• How TikTok Holds Our #Attention | Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker (30/09/2019)
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-holds-our-attention

    #ByteDance has more than a dozen products, a number of which depend on A.I. recommendation engines. These platforms collect data that the company aggregates and uses to refine its algorithms, which the company then uses to refine its platforms; rinse, repeat. This feedback loop, called the “virtuous cycle of A.I.,” is what each TikTok user experiences in miniature. The company would not comment on the details of its recommendation algorithm, but ByteDance has touted its research into computer vision, a process that involves extracting and classifying visual information; on the Web site of its research lab, the company lists “short video recommendation system” among the applications of the computer-vision technology that it’s developing. Although TikTok’s algorithm likely relies in part, as other systems do, on user history and video-engagement patterns, the app seems remarkably attuned to a person’s unarticulated interests. Some social algorithms are like bossy waiters: they solicit your preferences and then recommend a menu. #TikTok orders you dinner by watching you look at food.

    Article très complet sur le réseau social qui a le vent en poupe. #médias_sociaux