TikTok Heating Posts on the DL

TikTok has been taking select videos and giving them an artificial boost in visibility, a process known inside the company as "heating" as discovered by Forbes through interviews with six present and past employees of TikTok and its parent firm, ByteDance, along with documents and messages reviewed.

The practice of heating is controversial because it artificially inflates video view counts, making it difficult for users to gauge the true popularity of content accurately. It also gives TikTok an unfair advantage in the competitive social media landscape, allowing them to promote their own content over that of their competitors.

TikTok has also been accused of manipulating video velocity, which refers to how quickly a video accumulates views. By boosting the velocity of certain videos, TikTok can make them appear more popular than they actually are and therefore increase engagement with the platform. Such manipulation could potentially be used to benefit certain influencers and brands at the expense of others who may not have access to such tools.

Overall, it appears that TikTok has been using heating and manipulating video velocity in order to gain an edge over its competitors and boost its own content. This practice is controversial as it gives TikTok an unfair advantage over other platforms and potentially skews user perception of what constitutes a popular post or successful content.

Read the full article from Forbes.