TikTok employees reportedly had the power to help boost hand-selected posts to garner more attention and views in an effort to entire short form video influencers and brands into using their platform, according to Forbes.
According to the report, TikTok employees are able to “secretly hand-pick specific videos” in a process they call “heating” which pushes them more heavily to users than other posts and account for almost 2% of the platform’s total viewing figures for a day, which is being called a “significant impact”.
The company told Forbes that heating is used to “diversify the content experience” and that only a “few” United States based employees are able to approve it’s utilization, although it is also said to be utilized to “push important information.”