Interestingly it also seems to mix your content with content your friends tend to view. Or at least it does so tentatively, to see if you share the same interest. When I friended a pilot friend of mine on TikTok, I immediately started seeing pilot/plane content. This is after having had an account since forever and not once having seen pilot content on my For You page before. It's an interesting way to broaden your horizons, but it does turn a little common denominator, depending on what your friends like.
Similarly (and I have no way of proving this, but I believe it 100%), TikTok seems to alter your feed to incorporate videos from other people watching TikTok near you. My friends and I have made a game of this where we cast TikTok to a TV, watch videos, and try to guess which of us the video was intended for.
I've never once had a "oh wow that's a neat content discovery method" moment from Facebook/Instagram/YouTube but it has happened multiple times with TikTok. I'm not saying TikTok is the end-all-be-all of social media, but it's a good window into what social media could be, if they stopped chasing ad revenue and anger-driven content.
Oh it definitely keeps track of you social circle and shows similar content. Bedtime browsing on the same phone often yields some "I've seen this before" reactions.
Similarly (and I have no way of proving this, but I believe it 100%), TikTok seems to alter your feed to incorporate videos from other people watching TikTok near you. My friends and I have made a game of this where we cast TikTok to a TV, watch videos, and try to guess which of us the video was intended for.
I've never once had a "oh wow that's a neat content discovery method" moment from Facebook/Instagram/YouTube but it has happened multiple times with TikTok. I'm not saying TikTok is the end-all-be-all of social media, but it's a good window into what social media could be, if they stopped chasing ad revenue and anger-driven content.