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Does TikTok do it on purpose?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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It’s called a hook.
And yes it’s intentional by the algorithm to keep you engaged.
Just like a slot machine. Good ol visual drugs.
Sounds like a bad algorithm that drops you like a hot potato instead of, say, gradually decreasing your numbers though, no?
That’s kinda the point.
You’ll spent a disproportionate amount of energy trying to create content to hit that same dopamine hit it just gave you, it won’t push your content, after a bit you might get better numbers but overall nothing close to the initial one, you’d feel okay with that plateau, then another spike on a random video, and then back to the shallow waters with you so you can continue chasing shadows.
It’s an engagement trap distilled to a science, and I recommend avoiding it like the… something worse than a plague because that analogy apparently didn’t go all that well.
So OP can expect more spikes in the future? I was working under the assumption that it's only the first video that is pushed (because that's what OP described). That does make the whole scenario more plausible. (I know how dopamine traps work in principle, that's why I'm not on tiktok)
That line of thought is precisely why people engage with it and wait for that next hit.
Best suggestion I can offer is: don’t.
Well yes, I'm trying to work out what exactly they're doing and what it is that OP is seeing because I have no experience with tiktok (and I don't want to).
First time doing drugs then?
Huh?
Actually? I've ever only seen gifs reposted on here or.....before....On Reddit. I can't say I've ever been on their site. That just seems evil. Although that sounds exactly what a huge platform would do.