TikTok's becoming a TV platform. One pirated clip at a time

It's late. Flipping through options, you spot Malcolm in the Middle is on — you might as well tune in. But instead you keep surfing, eventually landing on 7th Heaven, a family drama you've heard people talking about. 

After a few more clicks of the controller in your hand though, you're surprised to see they're showing Catch Me If You Can. Feeling lucky, you decide to settle into the couch and watch. 

While it sounds like a pretty average night in, there are a few odd things going on here. First is that it's all taking place not in 2003, but right here in 2023. Second is the 10-100 chunks these shows are being broken into, forcing you to hunt through comments and hints of where to find the next two-minute part. And third is that thing in your hand isn't a remote control — it's your phone. 

"It's like a new form of piracy that you have out there and it's getting even wilder," said Shahbaz Siddiqui, co-host of the Movie Podcast. He was explaining the motivation that's driving millions to watch movies and shows on TikTok, ostensibly the least user-friendly app to do so. "There's a community there, they're leaving comments — it's like the silent version of talking during a movie."

Those millions of people are contributing to the billions of views on movies and films chopped up to fit the app's restrictive post limits, parcelled up and delivered to users in completely random order on its homepage.

As odd as it seems, it's a disruption of that industry with clear parallels to how the app similarly upended the music industry. There, it helped remove newness as a necessity for popularity — according to Billboard, TikTok's algorithm, which doesn't promote new songs over ones that released months or years before, caused older music to jump from 35 per cent of total music sales in 2014 to nearly 70 per cent in 2022.

And with movies and TV, it's leading to strange spikes in attention. Malcolm in the Middle is the most recent show to have undergone a seemingly random renaissance, as did The Good Doctor thanks to a clip of lead actor Freddie Highmore shouting "I am a surgeon." 

As CBC News was the first to report on — users packaging existing media alongside videos of inane crafts established the trend of "sludge content" while propelling Family Guy into the stratosphere. And earlier this year, TV movie Temple Grandin had a moment in the sun that threatens to eclipse the critical success it had back in 2010.

It's formed a strange and pervasive enough phenomenon that even some taking part seem to be aware what they're doing isn't exactly normal. 

"I am basically being shown this whole movie on TikTok," wrote a user about one clip, which had 3.6 million views. "I just need to go watch it for real now."

"The algorithm has found us; it knows what we like," said Movie Podcast co-host David Baptista. And TikTok's instant delivery, combined with an interactive peanut gallery to share compliments, criticisms and angered confusion, keeps people coming back. "It's giving me the best of what, hopefully, I like. And I'm going to stay there and watch it." 

Newer shows fall victim as well. A single clip of 2022's horror/thriller Fall racked up 105 million views, while multiple accounts have posted large segments of the movie to similar numbers. Meanwhile, HBO's highly anticipated Clone High reboot leaked online in January, five months early, with a substantial amount of its views coming from TikTok.

And Baptista admits watching clips of Sony's hit, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse on the app shortly after its release in theatres.

It's a trend that Siddiqui and Baptista say is turning the video-sharing app into one of the pre-eminent mainstream piracy platforms. Because while apps like YouTube — which have copyright policies so strict and in favour of claimants that multiple users have called it broken — TikTok's algorithm-driven makeup has flown more or less under the radar.