The lesson I learned: Even if I find magic, magic can quickly disappear with a new production release.

Physically speaking, TikTok videos CANNOT do anything but be extremely shallow "Fast Fact" videos that just make a claim, with no evidence, no reasoning, no verification, just a "Hey I'm me and I say I'm someone and this is a factoid and either believe me or don't". These videos are great for addiction, because if you are gullible for those kinds of factoids you will love an endless barrage of dopamine inducing "Facts" that you can repeat at the next party you attend.

Youtube has similar "Factoid" videos but you will also find 20 minute short form essays rebutting those factoids with demonstrations, evidence, citations, etc. You simply can't rebut a 1 minute claim in a 1 minute video in a way that laypeople should be convinced by. It's weaponization of "It's harder to debunk that spout nonsense"

I do. Don't waste time by trying to find the stuff you want by explicitly searching for specific tags (aside from maybe for the purpose of the initial seeding, but that's not a must at all). That would indeed bring up just tons of kinda trashy content that seems like it is tailored to either teenagers or the lowest common denominator. Instead, try using the main feed.

Simply scroll past videos you don't find interesting/appealing to you, hit "like" (double tap) on the kind of videos you like, etc. You've mentioned you've already found some creators you like, that's great. Hit "like" on some of their videos that you actually like . Don't try to trick the algorithm by forcing some unnatural behaviors, just use the feed normally. To clarify, when I say "feed", I mean "For You" feed aka the main feed, not "Following" feed.

First 30 mins or so of that will be meh. But the more you use it that way (doesn't need to be in one sitting at all, that part doesn't matter), the better the content will be tailored to your tastes.

I can almost guarantee that you will not only find what you wanted that way, but also discover things that you didn't realize you liked/wanted to see. I checked out feeds on my friends' phones before, and it is kinda wild how different our feeds are. A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos. Another friend of mine who is into building/fixing cars gets a lot of great build project videos. I get a solid mix of a particular type of dark comedy that appeals to me, sound synthesis videos, and some cool electronics projects that I would actually want to attempt myself.

Just don't rush it, don't expect some instant magic to happen, and let it naturally adapt to your tastes.

yeah, getting "non-mainstream" fitness advice from freaking short form videos is just about the dumbest thing I've heard this month

tell your friend to read a book sometimes, there's a reason why they exist and it's not to sell more ads unlike some other media ...

It is more for stuff like "oh, this is an interesting routine, let me look into it on my own later" or "damn, i didn't realize the nutritional benefits of XYZ, let's read up on it and see" or "oh, so this is how you can work lats more efficiently". TikTok isn't the end-all be-all, it is a starting point.

I filled in my profile honestly and somehow it took me a lot of effort to teach the algo that I don't want to see videos of (mostly) naked teens dancing or doing (other) suggestive sex things (the first hour after installing, I got 4 young girls simulating taking a boob & vag pic and then looking at them with faked interest while giggling called pause game or something; is it supposed to be funny or?).

I followed 0 teens and because I didn't think I wouldn't find anything interesting about programming, I thought I would follow some true crime stuff; still got naked young girls mostly. After a while of following enough other stuff I got less of it.

I guess most guys (even old as myself) normally want to see this crap so the algo defaults to that? I don't know.

But the content I am supposed to like really sucks too; the 100k view video authors often don't even get the names of victims/perps right, many facts are just debunked rehashes of sensationalist takes etc. It's horrible so far. And the comments... the comments. Youtube comments are great compared and that's saying something. Maybe it'll improve?

The user is complaining that he cannot get rid of the half-naked young girls dancing no matter how hard he tries. And yet, your reply is to accuse them of it being somehow their fault? If this is not Thoughtcrime, I don't know what it is.

For the record, I have heard his complaint before. I assume it's the default algorithm response when it can't figure you out.

It's also very easy for them to become your whole feed if you happen to watch all of them.

Edit: I have absolutely no insight on what metrics are being used, I'm just making it up.

Then I followed a bunch of guys in true crime and made sure to swipe other videos away as fast as I could and it got less but i still get them. Probably if you use it for a long time; it might be more tailored to me but the content, even the good content according to like minded, so far is so bad that I don’t think I will give it that much time.

But I also have a couple of times where I fucked up the algo by liking the wrong video and having to mindfully steer it back on track again. So it's not magic, ofc.

The whole magic sauce is that you don't/can't shape your FYP ("for you page": feed) by searching or otherwise sending deliberate signals to the algorithm. Instead you just flip through the videos it sends you and it reads into how long you watch, which videos you skip, where you like/comment, who you follow etc. If you don't consciously try to influence it and just mindlessly, organically consume you'll end up with a very accurate FYP of videos remarkably quickly. I'm not surprised that trying to drive your FYP in a specific direction backfired; I suspect they make search deliberately bad and don't take it into account in a meaningful way when constructing the FYP for a user.

It is, of course, up to you whether that sounds like a media experience that you want to participate in. I installed it skeptically but in literally less than an hour my FYP was nothing but videos I found engaging or fun, and several years later it's my most used phone app by a significant margin. Some of it is obviously low calorie entertainment but there's a lot of depth as well, and I continue to be struck by how accurately the FYP can identify what content I want to see and what I don't.

I'm working on making something called The Laugh Track where you send your friend (singular) the type of laugh you just did (from a select list of types of laughs). If it's worth it, they'll hit you up personally to know wtf happened :D If that takes off and becomes a national security threat, I will not say oh yeah this is great content, totally makes sense people are addicted to this nonsense!