TikTok Admits Its US Employees Are Able To Increase Views Of Certain Videos To Be FYP

TikTok employees can push for certain video views. (photo: doc. tiktok)

JAKARTA - TikTok has confirmed to Forbes that some of its US employees have the ability to enhance videos to "introduce new celebrities and content creators to the TikTok community".

The statement comes as part of a report about TikTok's "Heating" button, which Forbes says can be used to place selected videos onto a user's For You page, and helps increase views by circumventing the algorithms that should drive the TikTok experience.

Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to certain videos wasn't the only reason for Heating. “TikTok will also “promote some videos to help diversify the content experience,” she said, as quoted by The Verge.

Favazza also suggested that TikTok doesn't do it as often, claiming only "0.002% of videos in the For You feed" get heated. However, according to internal documents obtained by Forbes, heated videos reportedly account for "about 1-2 percent" of "total daily video views".

TikTok warm-ups can make creators and brands feel victorious on the platform

According to the report, heated videos do not come with a label to indicate they have been pushed by TikTok like ads or sponsored posts. Instead, they appear like any other video that the algorithm will select for you.

The news isn't necessarily a surprise. There have been reports over the years that TikTok uses the promise of promoted content to convince politicians and businesses to use its platform, and companies, particularly in the music industry, have made no secret of using the platform to promote their brands.

TikTok is also far from the only social media company to unreasonably enhance videos. Facebook allegedly knew it was showing an increased view count and didn't fix it immediately to help attract advertisers and media companies to its platform.

While it's not exactly the same scenario, TikTok videos do seem to get genuine views, even if they don't go viral organically, the effect can be similar; people end up thinking they're going to do better on TikTok than they actually are.

It also means that TikTok has winners and losers: creators and brands can lose ground on someone's For You page to someone with a closer relationship with the company.

According to Forbes, there have been incidents where employees have heated up content they shouldn't have, promoting videos from friends, partners, and even their own accounts.

Creators can also lose interest in the platform if their videos perform poorly compared to upgrades, as TikTok's lack of transparency around warm-ups makes it difficult to tell which videos top organically.

The reports come as TikTok faces stiff competition from platforms like YouTube, which recently started wooing content creators by giving them a cut of the ad revenue generated from Shorts, and Instagram's push to pay Reel creators, even though they admitted last Friday that recently they pushed the video too hard.

Meanwhile, TikTok has a very limited selective creator fund and ad-sharing model, which could give its rivals an edge.