Under “Settings and privacy,” users will have tools that let them adjust sliders to signal they want more or less of specific topics in their “For You” video feed on TikTok.
Themes include “creative arts,” “current news,” “humor,” and more. The sliders are set to a default medium at first, and users can adjust from there.
TikTok's "For You" section is famous for being highly personalized, based on user data. It makes it feel like the algorithm can guess your interests.
Over the years, TikTok has rolled out various features to help users feel like they have control over its algorithm.
The “not interested” button on videos is designed to tell the system that you want to see less of that content. And users can also block certain keywords from their feeds entirely. Last year, TikTok also began testing a “For You” reset to start over with how videos are displayed.
It’s unclear how effective the slider tweaks will be. In the past, this type of tool hasn’t always had a strong impact on content recommendation systems.
For example, previous research on YouTube's “dislike” button found that the algorithm continued to recommend similar content despite user feedback.
