<story><title>I Trained My TikTok</title><url>https://metastable.org/2022/05/how-I-trained-my-tiktok.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway290</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if anyone in this thread uses YouTube, but its algorithm is insanely quick to adapt and videos you see on home page and in recommendations entirely depend on what you have watched before. Watch a video, see your home page change; watch a ton and it will reflect your preferences. (It also makes an attempt to list the topics it thinks you prefer and offers additional separate home page for each, as well as one for videos not matching any topic but still possibly of interest to you.)&lt;p&gt;Everything about TikTok&amp;#x27;s algorithmic malleability can be said about YouTube, so I am confused as to why this is news to anyone.&lt;p&gt;One difference is that YT also has longer videos. Unlike fixed-length blurbs of TT, this increases the challenge for recommendation algorithms, but I welcome this heterogeneity.</text></item><item><author>pbw</author><text>I agree TikTok is doing something different from the other guys. The amazing thing is that it&amp;#x27;s been out for 5 years and no one has copied what it does. Although I&amp;#x27;d guess the algorithm has gotten a lot better over time as well, so it might be a moving target for the others.</text></item><item><author>teej</author><text>TikTok is the only social platform where you can reliably train the algorithm and it sticks.&lt;p&gt;On Twitter, no amount of curation, mutes, or blocks will save you from screenshots of content you don’t want to see.&lt;p&gt;On Reddit, you rely entirely up to the mods of a subreddit. Once a subreddit gets too popular, the submission rate overwhelms volunteer resources.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is just garbage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JADev62096</author><text>I feel like YT is too quick to adapt and adapts too fully. If I pick up a new interest and watch videos on it for a bit, then that&amp;#x27;s all I see in recommendations; it&amp;#x27;s like my old interests don&amp;#x27;t exist any more and I have to remember to search them again.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Trained My TikTok</title><url>https://metastable.org/2022/05/how-I-trained-my-tiktok.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway290</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if anyone in this thread uses YouTube, but its algorithm is insanely quick to adapt and videos you see on home page and in recommendations entirely depend on what you have watched before. Watch a video, see your home page change; watch a ton and it will reflect your preferences. (It also makes an attempt to list the topics it thinks you prefer and offers additional separate home page for each, as well as one for videos not matching any topic but still possibly of interest to you.)&lt;p&gt;Everything about TikTok&amp;#x27;s algorithmic malleability can be said about YouTube, so I am confused as to why this is news to anyone.&lt;p&gt;One difference is that YT also has longer videos. Unlike fixed-length blurbs of TT, this increases the challenge for recommendation algorithms, but I welcome this heterogeneity.</text></item><item><author>pbw</author><text>I agree TikTok is doing something different from the other guys. The amazing thing is that it&amp;#x27;s been out for 5 years and no one has copied what it does. Although I&amp;#x27;d guess the algorithm has gotten a lot better over time as well, so it might be a moving target for the others.</text></item><item><author>teej</author><text>TikTok is the only social platform where you can reliably train the algorithm and it sticks.&lt;p&gt;On Twitter, no amount of curation, mutes, or blocks will save you from screenshots of content you don’t want to see.&lt;p&gt;On Reddit, you rely entirely up to the mods of a subreddit. Once a subreddit gets too popular, the submission rate overwhelms volunteer resources.&lt;p&gt;Facebook is just garbage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jazzyjackson</author><text>YouTube&amp;#x27;s recommendation must be device dependent or something, because I only use it through AppleTV or as a Playstation App and the entire page is like 15 or 20 videos repeated over and over, like sometimes it will suggest the same video in two different places on the screen.</text></comment>