For years, TikTok has described its powerful For You Page as a personalized feed ranked by an algorithm that predicts your interests based on your behavior in the app.
But that’s not the full story, according to six current and former employees of TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, and internal documents and communications reviewed by Forbes. These sources reveal that 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 heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views,” an internal TikTok document titled MINT Heating Playbook explains. “The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics.”
TikTok has never publicly disclosed that it engages in heating — and while all tech giants engage, to some degree, in efforts to amplify specific posts to their users, they usually clearly label when they do so. Google, Meta, and TikTok itself, for example, have partnered with public health and elections groups to distribute accurate information about COVID-19 and help users find their polling place, making clear disclosures about how and why they chose to promote these messages.
But sources told Forbes that TikTok often uses the heat to lure people in with photos. Photo. influencers and brands, encouraging them to collaborate by increasing their video views. This suggests that warming has the potential to benefit some influencers and brands — with whom TikTok has sought business relationships — at the expense of others that TikTok has. not. . “We believe social media is democratizing and giving everyone a level playing field,” said Evelyn Douek, professor at Stanford Law School and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Knight First Revision Institute. class. level for public access. But that's not always the case, she warns
"To some extent, the same old power structures are replicated on social media, where the platform can to some extent decide winners and losers, companies and companies. . Other partnerships benefit from this."
Heating also revealed that, at least sometimes, videos from the For You page aren't there because TikTok thinks you'll like them; instead, they're there because TikTok wants a particular brand or creator to get more views. And without tags, such as those used for ads and sponsored content, it's impossible to tell which is which.
Furthermore, the documents show that employees — including those at TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and even contractors that work with the company — have substantial discretion in making decisions. decision. What content to advertise. A document titled TikTok's Heating Policy says employees can use the heating system to "interact with influencers" and "promote diverse content," but also to "push information to the public." important news". important" and "promotes relevant videos that were ignored by the recommendation algorithm." Two sources said Forbes employees often feel assigned to their own device to determine if a video is responsive.
In response to a series of detailed questions, Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, wrote: "We promote certain videos to help diversify the content and gender experience. introduce celebrities and promising creators to the TikTok community. Only a select few, based in the US, have the ability to approve content for the US, which represents approximately 0.002% of the videos in the For You stream.
Employees also abuse heating privileges. Three sources told Forbes they were aware of cases where heaters were misused by employees; one person said employees were known to heat their own or their spouse's accounts in violation of company policy. Documents reviewed by Forbes show that employees warmed up their own accounts, as well as accounts of people with whom they had a personal relationship.
According to one document, such a heated incident resulted in an account receiving more than three million views.
The heating material in TikTok and ByteDance is extensive but poorly organized. Heating Management documentation exists in a variety of groups and regions, including a programming and content team based in Los Angeles, as well as a live platform and product operations team based in China. Country. In addition to the MINT Heating Handbook, there are documents called MINT Heating Operations Policy 101, Heating Quota Guidelines, TikTok Heating Policy, and System Strategy Guidelines United States heating.
These documents show that TikTok and ByteDance first turned to the heat for legitimate and trivial business purposes: diversifying TikTok's content away from teenagers lip-syncing and dancing, and toward videos may be of more interest to users. "The purpose of this feature is to promote diverse content, spread important information and support creators," said MINT Heating Playbook. "If used well, heating resources will bring leverage, a small amount of heating resources will lead to mid-range user growth and a more diverse content pool."
A source told Forbes that the heater has also been used to foster high-level collaborations between TikTok and outside players, including NGOs and artists invited by the platform. hi, it's also used when a creator in one category (e.g. beauty) has created a video in another (e.g. cooking). In these situations, the person said, heating "can help the algorithm find the right object.
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There is a long history of technology platforms using their discretion to increase the reach of specific messages. People management has helped platforms create child-safe experiences and control misinformation, but it has also led to claims that companies use management to dictate preferences. their own user policies.
For TikTok, the fear of political manipulation is related to the fear that the Chinese government will force the Chinese owner of the platform, ByteDance, to amplify or suppress certain stories. . on Tik Tok. TikTok admits it previously censored content critical of China, and last year former ByteDance employees told BuzzFeed News that another ByteDance app, a news aggregator, is now obsolete. existence called TopBuzz, pinned a "pro-China message" to the top of its news. food for American consumers. ByteDance declined to report.
TikTok declined to answer questions about whether employees in China have ever reheated content, or if the company has ever warmed up content produced by the Chinese government or Chinese state media. not yet. export or not.
After this story was posted, TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said in a statement: "Under the National Security Agreement currently under review by CFIUS, all Promotional protocols and processes are in place. videos in the US will be monitored by CFIUS and a third party supervisor, only USDS-censored TikTok employees can "preheat" US videos. demonstrated that there was no other way to promote the content. Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment
TikTok is currently negotiating a contract with the Commission on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The company said it would address any national security concerns raised by foreign app ownership, but a growing number of lawmakers are looking to ban TikTok over concerns that electronic agreements with CFIUS is too small
And it was too late. Last month, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, admitted that a team of employees led by a Beijing executive had been monitoring the location. reporters' practices, including this, to identify their sources. ByteDance has fired employees who participated in supervision.
In December, TikTok announced that it would add a new panel to Recommended Videos titled “Why this video,” which will tell users how a certain video is viewed. to watch. choose for them. The examples in the blog post advertise the new feature as "meaningful transparency", including explanations like "This video is popular in the US" and "you're following [account]" - but the post doesn't mention heating.
When asked if the new feature would reveal when the video is heated, Favazza wrote: "We are continuing our work to expand the 'why is this video' feature and provide more detail and transparency for content recommendations."
Douek, a Stanford professor, said disclosing where and how TikTok uses heaters "would be the first step" to getting users comfortable with the tool. "But sometimes the reason they don't use [the clearest label] is that transparency is allowed to be criticized."
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