To see how this plays out in practice, Sára Soľárová at the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies in Slovakia and her colleagues deployed sock puppet automated accounts to TikTok, which simulated 16- to 17-year-old teenagers and 20- to 21-year-old adults. The bots were assigned specific interests, such as beauty, fitness or gaming, and were programmed to scroll through TikTok’s algorithmic For You feed for an hour a day over 10 days.