TikTok doesn't see inside my fucking brain. Don't have it, don't use it, never will.

Re:TikTok doesn't see inside my brain

[Talence]

my fucking brain.
Don't have it, don't use it,

LOL

Re:

[Ostracus]

I can. Hey why's it so dark in here?

Re:

[TomGreenhaw]

LOL, "Don't have it, don't use it, never will."
At first I thought you meant your brain. Sorry.

Inside "Your" Brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop this lazy style of writing, as if you're personally speaking to me. They don't see into *MY* brain, because I don't use this nonsense, so stop phrasing shit like this, please.

Re:

[smooth wombat]

And this is why I wear my tinfoil hat. It's great at blocking this stuff.

Wow, some secret algorithm

[Viol8]

So the longer someone watches a video the more interested they probably are in it? Amazing, who knew?

Re:Wow, some secret algorithm

[Last_Available_Usern]

True, there's nothing amazing about that. What's impressive is interpreting *what* the video is about to create keywords they can use to correlate other videos a user may be interested in. I believe this is the main reason TikTok offers so much music to attach to videos as a lot of the songs are contextual and can create additional mechanisms to group videos by content.

Re:

[MeNeXT]

Like interpreting hashtags like #kittens #cute is difficult?

The users mark them up.

Re:

[Last_Available_Usern]

True but there's no standardization amongst users. Assuming they actually do mark them up, 20 different cat videos might have 20 different hashtags to include #catz, #puddytat, #purrmonster, etc. Making sense of all these and pulling them together via automation probably isn't as simple as you, or even I, think.

Re:

[ayesnymous]

They're also probably trying to hijack your front facing camera to see where exactly you're looking.

I tick not

[MpVpRb]

..nor do I tock.
I use social media as a tool, on a desktop computer.
This phone-based nonsense is useless to me

Re:

[J.L. Pettimore]

You've already lost.

It's a whole lot of very short videos

[rsilvergun]

This means you're going to have a lot more data points to go off of. By fire up in 8-hour show hop video on YouTube all they know is that I listen to a show hop video for 8 hours. In that same 8 hours I probably would have watched a couple hundred tiktok videos. It's going to drastically change how their algorithm works and how effective it is.

Re:

[cayenne8]

By fire up in 8-hour show hop video on YouTube all they know is that I listen to a show hop video for 8 hours.

What is a "show hop"?

I'm not familiar with that term.

Re:

[rsilvergun]

Sorry, that was supposed to be "Chill Hop" :P. I keep posting using Google Voice from my phone and, well, it doesn't always work. Nor do I always catch its typos.

Re:

[cayenne8]

Sorry, that was supposed to be "Chill Hop" :P. I keep posting using Google Voice from my phone and, well, it doesn't always work. Nor do I always catch its typos. --

LOL...this is gonna kill ya.

I don't know what Chill Hop is either....

ditto Instagram

[Alworx]

Instagram does the same. It suggests posts based simply on what I watch, non what I actively "like". And no, I don't have any scars around my skull area

Dummy Accounts and Fake TikTok users?

[MindPrison]

Well...

No need to create dummy accounts to test, TikTok users already filled that role and the other one as well.

That's an easy feat

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What Tiktok sees inside Tiktok users' brains is a big great blank.

After watching a couple TikTok videos

[Opportunist]

I can say that this probably means that TikTok sees a lot of static noise...

Should be declared a "digital drug".

[BAReFO0t]

While Facebook might be cheap booze, TikTok is definitely crack. Just like Zynga "games" of FB, back in the day.

And while we're at it: Deliberately designing something so you can't get out, whether via a wall, or via neural input that triggers the pathways that starve the "GTFO" pathway, is also some kind of abusive crime.

The only difference is that, back in the psychological dark ages, harming the brain on an information/input level was considered "not real harm". Because independent-from-body "soul", dama

In my case ...

[PPH]

... my brain [clipart-library.com] is pretty easy to figure out.

Solving human attention

[baudboi]

Deep Learning algorithms have gotten to the point where given enough data (billions of videos from hundreds of millions of people), understanding the factors that drive human attention is possible and moving from the obvious to the subtle.

They are looking into *your* brain even if you don't have TikTok because guess what, you are a human, and the drivers of your attention start from the same place as every other human. Sex, faces expressing emotion, places you've been, music you've heard, things tha

Chinese propaganda

[cliffjumper222]

I had TikTok for a good while, just to watch, not generate content, but I deleted it because I noticed how every so often, out of the blue, there would be some content that I'd class as Chinese propaganda. It was what all effective propaganda is, subtle, well-produced information that promotes or publicizes a particular political cause or point of view, but in a way that the recipient doesn't really notice. In my case, (and every TikTok stream is customized so you may see different stuff), I'd get charming videos on what it was like to live in China, mixed with "white guy in China" raving about how great it was that he could drink a beer walking down the street, but in the USA with its apparently "land of the free" status you couldn't. Each had a good load of comments - "yeah, that's right", "wonderful", etc. Throw in the "China street fashion" videos and, other "there's no crime here in China" videos, and it was a very nice pro-China marketing campaign mixed in with dance, comedy, etc. I am attuned to this because of my work. They've done a good job there.

Re: Chinese propaganda

[electron826]

What job do you have that helped you notice this?