Have you ever heard of the phrase, ‘spam liking’?
While it’s also a thing on other social networks, spam liking on TikTok has become a common practice.
But what is spam liking, and is considered to be good or bad?
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about spam liking on TikTok.
What Is Spam Liking?
Essentially, spam liking is when you go to someone’s TikTok profile and like a bunch of their videos without actually watching them.
Typically, you’ll click on one, click the like button, and immediately flip through their next video. This is done over and over again in quick succession, hence the term ‘spamming someone with likes’.
Depending on the popularity of the user (and how many likes they are already receiving), this can send a barrage of notifications to them all at once. When they open their notifications page, they will see that you’ve liked a whole bunch of their videos.
Some people take this a step further by going back and unliking all of the videos, only to repeat the process over again.
Is Spam Liking Good Or Bad On TikTok?
When you spam like somebody, are you helping or hurting them?
Likewise, is it considered to be a good or bad thing if someone spam likes you on TikTok?
Unfortunately, TikTok has yet to release an official statement on this, and anecdotal evidence from other TikTok users seems to be inconclusive.
My own personal opinion is that spam liking does nothing at best (except boost your total like count), and has the potential ability to hurt the person being spam liked at worst. Here’s why.
TikTok’s algorithm wants to remain as unbiased and fair as possible. They want content that is actually deserving of views (and has earned engagement from other real users) to rise to the top, while minimizing exposure to boring or uninteresting content. This is why liking your own TikTok videos doesn’t really help in any significant manner.
TikTok knows that spam liking is common practice on its platform, and 1 user liking 50 videos from someone isn’t likely to help as much as 50 people each liking a video that comes across their feed.
In other words, these likes may be filtered out or ignored completely. Otherwise, people would form engagement groups and just like each other’s videos over and over again, which would the integrity of the algorithm and lead to an overall worse experience for TikTok users.
Where Things Go Bad
By the same token, spam liking can be seen as deceiving or manipulating behavior.
In fact, many TikTok users have reported that shortly after being spam liked, they appeared to receive temporary shadowbans. Views dropped from tens of thousands on each video to mere hundreds after having a small group of people spam like them all at once.
The reason for this is that TikTok’s automated systems may believe that the video creator is using bots or other malicious tactics to try and fake engagement.
Therefore, TikTok implements a shadowban to prevent people from exploiting the algorithm.
While you shouldn’t freak out if a friend spam likes you, it’s not exactly something you should encourage either. Like-for-like pages and follow chains are both examples of activities that will lead to shadowbans if you are caught.
TikTok is very smart and will find out if you try to cheat them – the consequences are not worth it. Ultimately, receiving likes from friends won’t help your video go viral either, so it is a waste of effort at best and can potentially get you banned at worst.
Another thing to point out is watch time. TikTok tracks how long each person watches your videos on also as one way to determine its quality. It can be implied that videos that are watched for a longer period of time are more interesting, which in turn causes them to be shown to more people.
Because spam liking usually results in videos only being watched for a couple of seconds or less, it can hurt the average watch time percentage, which may decrease the video’s reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Finally, let’s look over some frequently asked questions in regards to spam liking on TikTok.
Should I Be Worried If I Was Spam Liked?
Unless you specifically asked for someone to do it, it isn’t really a problem.
One person spam liking you shouldn’t lead to shadowbans. It’s more of an issue if you request several people all do it at once, or combine it with other tricks to try and cheat TikTok’s algorithm.
Should I Report People Who Spam Like Me On TikTok?
No, this is not something you should bother with. You should be able to safely ignore them, there is no reason to put any further thought into it.
However, you should NOT return the action by liking all of their TikToks as well, as this can be seen as coordinated manipulation.
Can You Get In Trouble For Spam Liking Someone Else?
I’ve yet to hear of anyone getting banned or blocked for spam liking someone else’s page.
However, TikTok does have limits and they may temporary block you from liking things if they believe you’re doing it too quickly.
Is It Still Spam Liking If You Watch The Videos All The Way Through?
Typically, spam liking involves just quickly running through and liking their videos. But what if you actually take the time to watch them?
This is less likely to hurt the creator, as the average watch time for the video is much higher.
However, it still may be considered spam liking if you like every single video. If you want to help someone, be as natural as possible – liking the videos you truly like, and not liking the ones you don’t.
How Do You Avoid Spam Liking On TikTok?
Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to prevent spam liking except for blocking the people that do it.
If you specifically ask people not to spam like you, this will probably lead to it happening even more frequently.
Conclusion
Spam liking is a controversial subject when it comes to TikTok. While many people do it with good intentions, it may actually hurts more than it helps.
Ultimately, it isn’t likely something to worry about however – even if someone is doing it to be mean.
Do you have any questions about spam liking, or want to share your own story?
We’d love to hear it through the comments form below
Thank you for reading!
– James McAllister
I got accused multiple times by a tik tok creator of spam liking after i watch a video 4 or 5 times then like the video. if i like it, but if i don't like it or its just so so i don't like it. Then i go see another of there videos either by clicking on another or tik tok choosing to show me more from the same user. Then i watch the videos i like 4 to 5 times but if i don't like it i only watch one time then leave a like if i did like it after watching it the 4 to 5 times. The problem is most of the videos the person makes i like. So i may only like 8 of 10 video's, but im still liking most of them. Then after watching n liking only the ones i liked several times i will get a message from the creator to stop doing it.
So i banned the creator, i don't know why he would rather have someone ban him for liking only the videos i like and watching them time n time again and even later coming back to watch the videos again than someone that would watch there video's and never EVER LIKE THEM!???
Travis(Quote)
Well the reason we don't like spam liking is it knocks us straight off the for you page. And if we weve spent our hard earned money promoting our video on tiktok you just literally wasted our hard earn money, especially if multiple people are doing it at the same time. Some people do it because they dont know any better, others do it to get a creators attention, and some flat out do iton purpose as a griefing strategy where they will spam like 100 videos with several alts to purposely screw up your tiktok algorithm. If someones bio directly requests no spam liking then it should be respected. It would be like going into someone's home and putting muddy shoes all over their couch. People do things online what they would never dare to do in real life. If people respected each others spaces in the virtual world the same way they did in real life there would be far less problems in the virtual world.
Heidi PEDERSEN(Quote)