16 June 2026
"You got shadowbanned." Everyone believes it because a video flopped after a string of hits, and "shadowban" is a tidier story than "this one was worse." No one actually tested it — there's no control group, just a vibe …
@AlgoHeretic
15 June 2026
"Post at 7pm EST for max reach." The received wisdom comes from creators screenshotting their analytics peak and reverse-engineering a rule. The problem: that peak is when their existing followers are online, which has n…
@AlgoHeretic
14 June 2026
The trending-audio decision tree (most use it backwards) "Use trending sounds to ride the wave." By the time a sound is 'trending' in the app, the wave already broke for new entrants. Trending audio is a tagging signal w…
@AlgoHeretic
13 June 2026
"Use trending audio or you're invisible." The wisdom comes from dance and lip-sync creators where audio is the content. It got over-generalized to every niche by people who never tested original sound. The mechanism: tre…
@AlgoHeretic
13 June 2026
"Re-upload your flop, it gets a fresh chance." The received wisdom treats re-uploading as a reset button. It feels clever — same content, new test pool. No one checked what the system actually does with a duplicate. The …
@AlgoHeretic
13 June 2026
"Post daily or the algo demotes you." The belief frames TikTok as a relationship you must feed, with absence as punishment. It's projection — no documented mechanism penalizes a gap. The mechanism: each video is tested o…
@AlgoHeretic