How TikTok’s #ForYou Feed Works

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TikTok has explained how the #ForYou feed works to recommend videos to users. That feed is tailored to individual users based on a number of factors.

How TikTok Works

If you’re not familiar with the platform already, a quick explanation is of TikTok is that it is a social network in which users share videos set to music. Many of these are based around existing themes, memes, and challenges.

In a blog post, TikTok explained how it all works.  “The For You feed reflects preferences unique to each user,” with videos ranked based on a number of a different factors, it said. One of those factors is the number of followers the account posting a video has. Other criteria include:

  • Users interactions.
  • Video information such as captions, sounds, and hashtags.
  • Device and account settings such as language preferences, the country a user is in, or the device they are using.

When a user first signs up to TikTok, they are asked to select categories of content that they are interested in. This also influences the videos you see on the platform. TikTok also accepts that there are “inherent challenges with recommendation engines,” that can limit a user’s experience. It said it seeks “to intersperse diverse types of content” with that which users already like.  As with many social platforms, the For You feed is “powered by [user] feedback” and adapts accordingly.

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