TikTok secret algorithm is a big 'Duh!'

TikTok underground algorithm is a big 'Duh!'

Someone using the TikTok app on their smartphone

(Image credit: Shutterstock / diy13)

TikTok's powerful algorithm steering the social media activity of millions of daily users is no longer a mystery.

In a new New York Times report that outlines information gleaned from what's been verified as an official document, TikTok's algorithm is laid blank. Look for it: it prioritizes retention and time spent, and is insanely obvious.

Boiled down to its essence, the TikTok algorithm looks for video likes, comments, and how much of the video yous watch (a fully watched video is obviously worth more than than one y'all terminate or scroll by before information technology'due south complete).

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The system understands, based on tags and other details, what each video is about. If you similar a certain kind of video and picket it all the way through, or fifty-fifty break it repeatedly and then still complete playing it, those are positive signals for the algorithm.

Since TikTok's goal is to bring you back to the platform as often every bit possible, and retain your attention once you're there, the algorithm will then feed y'all more of the kind of videos y'all've indicated that you like/prefer through the TikTok algorithm

It'due south an addictive, virtuous circumvolve, right?

Videos that string together a story – and get you to picket all of them – can supercharge the influence of that topic in the algorithm to give y'all more of that kind of meaty content.

A path to content addiction

When I started watching TikTok videos a few years ago, near all of them were 15 seconds or less. My feed was full of magic tricks, DIY, and people doing dances. None of this, fifty-fifty back then, was random. I was interested in learning new magic tricks (I've been an apprentice sorcerer almost all my life), I love dwelling hacks, and couldn't get plenty of the dances because I appreciated the skill, and wondered how people of all ages (including mine!) had the skill and free energy to learn and practise them. What I watched fed all the videos I saw. To this day, my youngest child often comments that I see a very different TikTok than they do.

Present, I watch longer, storytelling videos, like those from Elise Meyers, whom I stumbled on a few months agone when she told this lengthy and hilarious tale about a blind date who picked her up, drove them to Taco Bell, and and then bought 100 tacos.

She's a bright storyteller. I know this because at present I've consumed dozens of her videos thank you to the algorithm, which is feeding me more than and more of them (along with other long-class story-telling videos).

These three-infinitesimal TikToks are plain a boon for TikTok'southward core goal of collecting and retaining more users. Time spent as a metric isn't unique to TikTok. Anyone who runs a content website knows the value of more than time (and pages) consumed, which usually translates into more than served ads.

Down the rabbit pigsty

What's notable, though, is that TikTok'due south algorithm still allows for discovery. Yeah, there's a lot of showing y'all more of what yous clearly like or want (to the possible detriment of those who may be in a dark identify and are gravitating to depressing/aroused/harmful videos).

On the other hand, TikTok retains a bit of serendipity. Every once in a while, I run into a video that has nothing to do with my likes or interests (at least as I express them on TikTok), just I get hooked. That'due south how Elise Meyers happened. These random videos are usually a production of extreme popularity elsewhere on TikTok, which so drives that content into your feed, for yous to feed the algorithm with fresh attention info.

The downside of this fairly simple algorithm is that it can announced to go stuck. Suddenly, I have 5 or 6 Elise Meyers in i feed session, and even I tin can't slog through that many minutes of her crazy stories. I usually take a interruption and then come back to them.

I've also found that, once you sympathize the TikTok algorithm, yous tin untrain and retrain it. If I notice too much of 1 kind of video in my feed. I practise some hashtag searches and and then rabbit-hole down a few fresh topics.

This ordinarily works until I gravitate back to my old haunts (magic, DIY, FX, Elise Meyers) – and then I'm back to where I started.

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A 35-year manufacture veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered engineering since PCs were the size of suitcases and "on line" meant "waiting." He's a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Primary of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He as well wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium chosen The Upgrade.

Lance makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Ryan, Fob News, Fox Business, the Today Testify, Skillful Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC.