Tiktok is PREBUILDING social graphs using data from their wildly detailed link click tracking
1/10
This isn’t true for broadcast social apps, but nearly always for IRL friend apps (except cases like YOLO builton other graphs)
2/10
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- As a founder who built a stupid amount of social apps, I have plenty of PTSD from this problem.
- A few months ago, this article got big on tech twitter as people started to understand how detailed their data is.
5/10
ICYMI:
rufposten.de/blog/2019/12/0…
Here’s how it works:
Friend A has an account & shares tiktok link to Friend B who doesn’t have an account. But because Tiktok knows deviceID from link clicks they can continue to track Friend B
6/10
Friend B, who still doesn’t have an account, opens a link sent to them by Friend C.
Thus, Tiktok can assume Friends A, B, and C know each other IRL.
BUT WAIT
7/10
Friend D sends a link to Friend C. Tiktok then assumes Friend A knows Friend D.
Tiktok serves Friend D’s content in Friend A’s personalized/algorithmic feed, based on weights of these edges.
8/10
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