TikTok's CEO on its future -- and what makes its algorithm different | Shou Chew

Okay, thank you, Chris. It's basically if you're alive, you have had some kind of contact with TikTok at this point. So tell us about you. So my name is Shou and I'm from Singapore. Roughly 10 years ago, two engineers were building a product, and the idea behind this was to build a product that recommended content to people not based on who they knew, which was, if you think about it 10 years ago, it was all the social graph was all the rage, and the idea was you know your content and the feed that you saw should be based on people that you knew. But 10 years ago, these two engineers thought about something different, which is instead of showing you what you know, instead of showing you people you knew, why do we show you content that you liked? And that's sort of the genesis and the birth of the early iterations of TikTok. And about five years ago with the advent of 4G, short video, mobile phone penetration, TikTok was born. And a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to run this company, and it still excites me every single day.

I think to describe this, to begin to answer your question, we have to talk about the mission of the company. Now the mission is to inspire creativity and to bring joy. And I think missions for companies like ours is really important because you have product managers working on the product every single day and they need to have a north star, something to work towards together. Now based on this mission, our vision is to provide three things to our users: we want to provide a window to discover, and I'll talk about discovery in a second; we want to give them a canvas to create, which is going to be really exciting with new technologies in AI that's going to help people create new things; and the final thing is bridges for people to connect. So that's the vision of what we're trying to build. Now what really makes TikTok very unique and very different is the whole discovery engine behind us. There are earlier apps that I have a lot of respect for, but they were built for a different purpose. For example, in the era of search, there was an app that was built for people who wanted to search things, so that it's more easily found. And then in the era of social graphs, it was about connecting people and their followers. Now what we have done is that based on our machine learning algorithms, we're showing people what they like. And what this means is that we have given the everyday person a platform to be discovered. If you have talent, it is very, very easy to get discovered on TikTok. And I'll give you one example: the biggest creator on TikTok is a guy called Khaby Lame. He was from Senegal, he lives in Italy, he was a factory worker. For the longest time, he didn't even speak in any of his videos. But what he did was he had talent, he was funny, he had a good expression, he had creativity. So he kept posting, and today he has 160 million followers on our platform. So every single day we hear stories like that, businesses, people with talent. And I think it's very freeing to have a platform where as long as you have talent, you're going to be heard and you have the chance to succeed. And that's what we're providing to our users.

I'm going to simplify this a lot, but the machine learning recommendation algorithm is really just math. So for example, if you liked videos one, two, three, and four, and I like videos one, two, three, and five, maybe he liked videos one, two, three, and six. Now what's going to happen is, because we like one, two, three at the same time, he's going to be shown four, five, six, and so are we. And you can think about this repeated at scale in real time across more than a billion people. That's basically what it is, is math. And of course, AI and machine learning has allowed this to be done at a very, very big scale. And what we have seen the result of this is that they learned the interest signals that people exhibit very quickly and shows you content that's really relevant for you in a very quick way. Now, so it's a form of collaborative filtering. From what you're saying, the theory behind it is that these humans are weird people, we don't really know what they're interested in, but if we see that one human is interested with an overlap of someone else, chances are you can make use of the other pieces that are in that overlapped human's repertoire to feed them. And they'll be surprised, but the reason they like it is because their pattern also liked it. It is pattern recognition based on your interest signals. And the other thing here is that we don't actually ask you 20 questions on whether you like a piece of content, what are your interests. We don't do that. We built that experience organically into the app experience. So you are voting with your thumbs by watching a video, by swiping it, by liking it, by sharing it. You are basically exhibiting interest signals. And what it does mathematically is to take those signals, put it in a formula, and then matches it through pattern recognition. That's basically the idea.

I think we were the first to really try this at scale. The recommendation algorithm is a very important reason as to why the platform is so popular among so many people. But beyond that, you mentioned the format itself. So we talked about the vision of the company, which is to have a window to discover. And if you just open it up for the first time, you'll see that it takes up your whole screen. So that's the window that we want. You can imagine a lot of people using that window to discover new things in their lives. Then through this recommendation algorithm, we have found that it connects people together, people find communities. And I've heard so many stories of people who have found their communities because of the content that they're posting. Again and again, I hear these stories. By connecting people together, by giving people the window to discover, we have given many small businesses and common people a voice that they would never otherwise have. And I think that's the power of the platform.

I would describe it in a different way. There are other platforms that exist before TikTok. And if you think about those platforms, you sort of have to be famous already in order to get followers because the way it's built is that people come and follow people. And if you aren't already famous, the chances that you get discovered are very, very low. Now what we have done, again because of the difference in the way we're recommending content, is that we've given anyone, any single person with enough talent, a stage to be able to be discovered. And I think that actually is the single most important thing contributing to the growth of the platform. And again and again, you'll hear stories from people who use the platform, who post regularly on it, that if they have something they want to say, the platform gives them the chance and the stage to connect with their audience in a way that I think no other product in the past has ever offered them.

We want to make sure that every person who posts a video is given an equal chance to have some audience to begin with. But this idea that you are maybe alluding to, that we can get people to like something, doesn't really work like that. Could you get AI agents to like something? Could you seed the network with extra AI agents to give someone early encouragement? Ultimately, what the machine does is recognize people's interests. So if you post something that's not interesting to a lot of people, even if you gave it a lot of exposure, you're not going to get the virality that you want. So there is no push here. It's not like you can push something because I like Chris, I'm going to push your content. It doesn't work like that. You've got to have a message that resonates with people, and if it does, then it will automatically have the virality itself. That's the beauty of user-generated content. It's not something that can be engineered or overthought. It really has to resonate with the audience, and if it does, then it goes viral.

I think in terms of complexity, there are many companies with a lot of resources and a lot of talent; they will figure out even the most complex algorithms. I think what is very different is your mission of your company, how you started the company. Like I said, we started with this idea that the main use case, the most important use case, is you come and you get to see recommended content. Now for some other apps out there, they are very significant and have a lot of users, but they are built for a different original purpose. And if you're built for something different, then your users are used to that because the community comes in and expects that sort of experience. So I think the pivot away from that is not just a matter of engineering and algorithms, it's a matter of what your company is built to begin with, which is why I started this by saying you need to have a vision, you need to have a mission, and that's the north star. You can't just shift it halfway.

The diversity of content that our users see is very key. In order for the discovery, and the mission is to discover, so the vision is to discover. So in order to facilitate that, it is very important to us that what the users see is diverse content. Now generally speaking, there are certain issues that you mentioned that the industry faces. There are some bad actors who come on the internet, they post bad content. Our approach is that we have very clear community guidelines. We're very transparent about what is allowed and what is not allowed on our platform. No executives make any ad hoc decisions. Based on that, we have built a team that is tens of thousands of people plus machines in order to identify content that is bad and actively and proactively remove it from the platform.

We have it published on our website. We just in March iterated a new version to make it more readable. So there are many things: for example, no pornography, clearly no child sexual abuse material and other bad things, no violence. We also make it clear that it's a differentiated experience if you're below 18 years old. So if you're below 18, your entire app experience is more restricted. For example, we don't allow users below 16 by default to go viral. We don't allow that. If you're below 16, we don't allow you to use the instant messaging feature in the app. If you're below 18, we don't allow you to use the live streaming features. And of course, we give parents a whole set of tools to control their teenagers' experience as well.

In our industry, we rely mainly on something called age gating, which is when you sign up for the app for the first time, we ask you for your age. Now beyond that, we also have built tools to go through your public profile. For example, when you post a video, we try to match the age that you said with the video that you just posted. Now there are questions of can we do more, and that question always has for every company in our industry to be balanced with privacy. If we scan the faces of every single user, then we will significantly increase the ability to tell their age, but we will also significantly increase the amount of data that we collect on you. Now we don't want to collect data, we don't want to scan data on your face to collect that. So that balance has to be maintained, and it's a challenge that we are working through together with industry and with regulators as well.

I think, you know, when I travel around the world, I meet a whole bunch of creators on our platform. I was in South Korea just yesterday, and before that, I met with a bunch of people. For example, teachers. There is an English teacher from Arkansas, her name is Claudine, and I met her in person. She uses her platform to reach out to students. There is another teacher called Chemical Kim. She teaches chemistry. She uses our platform to reach out to a much broader student base than she has in a classroom. And they're both very popular. In fact, what we have realized is that STEM content has over 116 billion views on our platform globally, and it's so significant that in the U.S., we have started testing creating a feed just for STEM content. I've been using it for a while, and I learned something new. You want to know what it is? Apparently, if you flip an egg on its tray, the egg will last longer. I learned this on TikTok. And you want to know something else about an egg: if you put it in just one hand and squeeze it as hard as you can, it will never break.

I don't actually agree with that. As a company, our goal is not to optimize and maximize time spent. It is not. In fact, to address people spending too much time on our platform, we have done a number of things. I was just speaking with some of your colleagues backstage; one of them, Tony, she has encountered this as well. If you spend too much time on a platform, we will proactively send you videos to tell you to get off the platform. We also, depending on the time of day, if it's late at night, it will come sooner. We have also built-in tools to limit. If you're below 18 years old, by default we set a 60-minute time limit. We've given parents tools and yourself tools: if you go to settings, you can set your own time limit. We've given parents tools so that you can pair your phone with your teenager's phone and set the time limit. And we really encourage parents to have these conversations with their teenagers about what is the right amount of screen time. I think that's a healthy relationship that you should have with your screen. As a business, we believe that that balance needs to be met. So it's not true that we just want to maximize time.

Well, 60 minutes, we did not come up with it ourselves. I went to the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, and we had this conversation with them. 60 minutes was the recommendation that they gave to us, which is why we built this into the app. So 60 minutes is something that we've had discussions with experts about. But I think for all parents here, it is very important to have these conversations with your teenage children and help them develop a healthy relationship with screens. I think we live in an age where it's completely inevitable that we're going to interact with screens and digital content, but I think we should develop healthy habits early on in life, and that's something I would encourage.

I think, you know, even if you think about it from a commercial point of view, it is always best when your customers have a very healthy relationship with your product. It's always best when it's healthy. So if you think about short-term retention, maybe, but I don't think that's the way we think about it. If you think about it from a longer-term perspective, what you really want to have is a healthy relationship. You don't want people to develop very unhealthy habits and then at some point they'll drop it. So I think everything in moderation. There's a claim out there that in China there's a much more rigorous standard imposed on the amount of time that children especially can spend on TikTok. That's a misconception. That experience for Douyin, which is a different app, is for under-14. Now if you compare that, in the United States we have an under-13 experience. It's only available in the U.S., not in Canada. In Canada, we just don't allow it. If you look at the under-13 experience in the U.S., it's much more restricted than the under-14 experience in China. It's so restrictive that every single piece of content is vetted by our third-party child safety expert. And we don't allow any under-13s in the U.S. to publish; we don't allow them to post, and we don't allow them to use a lot of features. So I think that report I've seen is not doing a fair comparison.

We address this in our community guidelines as well. If you look at sexualized content in our guidelines, if you're below a certain age, for certain themes that are mature, we actually remove that from your experience. Again, I come back to this: we want to have a safe platform. In the Congressional hearing, I made four commitments to our users and to the politicians in the U.S., and one of the first ones is that we take safety especially for teenagers extremely seriously, and we will continue to prioritize that. I believe that we need to give our teenage users and our users in general a very safe experience because if we don't do that, then the mission is to inspire creativity and to bring joy. If they don't feel safe, I cannot fulfill my mission. So it's all very organic to me as a business to make sure I do that.

Dangerous challenges are not allowed on our platform. It's violative. We proactively invest resources to identify them and remove them from our platform. In fact, if you search for dangerous challenges on our platform today, we will redirect you to a safety resource page. And we actually worked with some creators to come up with campaigns. This is the 'Stop, Think, and Decide Before You Post' campaign, where we work with creators to produce videos to explain that some things are dangerous, please don't do it, and we post those videos actively on our platform as well.

The group is based in Ireland. It's a lot of people, tens of thousands of people. It's one of the most important cost items of my P&L, and I think it's completely worth it. Most of the moderation has to be done by machines. The machines are quite good, but they're not perfect at this point, so you have to complement them with a lot of human beings. And I think, by the way, a lot of the progress in AI in general is making content moderation capabilities a lot better. So we're going to get more precise, more specific, and it's going to be able to handle larger scale. And that's something I'm personally looking forward to.

Again, in our guidelines, for certain themes that we think are mature and not suitable for teenagers, we proactively remove it from their experience. At the same time, if you search certain terms, we will make sure that you get redirected to a resource safety page. We are always working with experts to understand new trends that could emerge and proactively try to manage them. Now this is a problem that predates us, that predates TikTok, it actually predates the internet. But it's our responsibility to make sure that we invest enough to understand and address the concerns, to keep the experience as safe as possible for as many people as possible.

I will say a couple of things about this. First, the internet is built on global interoperability. We are not the only company that relies on the global talent pool to make our products as good. Technology is a very collaborative effort. Many people here would say the same thing. So we are not the first company to have engineers in all countries, including in China. Now I understand some of these concerns. Data access by employees is not data accessed by government; these are very different. But we hear the concerns raised in the United States. We did not try to avoid discussing or argue our way out of it. What we did was build an unprecedented project where we localized American data to be stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. This kind of protection for American data is beyond what any other company in our industry has ever done. It's very expensive to build something like that. More importantly, we are localizing data in a way that no other company has done. We need to be careful that while we are pursuing what we call digital sovereignty in the U.S. and also doing a version of this in Europe, we don't balkanize the internet. We are the first to do it, and I expect other companies are looking at this and trying to figure out how to balance protecting data while allowing for interoperability to continue, because that's what makes technology and the internet so great.

We are very far along. Today, by default, all new U.S. data is already stored in the Oracle Cloud infrastructure, so it's in this protected U.S. environment. We still have some legacy data to delete in our own service in Virginia and in Singapore. Our data has never been stored in China, by the way. And that deletion is a very big engineering effort. It's going to take us a while to delete them, but I expect it to be done this year.

During the Congressional hearing, I made four commitments. We talked about the first one which is safety. The third one is to keep TikTok a place of freedom of expression. By the way, if you go on TikTok today, you can search for anything you want as long as it doesn't violate our community guidelines, and to keep it free from any government manipulation. The fourth one is transparency and third-party monitoring. The way we are trying to address this concern is with an unprecedented amount of transparency. We are actually allowing third-party reviewers to come in and review our source code. I don't know any other company that does this. Because everything is driven by code, to allow someone else to review the source code is to give a significant amount of transparency to ensure that the hypothetical scenarios you described cannot happen on our platform. At the same time, we are releasing more research tools for researchers so that they can study the output. The source code is the input; we are also allowing researchers to study the output, which is the content on our platform. I think the easiest way to defend this is transparency: we give people access to monitor us, and we can make it very, very transparent. That's our approach to the problem.

I can say that we are building all the tools to prevent any of these actions from happening. And I'm very confident that with an unprecedented amount of transparency that we're giving on the platform, we can reduce this risk to as close to zero as possible.

Absolutely. That's why we're letting third parties monitor them, because if they find something, they will disclose it. We also have transparency reports where we talk about a whole bunch of things: the content we remove that violates our guidelines, government requests – it's all published online. All you have to do is search for it.

I think it's still down to the vision we have. In terms of the window of discovery, I think there's a huge benefit to the world when people can discover new things. People think that TikTok is all about dancing and singing, and there's nothing wrong with that because it's super fun. There's still a lot of that, but we're seeing science content, STEM content. Have you heard about BookTok? It's a viral trend that talks about books and encourages people to read. BookTok has 120 billion views globally – billion with a B. People are learning how to cook, learning about science, learning how to golf. I haven't gotten better by looking at the videos, but I think there's a huge opportunity here on discovery and giving the everyday person a voice. If you talk to our creators, a lot of people will tell you again and again that before TikTok they would never have been discovered, and we have given them the platform to do that. It's important to maintain that. Then we talk about creation. There's all this new technology coming in with AI generative content that will help people create even more creative content. I think there's going to be a collaboration between people and AI where they can unleash their creativity in a different way. For example, I'm terrible at drawing, but if I had an AI to help me, maybe I can express myself even better. Then we talk about bridges to connect, connecting people in communities together. This could be products, this could be commerce. Five million small businesses in the U.S. benefit from TikTok today. I think we can get that number to a much higher number, and of course around the world including in Canada, that number is going to be massive. So I think these are the biggest opportunities that we have, and it's very exciting.