Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
TikTok is a brand-new type of social media platform. Unlike more traditional platforms like Instagram or Twitter where you manually curate your feeds by choosing to follow others — most likely, people you know — TikTok uses an algorithm to curate a highly personalized feed of videos. This algorithm can get shockingly specific as it gathers the videos it thinks you’ll like.
TikTok’s main page is named the For You page — and that really means for you. For instance, after I’d been on TikTok for a while, the algorithm figured out that I’m a grown-up emo kid (it was never a phase, Mom) who is trying to learn French, spends too much time playing The Sims 4, and is also queer. But TikTok’s algorithm didn’t get that shockingly specific by…
