About two years ago, I started InReview’s TikTok account (@inreviewmovies). Here’s what I learned.
What drew me to the platform was its algorithm — it allows anyone to go viral on its “For You Page,” which is home page of sorts in which the site’s artificial intelligence curates your feed based on past videos you liked. YouTube used to be this way, but its algorithm became increasingly unfriendly to small creators around 2011-2013, leading to the current climate on the site where a small group of creators are able to do exceptionally well — mostly by producing clickbait — and others don’t have a chance.
To put this into perspective, if you upload a video to a new channel on YouTube, you’ll be lucky if the algorithm shows your video to 10 people before it puts it into a digital vault where no one will see it organically. TikTok, on the other hand, will show your video to 200 to 300 people if it deems your video eligible for its “For You Page,” after which it might show it to more people if it does well.
In this way, it’s possible to have any video go viral, even if you have a low subscriber count. So far, that’s been the case for InReview — we have about 200 wonderful followers on that platform, with multiple videos breaking over 10,000 views.
This makes TikTok an exciting place to be, but it’s starting to fall victim to the same issues that ruined YouTube: Over and incompetent self policing, often spurred by fears about getting sued over copyright. Like YouTube, its implemented automated systems that aren’t up to the task of regulating the site, often false flagging content that doesn’t break its terms of service, while missing those that blatantly do.
We’ve had a few run-ins with this program. You might notice some of our videos are muted; that’s what TikTok does when it either loses the rights to a sound or it recognizes a sound in circulation that shouldn’t have been. Because of that, we’ve stopped using sounds altogether. Its system is just too inconsistent to use.
Recently, we’ve had a few videos false flagged for unoriginal content, which makes them ineligible for the For You Page. This classification is meant to catch people uploading static images with no transformation and entire movie clips. Some videos I’ve made have fallen victim to this because I use illustrative examples from the films and television shows I’m critiquing, as protected by the fair use doctrine of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
TikTok has certainly changed how people consume media and it is incredibly addicting. I’ve found myself spending hours on the app, much of which I regret. TikTok can connect you with an audience you won’t find anywhere else, but it can also suck you into a rabbit hole that isn’t enriching, well made or even true.
Like YouTube ten years ago, it’s also having an incredibly difficult time policing blatant infringements of copyright; you can easily watch entire movies there, albeit broken up into 20 different videos. Just throw some “Subway Surfers” footage next to some movie clips and you can have a viral video.
However, it is undeniable that its model of short-form video content with an endless scroll is here to stay; it’s incredibly popular and effective, which is why YouTube and Meta have created their own versions of it via Shorts and Reels.
I’m grateful for the success that we’ve found on the platform and the ways it allows us to complement the content we produce on this site. But I also know that TikTok is fickle and volatile and it might not be around forever.
Like YouTube, TikTok too might implement changes that fundamentally destroys what makes it special: Being able to discover small creators who are doing what they love.
Hopefully by then, the next up-and-coming social media platform will be able to take its place and provide that.
InReview 
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