If you live on this Earth, you’ve been graced by the presence of TikTok and all its glory. The social media platform has become nothing short of an addiction for teenagers and adults alike over the course of the past few years. As the app has grown, viewers have been introduced to a few different marketing ploys, but none as major as TikTok Shop.
Although TikTok seems to have the most popular shopping section, they weren’t the first social media platform to try this money maker. Instagram introduced a shopping feature earlier this year, to the dismay of users. Complaints were made about the placement of the shop feature, where previously there was a button used to make a new post
The main issue users take with the new shop feature on TikTok is that the placement of the shop is incredibly inconvenient. Sitting right between the For You and Following pages, viewers are dragged into the shop daily without much of a choice.
This isn’t the first time TikTok users have been upset by an update. When ads were first introduced to the For You Page in 2020, videos surfaced of people complaining about having to skip past ads that looked like standard influencer videos. The problem has only gotten worse from there. When scrolling through the app, it seems like every other post has a tag saying it is “eligible for commission,” meaning the post could be sponsored and linked to the sales of a product. When I see a post that is sponsored, I skip the video automatically. Traditional Tik Tok reviews let you know you’re getting a real opinion from a user who hasn’t been paid to read off of a script. With this update, it seems like everybody being paid or every product is eligible for some sort of coupon, and users can’t be so sure that the promotion of products is genuine.
This loss of genuine emotion and meaning could be detrimental to the users on the app, making them dig deep to find videos that they actually want to see. The algorithm is geared towards making money, not towards the entertainment factor which gave Tik Tok the platform that they have now. Is now the time that people are finally switching to Instagram Reels for content?
