It's not just you — the TikTok Shop will show you literally anything
- TikTok appears to heavily promote videos and livestreams that use Shop — even if what's on sale is junk.
- A writer tested out selling a used pencil for $1 with a livestream and got over a thousand viewers.
If you've noticed your "For You" page on Tiktok has become overrun with posts and livestreams of TikTok Shop items you have little interest in, you're not alone.
The TikTok Shop hard launched this fall. Now, anyone can set up a Shop and easily start selling wares. TikTok has been subsidizing massive discounts and free shipping to woo customers, making it a great deal for sellers and buyers.
Even sellers have noticed how Shop content seems to get boosted — one creator told BI that a post with a Shop link got almost a million views while her normal posts got only 2,000 to 3,000 views.
Shop posts are all over your TikTok feed now — for better or worse. And unlike the regular FYP, which has an uncanny ability to predict what content you'll love, the TikTok Shop has a way of showing you stuff you don't love.
For New York Magazine, John Herrman demonstrated just why you might be seeing, well, crap: TikTok will promote literal junk if it's sold in Shop. To test out the seller experience, he signed up as a seller and listed a single item — a used mechanical pencil that he happened to have on his desk, for $1.
Then, he started a livestream to sell this used pencil — and the incredibly banal livestream got more than 1,200 viewers. He writes:
He notes that many of those viewers seemed to have gotten a notification in their inbox that he had gone live. (They didn't even follow him!)
Herrman was selling a piece of garbage, had almost no followers, and was doing a really boring livestream. This was a terrible experience for anyone who happened to scroll past it or get alerted.
And yet, TikTok appeared to promote it heavily.
That explains a lot about why your feed may be flooded with live streams and Shop posts for stuff as junky as a used pencil.