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Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

It took me a while to train my TikTok as well. No celebrities, no entertainment of any kind. Eventually, it has become a very valuable tool that I use once a couple of days. I am amazed that TikTok algorithms let me actually do it.

Very big difference from Amazon videos and YouTube, where I feel that they are trying to shove the content, they want me to see, down my throat. This is one of the main reasons I completely cancelled Netflix.

I ended up buying $600 worth of long-form products from the TikTok content providers that I watch, without any advertising from them. I am guessing that letting customers watch what they want works out as a business model.

I suspect that my experience is not the norm, though.

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OP here. My guess is the vast majority of TikTok users don't realize how much control they have over its contents, and thus they end up watching mostly attention-grabbing fluff. I think even they will stumble on good meaningful stuff, but it won't be that often. But yes, I've find with effort it's a great resource. The best one for short-form videos that I know of.

I agree. I found that the process of training TikTok requires self-disciple and self-control and it was not easy in the beginning. I just marvel that the TikTok actually responded to this, unlike other solutions that basically don't care about your feedback. I wonder why that is? I feel that there is a huge manual override in the Google/Netflix/Amazon algorithms. In TikTok, I feel like I am having a relationship with Artificial Intelligence. It feels dangerous. If you lose control, it will eat you up alive and waste tremendous amount of your time. But if you can control it, it will deliver value.

How do you break into the good content? Where do you get the first seeds? I can't ad weight to interesting videos if no interesting video is suggested.

For me it happened randomly, but I think you can start searching for good content through good keywords or good people that you already know. This will create first good seeds and then the system will proceed with random improvements and through feedback loop.

Eventually, it has become a very valuable tool that I use once a couple of days

A tool or a toy? I don’t have tiktok and am suspicious whether folks itt mistake a good algorithm for a good content, or is it really helpful to your interests. I mean, if youtube or twitter had it, would you still stick to tiktok? What does it deliver apart from fragmented “shorts” erudition?

I ended up using it for getting motivational thought leaders, such as David Goggins, Joe Rogan interviews, Dr Jordan Peterson, Brad Lee, and the like. It turns out that 15-30 sec format is just enough to deliver a point across. There is the whole army of people slicing long YouTube videos into 15-30 sec bites. They generate more content that anyone could imagine. Periodically, I would go to the long-form on YouTube or pay to access the lectures. But after the TikTok, I know exactly where to go and whether it’s worth to pay for access.

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