The algorithm is pretty simple, it'll show you a selection of videos that are from the n most popular genres of videos, then depending on your dwell time, it'll A/B test categories that are related, or sub categories.

That bit isn't that difficult or new. the special sauce is the editorialising and content categorisation. being able to accurately categorise videos into genres, subjects and sub subjects (ie makeup video, 25 year olds, woman, straight, new york, eyeglitter) and then creating a graph of what persona likes what.

The second secret sauce is people going through and finding stuff and promoting it. TikTok (used to) editorialise/pay highly for content.

I did the same... even faster. I installed it, suggested me some local crap. I wanted ltt, mkbhd, etc. searched those 2, added them, after that first 2 videos were the same crap. uninstall. even youtube is better. It's so much content on youtube that It's impossible to watch it all in a lifetime even at 5x speed. And 10x better content.

I'm in the same boat. I have a TikTok account so my wife and friends can send me videos (mostly cute dogs). It's funny when people probe why I don't use TikTok and they think it must be because I'm against the Chinese/Larry Ellison influence or other common reason. No, I just don't like the format.

I did the same, but because I realized it could become addicting. Too bad Instagram f'ed me by copying TikTok. Now I'm addicted to Reels and I can't uninstall Instagram because my friends message me on it.

It's a constant stream of makeup & dogs. I just stick to Michael Penn on YT.