TikTok has added a new feature via which creators will now be informed whenever their videos are bookmarked as Favorites by other users.
There’s a marked difference between liking a video and bookmarking it as a favorite, and it all boils down to intent. Liking a video means conveying to the creator that you as an individual enjoyed their content, and is expressly acknowledged as a very public act (for social media platforms anyways). There’s no ambiguity present; to like a video is to actively vouch for the creator and their content. Favoring content, however, means that the user in question has saved a particular video on the platform, to be watched later, shown to others, and so on.
This, in turn, is private, i.e. no one else is notified of a TikTok being added to someone’s Favorites tab. This can be quite freeing as users can add videos that they haven’t seen, take note of them later when they have time, and thus choose whether or not they like the video as well. It’s a well-executed one-two punch that doesn’t put pressure on users to immediately like a creator’s content.
Or, rather, that used to be the case since TikTok has effectively changed this policy for no provided reason. A simple guess can postulate that developers did so to provide the short-form video content platform’s creator base with yet another way to measure engagement metrics online. This could provide an upgraded sense of QoL (quality of life) for the creators since they can map how well videos are performing much more accurately. However, this also comes at the loss of user privacy, since the new feature not only informs a creator of their video being saved to Favorites but also provides the username of the individual who did so.
TikTok may be an online platform, which in and of itself lends all users a certain sense of anonymity, but even online ecosystems need to establish modicum of privacy and security for their respective communities. I’m sure this feature won’t be particularly well received, simply because there’s already a provided mechanic via which users can share their appreciation of a TikTok with its creator in the form of the like button; providing any further information is both superfluous and undermines the user’s wishes to keep certain information to themselves.
H/T: Matt Navarra
Read next: Here Are the Most Frequently Used and Misspelled Words in CVs in 2022
There’s a marked difference between liking a video and bookmarking it as a favorite, and it all boils down to intent. Liking a video means conveying to the creator that you as an individual enjoyed their content, and is expressly acknowledged as a very public act (for social media platforms anyways). There’s no ambiguity present; to like a video is to actively vouch for the creator and their content. Favoring content, however, means that the user in question has saved a particular video on the platform, to be watched later, shown to others, and so on.
This, in turn, is private, i.e. no one else is notified of a TikTok being added to someone’s Favorites tab. This can be quite freeing as users can add videos that they haven’t seen, take note of them later when they have time, and thus choose whether or not they like the video as well. It’s a well-executed one-two punch that doesn’t put pressure on users to immediately like a creator’s content.
Or, rather, that used to be the case since TikTok has effectively changed this policy for no provided reason. A simple guess can postulate that developers did so to provide the short-form video content platform’s creator base with yet another way to measure engagement metrics online. This could provide an upgraded sense of QoL (quality of life) for the creators since they can map how well videos are performing much more accurately. However, this also comes at the loss of user privacy, since the new feature not only informs a creator of their video being saved to Favorites but also provides the username of the individual who did so.
TikTok may be an online platform, which in and of itself lends all users a certain sense of anonymity, but even online ecosystems need to establish modicum of privacy and security for their respective communities. I’m sure this feature won’t be particularly well received, simply because there’s already a provided mechanic via which users can share their appreciation of a TikTok with its creator in the form of the like button; providing any further information is both superfluous and undermines the user’s wishes to keep certain information to themselves.
H/T: Matt Navarra
Read next: Here Are the Most Frequently Used and Misspelled Words in CVs in 2022
