TikTok confirmed that several of its employees in the United States have the authority to boost the traffic of a video, aka making a video or someone viral.
This authority, according to TikTok, is given to introduce developing artists or creators to the TikTok community. This statement was made by TikTok as part of a Forbes report regarding the "Heating" button which was allegedly used to insert certain videos on the 'For You' page.
The goal is of course to boost the traffic of a video and ignore the algorithm that should determine which videos will be included in the FYP, we were quoted as saying from The Verge, Tuesday (23/1/2023).
However, according to TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza, the Heating button functions not only to increase the traffic of a video. But promoting a video to increase content diversification, or in other words, ensure that the user's FYP page is not filled with only one or two trends.
Favazza also claims that this button is not used often, only 0.002% of the videos on the For You page come from this Heating button. This is different from the Forbes report which states that videos from these buttons account for 1-2% of the total daily videos.
Then this enhanced video is also not given a special label like an advertisement post, but appears like a video in general that is selected by the algorithm.
This is certainly not surprising, because for years TikTok has promised this kind of feature to advertisers, for example politicians or business people, or anyone who wants to use TikTok to promote their brand.
TikTok isn't the only social media that has naughty tricks to attract these advertisers. Facebook, for example, is suspected of deliberately showing the traffic of a post that has been inflated to advertisers.
However, what TikTok does can irritate creators, because it turns out that the popularity of a video can be controlled by TikTok. Even in the Forbes report, it was said that there were incidents where employees who had access to the Heating button promoted videos that were not supposed to be, such as promoting videos from friends, colleagues, or even their own accounts.
