flâneur

Though the Charleston is tolerated, the twist is taboo

robhorning.substack.com · 1,721 words · saved by 1 readers

Last week, Emily Baker-White reported on TikTok’s internal “heating feature” — described as a “button that can make anyone go viral”: In addition to letting the algorithm decide what goes viral, staff at TikTok and ByteDance also secretly hand-pick specific videos and supercharge their distribution, using a practice known internally as “heating.”

Last week, Emily Baker-White reported on TikTok’s internal “heating feature” — described as a “button that can make anyone go viral”: In addition to letting the algorithm decide what goes viral, staff at TikTok and ByteDance also secretly hand-pick specific videos and supercharge their distribution, using a practice known internally as “heating.” The selected videos are then placed onto users’ For You Pages until a certain number of views are reached. The point of this, according to Baker-White’s sources, is “to court influencers and brands, enticing them into partnerships by inflating…

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