The original Chinese post was published here:

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was interviewed on TED. The host Chris Anderson even joked at the beginning: You have achieved an achievement that few people can achieve, allowing the two parties in the United States to reach a consensus.

Shou Zi Chew shared that the reason why TikTok has successfully become such a large platform is that the most attractive thing is that the underlying logic is completely different. Other social platforms focus on interpersonal relationships, that is, allowing you to interact with people you know. This underlying logic will allow you to see the content produced by people you know, but in this way, famous people will continue to be famous. It’s hard to become famous without being famous. I don’t think so at this point. A lot of people start from 0.

And Shou Zi Chew said that the focus of TikTok is interest. It doesn’t matter who you know. What you do is related to other people’s interests, and you will become popular, so many people can become popular very quickly. It has something to do with how interesting his content is.

How does Shou Zi Chew illustrate how TikTok’s algorithm works? In a bunch of videos, I like 1, 2, 3, 4, you like 1, 2, 3, 5, he likes 1, 2, 3, 6, we all like 1, 2, 3, this defines our common interests, then four, five, and six are different, but they are likely to be what we like in common, and we will recommend them to others. So your viewing time, clicking likes, sharing and other behaviors will all constitute “interest signals”, allowing the algorithm to know what your interests are.

But what Shou Zi Chew didn’t say is that the interest the algorithm thinks may be very different from what you want. For example, you have an exam tomorrow, you should study now, but you want to take a break after dinner, so you slide some light and interesting content, but the TikTok system thinks that your interest is those fun videos, of course it is true, but That’s your emotional need, not your rational one, and if you had a choice, you’d want to watch something about the test, not someone else singing and dancing.

So you instinctively want to watch entertaining videos of girls dancing, but you rationally want to watch commercial content that can help your career go smoothly, but under the mechanism of the algorithm, you will only see entertaining videos of girls dancing, and You can’t finish the slide, but you can’t see the commercial content. No matter how you do it, you can’t see it. To put it simply, in TikTok, you are like an ancient emperor who abandoned the government and lived a happy life. As a user, you think you’re having a good time, but in reality you’re addicted to emotional entertainment that doesn’t do much good for your life.

It’s even worse if you’re a creator. Why is China discussing involution? It is excessive competition in the same field, which is actually the result of algorithms based on “signals of interest”. For example, you are a user who likes to watch entertaining videos of girls dancing, but you are also an entrepreneur who wants to start a business opportunity through TikTok, but your “signals of interest” are all entertaining videos, and your videos for promoting your business are doing well. No matter how good it is, it’s useless, because TikTok won’t recommend it, and it doesn’t match your interest signal. Shou Zi Chew told you that there are many unknown people who are followed by millions of people on TikTok, but he didn’t tell you that more people have achieved nothing.

The “signals of interest” conflict, so what should I do? It’s very simple, you can only create an account, train the “interest signal” of this account, and only watch the content of the same industry, so that your own videos will be released, so your competitors are only under the control of the algorithm. Your peers, this will cause more competition among peers. If you don’t maintain the “interest signal” of your account well, no one will see your video at all. If your “interest signal” is well maintained, but your video loses to your peers, you will disappear directly in the video sea , and you can’t usually watch other videos because it will pollute your account’s “signal of interest”.

This is equivalent to being locked in a room, fighting with colleagues every day, but receiving no other messages at all. So TikTok said that it can help talented users to be seen by the world, which is true at all, but only a very small number of people, and the rest will be busy and tired by algorithms, but what? nothing. And even if you are one of the few creators favored by the algorithm, you never know when the algorithm will abandon you, and you never know why.

So Shou Zi Chew said that TikTok does not have social bubbles like other social platforms, which is true, but he did not tell you that TikTok has more terrifying interest bubbles. You will come into contact with many diverse groups of people, but these people are Based on the same interests, it is even very difficult to “break the circle”, because the algorithm will always pull people back.

Cherish life and stay away from TikTok, do you know? Shou Zi Chew also does not allow his two children to use TikTok.