[rendaw]

GP didn't say anything about TikTok's algorithm not working out for people in general, but I'll bite.

The selling point behind TikTok is that by using the app normally (i.e. watching what you want) TikTok can figure out what stuff you want to watch.

But pretty much every suggestion that comes out on HN for people who complain about the algorithm on sites like this is to do unnatural things to "train" the algorithm: be very careful about how long you watch videos, click on videos that you think are relevant even if you don't want to watch them, watch things you're not interested in to prevent falling into a rut, avoid click on things you're curious about if you don't think you want to watch 100s of them to avoid tainting your recommendations, etc.

If that's "working" I think I'd agree that TikTok was mostly hype.

[throwaway290]

Yep. It's almost like tiktok targets users who are only using system 1. If you just go with lizard brain reactions you don't care about any of that. But once system 2 is in play you start doing "crazy" things like watch a video forensically even if you don't want to be fed similar videos on the regular or skip videos even if they are about things you like, and you need some control over what you watch

[ninkendo]

A good example here is YouTube, which started recommending me a bunch of really short (5-second) meme videos lately which I really don’t want polluting my feed. Even if I really want to click and watch them just out of dumb curiousity… (I don’t go to youtube for 5 second meme videos, I prefer longer form content.)

I spent some time disliking every 5-second video being recommended to me, and the problem went away. It was easy.

[throwaway290]

YouTube also allows to remove videos from watch history completely, though I don't know how fast (or if ever) this has effect on recommendations...