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Do you think that tik tok's particularly strong boosting of local content, especially compared with other social media platforms, is possibly tied to a desire by the platform to deepen partisan and regional divides across the US?
There is also something dark in the way the algorithm is great at boosting content that shows us exactly what we desire in the most degrading way. For example I'm socially anxious and insecure about my masculinity so my feed was overrun with hypermasculine extremely affable men to a ridiculous degree. I have never had that experience with any other social media platform. I haven't used the app in over a year but there was something about it that always struck me as more toxic than any other. It is almost like the mirror of Erised, the magic device that shows us our deepest desires but never gives them to us. I found it completely maddening.
I've never heard this about TikTok, but that's probably because I've stayed far away from it. I know close to nothing about TikTok. But I'm wondering, what is the mechanism/algorithm by which they tailor this content for you and give it to you? Is it that you're looking up those videos of hypermasculine content, and then they give you more of it?
I've deleted and re-downloaded the app a handful of times and every time I do I get tons of local content and videos that seem to highlight things people are insecure about- for example, one video I saw was something like "my [rich] mom's insane skincare collection," (playing on people's class anxieties and appearance anxieties,) videos of really hot local people with lots of followers (playing on people's social anxieties), I can imagine other people get tons of social justice related type content that plays on people's anxieties around race and such. It just seems to boost content that shows what people find themselves lacking. It's kind of Girardian in how it shows memetic desire of others in one platform. So it seems like it's already designed to figure out what you want and then give you a simulacra of that thing.
Of course I'm not blameless as I chose to follow and interact with the accounts that show me what I want, but I suspect most people would be even worse at resisting the bait than I was.
I do not know much about TikTok specifically, but every social media has a large section of content aimed at highlighting the objects of people's insecurities. I think that insecurity's compulsiveness mixed with TikTok's uniquely high content turnover rate which also influences the algorithm's recommendations in totality(the watchtime itself is a metric of engagement), gives rise to the amount.
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