It’s the most successful video app in the world. A New York Times columnist has obtained an internal company document that offers a new level of detail about how the algorithm works
A chart illustrating the goals of TikTok's algorithm, part of an internal company document obtained by New York Times columnist Ben Smith.
It succeeded where other short videos apps failed in part because it makes creation so easy, giving users background music to dance to or memes to enact, rather than forcing them to fill dead air. And for many users, who consume without creating, the app is shockingly good at reading your preferences and steering you to one of its many “sides,” whether you’re interested in socialism or Excel tips or sex, conservative politics or a specific celebrity.
“I think it’s a crazy idea to let TikTok’s algorithm steer the life of our kids,” he said. “Each video a kid watches, TikTok gains a piece of information on him. In a few hours, the algorithm can detect his musical tastes, his physical attraction, if he’s depressed, if he might be into drugs, and many other sensitive information. There’s a high risk that some of this information will be used against him. It could potentially be used to micro-target him or make him more addicted to the platform.
“There are two solutions to this issue,” the document goes on. “Make some assumptions, and break down the value into the value equation. For instance, in terms of repeated exposure, we could add a value ‘same_author_seen,’ and for the boredom issue, we could also add a negative value ‘same_tag_today.’ Other solutions besides value equation may also work, such as forced recommendation in users’ for u feed and dispersion etc. For example, the boredom issue can be solved through dispersion.
But the document also makes clear that TikTok has done nothing to sever its ties with its Chinese parent, ByteDance, whose ownership became a spasmodic focus at the end of President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020, when he attempted to force the sale of TikTok to an American company allied with his administration, Oracle.
Concern about Chinese consumer technology is bipartisan in the United States. Trump’s executive order attempting to ban the app in August 2020 warned that TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.” The Chinese government could “build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” it said. That ban stalled in court and faded after the presidential election.
The U.S. government’s security concerns come in two forms. The first, as Trump suggested in his executive order, is whether the vast trove of data TikTok holds — about the private sexual desires of fans of the app who might end up becoming U.S. public officials, for instance — should be viewed as a national security issue. There’s no evidence the data has ever been used that way, and TikTok is hardly the only place Americans share details of their lives on social media.
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