- TikTok creators are complaining about TikTok Shop ads making the app “dystopian.”
- TikTok created the TikTok Shop and an affiliate creator program in early 2023.
- Instagram nixed its own shop tab from its home feed in 2021.
TikTok creators are starting to complain that the app is showing them more sponsored content, making the space feel “dystopian.”
TikToker Grace Brassel, who has more than 500,000 followers, said in a video that the app is becoming “like SHIEN and AliExpress had a baby,” because of things like TikTok Shop advertisements and the “NPC trend,” where influencers stand in live streams and perform a nonstop loop of robotic actions that correspond to the digital gifts they receive.
“There’s links everywhere,” Brassel says in the video. “There’s a hundred ads. Why is there 17-year-old girls trying to sell me 35-cent ring lights?”
In April, TikTok announced the TikTok Shop and an affiliate program for US creators to earn commission from the products that they sell on the app.
It’s unclear whether the introduction of the TikTok Shop has created an increase in sponsored content on the site. Still, an analysis conducted by two Insider reporters shows that advertised content is steadily making its way into people’s feeds.
Each reporter watched 500 videos on TikTok. One found that about 72% were regular videos while about 30% were ads. The other found 64% of the content to be normal and 36% to be product-related.
Mile Taylor, another TikToker with nearly 14,000 followers, said in a September 8 video that she wishes TikTok would stop showing her so much Shop-related content and show more “videos that I like.”
“I respect it,” Taylor says in the video. “It’s providing a good opportunity for some people. But I think that it can provide a good opportunity for people and TikTok can stop showing me 4 million of them.”
“It’s literally every video that I scroll,” Taylor says.
Autumn Accord, who has a TikTok account with more than 150,000 followers, said in an August 29 video that the TikTok Shop has become annoying and that she doesn’t trust that people’s reviews of sponsored content will be unbiased.
“Feeling overwhelmed with too many ads nowadays, which is why I left Instagram when they really pushed their Instagram shops [and] now TikTok is doing the same,” Acord said in the video caption.
Instagram announced an affiliate marketing program in 2021 in hopes of establishing itself as the leading player in the social commerce industry, which is huge in China and is trending upward in the United States, Insider previously reported. Instagram began testing a home feed without its “shop” tab in late 2022 and removed it in early 2023.
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