There are two things that I think make TikTok irrefutably unique compared to other social media companies, and they have both garnered the company immense success in the last three years. Unfortunately, I think in both of these cases, TikTok's most distinct and successful features may ultimately be the most painful thorns in its side.
First and most obviously is its "For You" algorithm. This is TikTok's core competency. By almost all accounts, TikTok's content curation algorithm blows every other service's out of the water. The app knows you better than your mother does. The app knows you better than your spouse does. The app knows you better than you do. It's freaky.
But we don't need to dig too deeply into our home screens to trace the crash course this could put TikTok on. YouTube's suggestion algorithm is also incredibly powerful, so much so that it was able to direct the most ideologically vulnerable Americans toward QAnon. Likewise, Facebook's news feed curation is so clever that it can predict with a surgeon's precision content that will engage or enflame you, and this has directly led to the proliferation of fake news on the site. Truth be told, algorithms this powerful will always be exploited by malicious groups looking to most efficiently spread harmful information, and it's not clear whether the risk is worth it. Curated cat videos create only marginal societal good. Precisely targeted misinformation can do monumental bad.
That being said, there does seem to be a fundamental difference in the way TikTok's algorithm is designed compared to an algorithm like Facebook's. Facebook's algorithm is looking for sheer content engagement. It's relatively agnostic as to whether that interaction is positive or negative. Often the content people engage with is the content that is the most inflammatory, like a pointed political meme or a story on Barack Obama's Nigerian birthplace. When you leave an enraged comment on that Barack Obama story, the algorithm sees engagement and generates more of that same content. The fake news stories continue popping up on your newsfeed, you continue leaving enraged comments, and the feedback loop continues. In other words, it's toxic. TikTok's does not seem to confront users with the same level of inflammatory content. There certainly does seem to be an echo chamber effect — people who like a video about a topic will soon see thirteen more videos on the exact same topic — but the algorithm does not seem to be as centered around enraging the user as Facebook's. I think it's a coin toss as to which of these ultimately has a more negative effect on society.
The second feature about TikTok that I find both genius and ultimately self-defeating is its decision to focus the user experience on the community of users, not the individual user profile. Sites like Instagram and Snapchat are very directly centered around user profiles. Users post content to their pages, you follow other users directly, you stalk other users' profiles, and so on. This is not the case for TikTok. TikTok has all of these features too, but it is certainly not the focus of the app. The focus is around the "For You" page, and therefore the collective community of users also on the app. The user's individual profile is a second thought. A lion's share of users don't post any content, and many are using stock profile pictures with vague, cryptic usernames.
This is all cool on the surface because, once again, it keeps the focus on the collective community of TikTok users rather than the individual profile. But much like how extremely powerful algorithms on the internet will almost always have a malicious side effect, so will mass anonymity. I've heard many people talk about how incredibly misogynistic TikTok users can be, and I don't think it's a stretch to say the widespread anonymity caused by TikTok's non-profile-centric setup is one cause of this. People are already cruel enough online when their name is attached. We don't need the most powerful social media app to also have a culture of anonymity.
I don't know if these scenarios will actually play out like I envision they will, but if they do, look out below.
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