TikTok Confirms That Its Own Employees Can Decide What Goes Viral (theverge.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: TikTok has confirmed to Forbes that some of its US employees have the ability to boost videos in order to "introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community." The statement comes as part of a report about TikTok's "Heating" button, which Forbes says can be used to put selected videos onto users' For You pages, helping boost views by sidestepping the algorithm that supposedly drives the TikTok experience.
Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to particular videos isn't the only reason for heating. TikTok will also "promote some videos to help diversify the content experience," he said. Favazza also suggests TikTok doesn't do it that often, claiming only ".002% of videos in For You feeds" are heated. According to an internal document obtained by Forbes, however, heated videos reportedly make up "around 1-2 percent" of "total daily video views." Heated videos don't come with a label to show that they've been boosted by TikTok like ads or sponsored posts do, according to the report. Instead, they appear like any other videos that the algorithm would've selected for you.
Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to particular videos isn't the only reason for heating. TikTok will also "promote some videos to help diversify the content experience," he said. Favazza also suggests TikTok doesn't do it that often, claiming only ".002% of videos in For You feeds" are heated. According to an internal document obtained by Forbes, however, heated videos reportedly make up "around 1-2 percent" of "total daily video views." Heated videos don't come with a label to show that they've been boosted by TikTok like ads or sponsored posts do, according to the report. Instead, they appear like any other videos that the algorithm would've selected for you.
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I've been using Twitter for some time now, and I really don't think it's as simple as you make it out to be.
It's one thing to know that Twitter is sleazy, that there are shadow bans, that people have had trouble there because they conflicted with Musk. But it's another thing to think that you can't learn facts there.
Some independent journalists have managed to hang on there, and are still disseminating information. Some of them are extremely critical of Musk, Twitter, and Tesla. Some of these people have re
Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one thing to know that Twitter is sleazy, that there are shadow bans, that people have had trouble there because they conflicted with Musk.
Um ... all of that predates Musk, lol. It's just hilarious that it's now a bad thing, simply because Musk bought it.
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It's one thing to know that Twitter is sleazy, that there are shadow bans, that people have had trouble there because they conflicted with Musk.
Um ... all of that predates Musk, lol. It's just hilarious that it's now a bad thing, simply because Musk bought it.
Really? People being banned because they conflicted with Musk predates Musk's ownership? Tell us more. Also, point to where I said Elno caused the other stuff. Oh wait, I said no such thing. Also, all that shit belongs to his Muskiness now. He said he was going to fix Twitter, instead he's set it on fire. There's more censorship of liberal voices than ever, and he's still having to ban the loudest right-wing voices because they didn't change since the last time they were banned.
Twitter was bad before Elon M
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Either Musk is a total idiot, or this is actually a plan to destroy Twitter,
False dichotomy! He can be both.
Personally, I think he offered to buy Twitter while off his head high, the SEC forced him to buy it because otherwise it was massive market manipulation, so now he has it, is angry at it/them/Twitter and wants to destroy it.
It's turtles all the way down except the turtles are actually embodiments of dumbassery.
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You just deadpan responded to a troll. Congrats.
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You just deadpan responded to a troll. Congrats.
Sometimes the trolls say something I'd like to comment on, and they are therefore convenient. That's their only use. If I get mad at them then they get what they want, if I write the comment that I wanted to write then I get what I want. I think of their comments as compost. I plant ideas in their shit.
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Re: Yes, but... (Score:1)
Huh. That's strange, because it seems that the truth is
Not That
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I'm not Chris and don't know who Chris is. Keep modding down with your sock puppets until there's no one left here but you n me.
Re: Yes, but... (Score:1)
Yes, comrade.
Search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked for a popular search engine which had a promotions.txt file which would boost the content to the top if it was relevant to your query.
What makes anyone think facebook twitter Reddit etc are any doing anything different than what TikTok does?
Re: Search engine (Score:5, Informative)
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TikTok is doing it for their CCP masters. I'd say that's different.
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Everyone is doing what their "masters" tell them to do. There's very few people who actually wield autonomous powers.
Re: Search engine (Score:1)
Then you'd be wrong.
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"TikTok is doing it for their CCP masters."
TikTok is run by Eve Online?
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What makes anyone think facebook twitter Reddit etc are any doing anything different than what TikTok does?
None is particularly healthy for society. But China has an explicit goal of exploiting US social media for propaganda purposes and to promote friction and social deterioration, as can be opaquely seen from their engagement on Twitter. It's very different to have an actual objective of causing harm vs. to simply to cause some harm incidentally.
huge number (Score:2)
It's beginning to look a lot lke.... (Score:1)
Section 230 isn't working.
Re: It's beginning to look a lot lke.... (Score:2)
Section 230 already did that.
What other mechanism could there be? (Score:2)
Random chance? Yeah right.
Higher quality? Do you really think so?
Videos, or posts, or products, or radio songs, or politicians, have always "gone viral" due to the efforts of people who have mastered the levers of popularity. It's never been an accident. If you're willing to pay money to the right people, for the right content, you'll go viral. And if you didn't, somebody else did it for you, for their own gain.
Even on Google itself, which was founded on a principle of counting "votes" of sites that link to
I almost installed TikTok because of this. (Score:2)
Oh wel, nothing to spoil my "expericence" I guess.