The Role of Interface Design in Shaping Consumptive Curation Affordances on Social Media Platforms: TikTok as a Case Study

Social media transition into algorithmic content recommendations has reshaped platforms’ consumptive curation affordances, reducing users’ explicit curation tools. In this article I interrogate the role of platforms’ interface design in shaping these new affordances. Building on existing literature on digital curation, social media affordances and mediation theory, I present affordances as relational, shaped by the interplay between social media technology, user practices, and social arrangements. Platforms’ software interface acts as a mediator between consumptive curation practices and algorithmic recommendations, establishing an initial environment that attempts to shape user practices. To illustrate this, I analyse TikTok’s interface through a walkthrough method, organised according to the algorithmic experience framework. Findings show the dominant role of the For You Page, how TikTok encourages passive consumption through watching and scrolling and how it discourages disabling data sources, among others. These insights serve as a foundation for future user-centred studies on how users react to and reappropriate TikTok’s interface to fulfil their consumptive curation goals.