Reference tiktok no retention metrics

URL: https://mkdocs.justinsforge.com/memory/general/reference_tiktok_no_retention_metrics/

Confirmed 2026-07-15 during the CreatorTrack TikTok backfill (887 videos, workspace 85, Gus Outdoor). Views, likes, comments, shares, duration, posting date, and permalink are all available and correctly ingested, but watch-time/retention is not exposed by TikTok's API at the app's current tier. It only becomes available at TikTok's Business-audit tier.

Why: relevant to any future analytics or voice-profile work that assumes retention data exists per-platform; TikTok retention will read as unknown/null even after a clean ingest, this is a platform API limit, not a bug.

How to apply: don't debug "missing TikTok retention" as an ingestion failure. If retention-weighted logic (e.g. voice-profile training weighted by watch-through) is applied across platforms, TikTok rows need a fallback (e.g. engagement-rate weighting, or borrowing a cross-posted YouTube twin's retention via the crosspost link) rather than assuming the field will populate.

[Claude Code]