It is not just about audience. The political content is definitely de-emphasised and made harder to appear on peoples stream. It does not just happen by itself. It is moderated.
I really don't think it is as human curated as you think. A lot of political content is very low effort. For example boring political rants that regurgitate the same tired old political lines that we've already heard a million times before. This stuff doesn't last long on For You page because it doesn't have people watching it loop multiple times, and it doesn't get likes, so the algorithm deemphasizes it.
I have seen high effort political content hit the FYP page though and get millions of views. Like there is a guy who composes his own songs with a political theme and sings and dances them. That hits FYP all the time, because it is high effort and engaging, and people enjoy the tune and watch it loop a few times.
High effort political content does succeed and does hit FYP, but it is rare to see because most people haven't figured out how to do it right for the TikTok audience. The kind of tired old outrage memes that make it on Twitter won't succeed on TikTok because they don't generate the same algorithmic signals.
I have seen high effort political content hit the FYP page though and get millions of views. Like there is a guy who composes his own songs with a political theme and sings and dances them. That hits FYP all the time, because it is high effort and engaging, and people enjoy the tune and watch it loop a few times.
High effort political content does succeed and does hit FYP, but it is rare to see because most people haven't figured out how to do it right for the TikTok audience. The kind of tired old outrage memes that make it on Twitter won't succeed on TikTok because they don't generate the same algorithmic signals.