It turned out that TikTok employees featured videos to increase the number of views of celebrities and content producers who started to gain new followers.
Forbes claims that videos watched by millions on TikTok and other social media platforms are determined by TikTok employees with a single button. The company says there have been incidents where employees feature videos of friends, business partners, and even their own accounts.
Videos Firing with One Button
According to TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza, this is not done often; Only 0.002% of the videos streamed for you are fired videos. However, videos featured to be viral are said to account for approximately 1-2% of total daily video views.
Doesn’t Show Sponsored
Featured videos do not carry a tag that indicates they are endorsed by TikTok, such as ads or sponsored posts. It looks like normal videos that the platform chooses for the user.
TikTok isn’t the only social media company to unnaturally amplify videos. In order to attract advertisers and media companies to the platform, Facebook does not show the view counts correctly. It’s not exactly the same thing but TikTok videos seem to get real views even if they aren’t organically viral and the effect is similar.
