TikTok just made a huge change to its For You feed — but is it enough?

TikTok but made a huge change to its For Y'all feed — merely is it plenty?

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TikTok is planning to adjust the way its individually curated 'For You' page picks content, to effort and prevent users seeing so much of the aforementioned thing. The visitor believes that the kind of content it's concerned about is fine in isolation, but could be damaging when viewed excessively.

The news was offset reported in the Wall Street Journal, which had previously published a pretty damning investigation into how the TikTok algorithm learns about its users and supplies suitably engaging content to send them down rabbit holes.

In it, a bot set up by the paper to display depressive tendencies in its interactions with the app was shown videos about sadness and low 93% of the time, afterward merely 36 minutes' usage of the app.

In response, the newspaper claims, TikTom intends to "avert showing users as well much of the same content."

Sure plenty, TikTok then wrote a blog postal service outlining its planned changes. "We're testing ways to avoid recommending a series of like content – such as around extreme dieting or fitness, sadness, or breakups – to protect confronting viewing likewise much of a content category that may be fine as a unmarried video only problematic if viewed in clusters," the company explained.

"We're too working to recognize if our organization may inadvertently be recommending just very limited types of content that, though not violative of our policies, could accept a negative issue if that's the bulk of what someone watches, such as content almost loneliness or weight loss," it connected. "Our goal is for each person's For Yous feed to feature a breadth of content, creators, and topics."

While information technology's hoped that this will assistance TikTok fans' wellbeing, algorithms tin just go and so far. Then the company is also working on a feature that will let users to block content associated with certain words or hashtags appearing in their 'For You' feed.

Growing pains

Social media companies the world over, from YouTube to Facebook, are coming nether intense scrutiny for the content that they surface, and the impact that seemingly benign algorithms can have on the wellbeing of both individuals and societies. Given that TikTok just passed a billion users in September — well-nigh a seventh of the globe'southward population — it's perhaps unsurprising that information technology's now attracting like levels of concern.

The trouble sounds similar a familiar one. Just every bit YouTube'south date algorithm appears to enhance dwell times by pushing people to more and more farthermost and/or controversial content, it seems that TikTok's success comes from learning virtually a user's profile and then delivering them the kind of content they require — whether it's ultimately skilful for them or non.

The change described hither is an interesting one, because the company advisedly stops short of calling the content damaging in and of itself. If that was the core statement, and then stricter moderation would be required, and bigger questions would invariably accept to be asked. This is a quantity issue, not a quality one, in other words.

But ultimately, this could still end up opening a can of worms. Later all, if one extreme dieting video is fine, but "clusters" are not, then what's the number that can be safely viewed without inflicting damage? V? 20? 100?

These are seemingly impossible questions that the company will accept to reply somewhen: if not directly, than via the mysteriously opaque workings of the algorithm. If it can't answer them satisfactorily, and so this won't exist the last fourth dimension TikTok ends up in the news for the incorrect reasons.

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing nearly tech for over a decade, roofing phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the spider web and in the occasional mag too. When non weighing upward the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his e'er-growing games excess. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.