Not only does TikTok capture very clean signals of sentiment from its users, it also gathers a tremendous volume of them per session. Videos on TikTok are so short that even in a brief session, TikTok can gather a lot of feedback on your tastes.

In contrast, as soon as you opened TikTok for the first time, you saw entertaining videos—time to satisfaction was instant. You didn’t have to worry about making an account, let alone following creators, channels, or friends. You only saw the option to create an account if you tapped the profile icon at the bottom of the app.

the most important piece of technology Bytedance introduced to TikTok: the updated For You Page feed algorithm.