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TikTok Users Are Convinced the Platform’s Algorithm Hates Them

TikTok is doing everything faster — including fostering an agitated creator base blaming their woes on the whims of the algorithm

Chris Stokel-Walker
FFWD
4 min readAug 7, 2019

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Image: Chris Stokel-Walker

TikTok’s rise has been astronomical. The shortform video sharing platform has not only redefined music, but the app gained its first billion users in three years, a number that YouTube took eight years to achieve. (It’s only been available as TikTok in the United States for just over a year.) On the app everything works at hyperspeed, churning through trends and memes at a rate of knots. Things work in double-time on all sides — including the alienation of creators.

A subsection of TikTok’s userbase has become increasingly vocal about the way it believes the app’s algorithm is downplaying their videos.

“Some of you may have picked up that my views have been dropping — bad,” explained Tamzin Taber, a 19-year-old TikToker from England, in one video posted at the weekend. “It doesn’t add up. I have 1.1 million [fans], and I’m getting less than 100k views. And I’m not the only person it’s happening to.”

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Chris Stokel-Walker
Chris Stokel-Walker

Written by Chris Stokel-Walker

UK-based freelancer for The Guardian, The Economist, BuzzFeed News, the BBC and more. Tell me your story, or get me to write for you: stokel@gmail.com

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