The shift away from the follow was led by Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, but no one perfected it quite like TikTok and their ‘For You’ page. Instead of giving users control over what they see based on who they follow, TikTok serves up a feed based on what they predict will be most engaging.

When you open TikTok and land in your For You feed, you're presented with a stream of videos curated to your interests, making it easy to find content and creators you love. This feed is powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user. Part of the magic of TikTok is that... See more

the systems governing what people see are no longer structured primarily around relationships, but around probabilistic prediction, behavioural feedback loops, and continuous optimisation.

TikTok made this shift explicit by breaking the link between identity and distribution by showing content to users with no prior relationship to the creator and... See more