Slate Daily Feed What Next: TBD | Who Owns TikTok Now?
Oct 3, 2025
Emily Baker White, a senior writer for Forbes and author of Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok, dives into the intriguing world of TikTok's algorithm and ownership. She discusses how TikTok's unique approach to user preferences revolutionized content delivery. Emily reveals ByteDance's strategies—from regional content teams to sourcing data from other platforms. The conversation also explores national security implications, potential changes under U.S. ownership, and how these dynamics could shape the future of content on TikTok.
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Early Human Curators Shaped TikTok
- ByteDance sent a team of young content curators to Mexico City to learn what Latin American teens found funny and trending.
- Those early human curators, like Jorge Reyes, directly ordered and promoted videos, shaping TikTok's long-term feed.
TikTok Remade The Social Media Landscape
- TikTok's algorithm forced competitors like YouTube and Instagram to adopt short-form recommendation feeds.
- The app now reaches a massive share of Americans and shapes where people get news and culture.
Algorithm Plus Human Overrides
- TikTok used scraping of other platforms and internal human overrides called "heating" to shape what content spread.
- Heating could grant particular videos tens or hundreds of thousands of views beyond algorithmic prediction.
