TikTok and the AI algorithms behind its popularity
How TikTok took over everyone’s social media
TikToks. They are everywhere. You are wandering around the endless depths of Instagram and bam!! There it is. The dancing. The sounds. The memes. Everyone has seen them. But what exactly are TikToks?
TikTok is a relatively new social media platform, in which users can post short videos. People can share “sounds”, create simple memes, or hop on a new dancing trend. These videos can be streamed on the TikTok app, or you can download them and send them to friends. People spend hours just scrolling through TikToks, forgetting that they should be completing an assignment, or that it is 2 am and they haven’t looked away from their screen for over six hours. Many people believe that TikTok is only a platform for teenagers and the occasional college student. However, many adults have created popular content as well. Many famous TikTokers like Charli d’Amelio and Loren Gray are still in high school, but there are still content creators such as Zach King and the Try Guys that are popular on TikTok.
This begs the question: What is it about Tik Tok that appeals to people? It is TikTok’s format and algorithm that helped to drive the platform to fame.
But, after the COVID “quarantine” forced millions of people to “shelter in place”, the app’s usage skyrocketed. People had nothing better to do than started downloading TikTok “just to check it out.” and they were sucked into this virtual world — unable to escape.
TikTok videos are closely based off of Musical.ly, another social media platform that came out in 2014 that specializes in short lip sync videos. Most people do not understand why only one of these platforms took off though both are so obviously similar. After all, both platforms use content that appeals to teenagers. These include famous comedians performing short skits, artists drawing their latest original character in time-lapse videos, memes popping up for different fandoms (anime, gaming, and TV shows alike), people dancing to the latest songs and using sounds from videos to create their versions. But, if the platforms are so similar, why did Musical.ly die, and TikTok prosper? There is, in fact, a simple explanation for this.
TikTok has one thing that Musical.ly never did. A highly efficient and effective AI algorithm to provide new video recommendations. New users can go viral in a single day if they have the right kind of content. The manner in which TikTok determines the worth of a video is very systematic. Although it’s not public information, many statisticians believe that TikTok’s algorithm “judges the view time”.
Most videos on TikTok are 15–60 seconds long, and most viral TikToks are very eye-catching and engaging. Let’s consider an example of TikTok of 15 seconds. There are three checkpoints in the video. The 3 second, 5 second, and 10-second mark. When a user posts a video on TikTok, the algorithm will send it out to a few users on their “For You Page” (FYP). TikTok then keeps track of how long a user will watch the new video before swiping down to the next one. Additionally, to prevent users from getting bored watching new videos that may not be of the best quality, TikTok “places these videos in between two known viral videos”. After a few people have seen the new video, TikTok checks the new average watch time. If people only stayed on the video for 0–3 seconds, TikTok stops recommending that specific video to more people. If the average view time is 3–5 seconds, then TikTok sends it out to a larger proportion of the TikTok users, but they do not broadcast it to the vast majority of their users. Once a video’s view time gets past the five-minute mark, the video is sent out to users interested in the specific tags or the specific subject area. All viral videos have an average view time of over 10 seconds, during which time TikTok starts blasting it on everyone’s FYP since it has deemed the quality to be “good.” Additionally, TikTok tracks the momentum a video receives. If a video in an account gets a considerable increase in “likes” compared to other videos from the same user, TikTok starts sending out that video from the user more frequently.
Additionally, TikTok keeps track of which videos hold people’s attention the longest and starts recommending new videos based on the most-watched TikToks. It’s algorithm reviews the longest view time of videos for a user’s account and identifies the videos that other users liked after watching that user’s video. This means that if you watched the entirety of an art video, the algorithm reviews the art video’s analytics and recommends similar art videos that were viewed. If a user skips a video completely, TikTok prevents videos that are similar from appearing on that person’s FYP. In short, TikTok’s algorithm operates behind the scenes in an extremely insidious way to provide content that is very specific to its audience’s taste.
TikTok has over a billion users, which means that it is very easy to become famous through the platform. If someone creates videos based on popular trends or sounds, their videos are automatically associated with other popular videos and sent out to even more people. However, copying other people’s ideas only gets a creator so far….
Creating an engaging TikTok to trick the algorithm and making a viral video is quite simple — once you know how the “recommendation system” works. As mentioned above, there are three checkpoints, and the goal for users is to get viewers past all these checkpoints. Therefore, you must have three parts to the video.
First, you need “an eye-catching hook.” It’s the same idea as “clickbait” on YouTube. If you can fool people into staying longer than the first three seconds, they are more likely to stay till the end. So, you begin the video saying something along the lines of “I told my friend I liked them and filmed their reaction” or “I pranked my friend, and you won’t believe what happened next.” Captions that create suspense and arouse curiosity irrespective of the content in the video.
Second, the creator adds some “stall time” in the middle. You don’t want to reveal exactly how the video ends just yet. At the same time, you don’t want the user to get bored and swipe away. This is where it becomes important to learn how to “pace the video”. It should keep the story going, but the “big reveal or climax” should only occur at the very end of the video, after the 10-second mark.
Finally, the finale. You do not want to conclude the video with an unsatisfying ending. Thus, include a plot twist that surprises the viewers. For example, recently there was a new TikTok trend where a girl would kiss their guy best friend on camera to tell them that they liked them. People enjoyed the videos in which they ended up together, but the videos that became more popular were the ones in which the girl was rejected.
Another popular tactic is to post videos as parts of a larger series. Posting videos that have the climax in a second video allows creators to force viewers to watch till the end. This gives them enough leverage to say “if this video gets to 100K likes, I’ll post Part 2” and automatically increases the number of likes, which is a factor embedded in the algorithm. Additionally, TikTok points viewers to another video from the user, which provides the creator with more views on their next video. However, for these video series to be successful, the actual content needs to be something truly captivating. If the “stall time” is too long, viewers realize that they are being “baited” into watching a video with no end. Basically, the algorithm leads the audience to a merry dance of manipulation and continuously tests for their threshold to addiction.
One of the severest criticisms against TikTok is the use of deep fake algorithms that TikTok purportedly uses, which allows you to create fake images and videos that users cannot distinguish from authentic ones. Not only does this raise privacy concerns and challenge the integrity of TikTok videos, but the use of deep fake also represents threats to democracy and national security as well. This is deemed particularly serious because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance and has a reach of 500 million global monthly users with 1.5 billion all-time downloads.
Although a relatively new platform, TikTok’s popularity is undeniable. It’s an advanced algorithm and short videos allow it to grow from a small app to the most popular social media since Instagram. If you are interested in a more technical explanation of TikTok’s growth, check out this other article.
