\u201cWe basically work from the assumption that if we want data, then we need to obtain it ourselves,\u201d Sapiezynski said of their account cloning approach. \u201cEven if we did, for example, want to use the official TikTok researcher API, none of the user agency is covered there. You can see what content is available, but you cannot see individual timelines that will tell you how the algorithm reacts to a particular user watching or not watching a particular video. Similarly, with the European Union\u2019s researcher data access, all of this data can only be accessed aggregated and not from a perspective of a single user. So when you want to really study personalization, this research cannot be done on the aggregated data.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mind the gap<\/p>\n
The team ran their experiments multiple times on the 90 cloned accounts and made side-by-side comparisons, using both implicit and explicit signals, to see how TikTok\u2019s algorithm responded in terms of recommended content on the FYPs. They focused on three popular topics: cooking videos, fitness videos, and sports betting.<\/p>\n
The \u201cnot interested\u201d button proved most effective, reducing unwanted content by around 84 percent, compared to just a 48 percent reduction from merely skipping videos. \u201cSo if you don\u2019t want to see something, you should be hitting that button,\u201d said Kaplan. But the authors note that the \u201cnot interested\u201d option seems to be deliberately hidden from users. And it was very easy for the algorithm to \u201crelapse\u201d into once again flooding an FYP with previously unwanted content; even a brief re-engagement by a user is sufficient.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turns out that it works in the beginning,\u201d said Sapiezynski. \u201cWhen you start saying, \u2018I don\u2019t want to see this particular topic,\u2019 the platform might actually show you fewer of such pieces of content. But then the platform will slowly start putting it back in your feed. And if you don\u2019t continue saying, \u2018I really don\u2019t want to see it,\u2019 this may balloon back to the place where it was in the beginning. So the platform does react to your negative feedback, but then it also very much reacts to your express behavior. So if you are presented with this content again and you start watching it, the platform will again feed it to you more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, be consistently very active with your feedback\u2014constant vigilance<\/a>!\u2014when it comes to curating TikTok\u2019s FYP. The researchers hope to test this hypothesis on real user data in the future. That said, \u201cWe can teach users how to use the platform better, but ultimately the way that you\u2019re interfacing with the platform is going to be dictated by the design decisions that are fundamental to the platform,\u201d said Kaplan.<\/p>\n Proceedings of the Twentieth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2026. DOI: 10.1609\/icwsm.v20i1.42688<\/a> (About DOIs<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe basically work from the assumption that if we want data, then we need to obtain it ourselves,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-539696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}