TikTok For You feed

TikTok says it ranks videos from three groups of factors: user interactions such as likes, shares, follows and comments, video information such as captions, sounds and hashtags, and device and account settings ¹. The settings group gets lower weight because people do not actively express those as preferences ². A strong indicator, such as finishing a longer video from beginning to end, outweighs a weak one, such as viewer and creator being in the same country ³. Tap the signals in the mixer to see a strong one lift a video past a weak one.

According to TikTok, neither a creator's follower count nor a history of high-performing videos is a direct factor in ranking ¹. An account with more followers is still likely to get more views, simply because more people follow it ¹. The feed also generally avoids two videos in a row with the same sound or by the same creator, and skips duplicated or already-seen content ². Drag the follower slider in the mixer and the order stays put.

A video that has just been uploaded or is under review may be ineligible for recommendation into anyone's For You feed ¹. Once eligible, TikTok mixes some videos into feeds even when they do not match a viewer's expressed interests or have many likes, and says this helps the system learn what is popular among a wider range of audiences ²³. Its safety team also reviews videos as they rise in popularity ⁴. The figure below follows those four stages.