Week 4 Blog

The focus area I am looking at is News & Media. I will specifically for my research project be looking at the TikTok medium and how automation and specific algorithms are used in order to make the app work. The two main questions I am seeking to answer in my video are 1. How does the TikTok algorithm work and; 2. Is my privacy safe?. What I found in my research about how the app’s algorithm truly works, is that on the surface many explain that the algorithm works purely based off of things you would expect; user interaction such as which videos you save, like, comment on and etc. as well as geographical factors and information such as hashtags within the video. However, after doing more research and reading more information online written by other individuals like me seeking to answer the same question. Many such as myself were sceptical about how specific the app was to the user. I could relate to this as I myself am a TikTok user and over the last year or so have often found my “for you page” matching my current mood in a specific period of time. For example when I went through a breakup all of a sudden my ‘for you page’ would be swarmed with sad montages, relationship advice and so on and so forth. This is what concerned me the most as TikTok had no way of knowing that I had gone through a breakup recently as I didn’t communicate with anyone on there and merely viewed content.  However, the company itself claims in a piece of writing given out to employees “TikTok Algo 101” that the two main pieces of information the the algorithm looks for is retention and watch time. They say it is through this in which the algorithm can focus on which types of videos you spend the most time watching or rewatching and which videos you save that it is able to determine which videos to show you next.