this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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People liked TikTok, and it got really big, not because of the format, but because its recommendation system was optimizing for “Show people things they like”. If you change that to “show people things I want them to believe” people who don’t already believe those things will stop engaging and move away.
it may take time, but they will migrate. The network effect can slow that down, but a platform like TikTok is distinctly not one built by networks. Like, people don’t go there to fallow creators or their friends, they go there to see random stuff from people they don’t know, and it actively makes it difficult to get a consistent feed from people you fallow.
Tiktok has always been about to “show people things I want them to believe." It's just that by now it was the Chinese government that dictated what you're shown, now it may be the US government.