TikTok Shadow-Banning: An Algorithmic Quirk or Addiction by Design?
In January 2020, I made my first trending TikTok video, which garnered over 100k views in less than 24 hours. While I had only spent one-month creating videos on the site, I had years of experience researching and studying video-sharing platforms, algorithms, and recommendation systems from YouTube to Vimeo. After hitting my first 100k, I felt like I had it down and created a surefire formula for online success.
As I created more videos using a similar style and format, I was shocked when the following four videos barely reached 1k views, and video 5 barely broke 20k. I spent the following weeks researching peak posting times, obsessively studying my daily stats, and creating two to three videos daily to keep up the momentum I had garnered from my first highly viewed video.
Over the months, my engagement with TikTok has taken on a similar cycle. I produce consistent videos, usually going a week or two with relatively low views (below 1k) and then producing one video, which spikes my views and platform growth. As I researched more about this…
