Is Your TikTok FYP as accurate as it seems?

By: Joey Brewer

What we Know

When TikTok began to gain some traction in more recent years, people were so excited about the feature it had called the “for you page.” This is when the site showed you clips that they assumed you would like based off of your past interactions with other videos and creators.

For the most part, it is quite accurate when you first make your profile on the app. However, when you have your account active for a while and you interact with a decent amount of content, then it is harder for the viewer to get more personally relatable videos. The reason as to why it is harder to get more relatable videos as time goes on is because the longer you have the app for, the longer time you have to interact with all kinds of videos and creators, and the more you interact with all kinds of content is how it messes up the algorithm of what the app thinks you like. 

Common Problems

Personally, whenever I had first gotten the app, I did not create a profile right away. I would just scroll within the app and just see what I came across. Yet, even though I did not have a profile, TikTok would still try to make posts relevant to the ones that I liked already; even though it did not matter because I did not have a profile to go back and look at them.

Even though this seems like a smart move made by TikTok, it is still flawed to an extent. Because I noticed that when I finally decided to make an account within the app, some of the posts that I would see would not be fully relevant to what I liked. At first, I thought that it was because I had just made the account; but after having it for about two years, I still notice that my FYP is still like that. It is not as frequent as before, but it never fails that there is, almost, a guaranteed chance that I will scroll past a random post. 

Let’s clear the air

I do not want to make it seem like I am just trash talking or putting down TikTok, though. It is a very entertaining app to use, and keeps a lot of peoples minds and lives occupied with creating content. Millions of people come up with different entertainment ideas and a lot of them are very unique. Some creators even have a specific type of content style that was, pretty much, tailor made for them by them.

With that, TikTok allows people to create content on a, somewhat, basic level that could possibly open new opportunities for coming up with other content. For example, someone could start off by just making videos on TikTok, but then they could go on to make YouTube videos, or podcasts, or even try to have their own show; depending on how famous they become.

On top of all of this, TikTok is also known by a very wide range audience and that benefits them greatly within the marketing industry, and with getting their name out to the public in general. I, personally, have never seen a TikTok ad, but I have seen other media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) repost videos that were made on TikTok; which benefit them greatly in getting their name recognized by people from around the world. 

Possible Adjustments

Like I stated before, I do not hate TikTok or even think it is a terrible app all around. However, I just think that they could do a slightly better job with getting the right videos to the right people. They could try to make the algorithm more narrow in order to see videos that are generally related to the ones you liked before. Even though the point of the FYP is to see videos that you have not seen before; many people would rather see content that is somewhat similar to what they have liked previously. Even though some people do not mind seeing completely new content, others might not want it to be that way unless they go out of their way to change their FYP settings. TikTok is still kind of new and there can still be updates and changes made to the app that make it even more enjoyable for their audience.