Ep. 372: Decoding TikTok’s Algorithm

The big news in the world of social media recently is the announcement made last week that U.S. interest would be taking over operation of TikTok in America. Now this deal is complicated, so I'm going to read you here from a a New York Times article that's explaining it. So the article says the following. The software giant Oracle will oversee the security of Americans' data and monitor changes and updates to TikTok's powerful recommendation technology under a new deal to avert a ban of the service, according to a senior White House official.

A copy of the algorithm, the recommendation engine that powers the app's addictive feat of short videos, will be licensed from China to an American investor group that will oversee the app in the United States, the official said. Alright, so we're gonna have this new entity, TikTok in America, that will be created to run and monitor all of this, and American investors will have an 80% share in it. Here's some questions that come to mind. You know, why does our government care about this? Well, TikTok's mysterious and acclaimed algorithm seems to know so much about its users and is so good at serving up videos that meet their interest that there's a general fear that a foreign government could be gaining too much influence over our population.

But this begs a follow-up question. How does this algorithm actually work? Is this something that can be fixed once the right people have control over it? In other words, is our problem with social media today largely one of bad algorithms? That's what I want to look at today.

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