Every second you watch or rewatch a video on TikTok, it’s tracking you. Our investigation reveals the one piece of information the app needs to decide what you see.
The Journal created automated accounts that watched thousands of videos to uncover how the social media network knows you so well.To understand TikTok’s algorithm, which powers the world’s fastest-growing social network,—or bots—that watched hundreds of thousands of videos on the app.
What did we find? The TikTok experience starts the same way for everyone, with a variety of videos, many with millions of views. The app takes note of subtle cues, such as how long you linger on a video, to zero in on what users really want to watch. Over time, the video choices become less mainstream, less vetted by moderators and sometimes more disturbing.Some of the accounts ended up lost in rabbit holes of similar content, including one that just watched videos about depression.
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