[HN Gopher] TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app
Author : em500
Score : 418 points
Date : 2021-08-10 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| TikTok is literally TV.
|
| not youtube, tiktok. Youtube failed to be a television
| replacement, and tiktok succeeded. If you don't see this, you are
| literally dumb.
| smoldesu wrote:
| What shows can I watch on TikTok?
| ur-whale wrote:
| >What shows can I watch on TikTok?
|
| Many people don't watch shows on TV, they just channel hop to
| avoid ads and numb their brain after a day at work, consuming
| short stretches of content at a time.
|
| In that regard, TikTok is indeed very much like TV.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Maybe so, but other platforms (Instagram, Vine, Twitter,
| YouTube, etc.) pitch themselves as the exact same product.
| jmfldn wrote:
| It's "literally" not TV.
|
| Pedantry-aside, YouTube clearly fits the bill as the TV
| replacement.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| isn't FB is on decline and young people no longer care to be on
| it?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm a 34 year old who just got into Instagram and TikTok.
|
| I love it and hate it.
|
| I love all the creative and ridiculously funny content I find.
|
| But I viscerally cannot stand and get angry over so much
| attention seeking garbage there is out there too. Just smug
| unqualified nobodies telling people to "stop it" with a smug meme
| song regarding health habits or fashion or whatnot. Or "oh no no
| no no" or "thank you Diane" memes.
|
| I dunno. Maybe I'm a summer child discovering something
| everyone's already contending with. I know it's a biased sample
| but there's this whole culture of entirely unearned confidence
| and narcissism.
|
| Don't get me started with all the 20something "Influencers"
| humble bragging about their cars and homes.
|
| I get angry at night and yet I can't stop scrolling because
| there's always some occasional maniac driving a canoe down a hill
| into a lake.
|
| I'm just yelling at people to get off my lawn aren't I?
| reggieband wrote:
| I want to spoil a magnificent movie, the Russian classic
| Stalker [1]. If you haven't watched the film and want to one
| day, please stop reading this comment.
|
| It is a deep film with many themes but one main theme involves
| a curious plot device. From the Wikipedia article: "The Zone
| contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of
| anyone who steps inside." The theme of that plot device is that
| once a group of explorers finally get to the room they refuse
| to go inside. The "Room" isn't a monkey-paw like device that
| distorts your wishes and gives you a bad outcome, rather it
| sees inside your soul and gives you what you truly desire. It
| raises questions about man's conscious desires compared to his
| unconscious desires. Do you really want to know what you truly
| desire, even the desires you hide from yourself?
|
| I can't do justice to the film but I think of it often and
| usually with respect to AI and the unreasonably effective
| algorithms that drive modern feeds. TikTok is in some ways our
| first true glimpse into the "Room" of Tarkovsky's Stalker.
|
| All this to say: I don't see any of the things you are saying
| you see on TikTok. Whether you like it or not the algorithm is
| sending you what you engage with. You have been sorted into the
| "desires wild canoe ride" TikTok. You are sorted into the
| "desires smug fashion gatekeepers" TikTok.
|
| And if you happen to have read this comment and haven't seen
| Stalker - it is still worth it.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
| npteljes wrote:
| The wish theme is present in the first Stalker game too.
| Along with a fascinating story about the human consciousness.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Interesting - thats different from the Strugatsky Roadside
| Picnic novel the Tarkovskys film is based on.
|
| There it was a floting golden ball that would grant you a
| single wish.
|
| The problem was that to get to it you had to pass via a
| phenomenon they called "the grinder". Anyone stepping inside
| it would be mutilated into pulp in short order, after which
| it will deactivate for long enought to let you reach the
| golden ball.
|
| So the dilemma is different there - can you live with the
| fact that you need to take another uknowing human with you to
| feed to the grinder for you to have a wish, any wish, granted
| ?
|
| (Well unless the wish could be "Give me unlimitted number of
| wishes." Then you can just "respawn" your victim without
| loosing the wish. ;-) )
| emddudley wrote:
| TikTok sorts you according to _it 's_ interests, not your
| own. Just because they notice that you are more engaged with
| irritating content doesn't mean you like irritating content.
| rchaud wrote:
| I'm the same age as you. I remember downloading Snapchat years
| ago and and thinking "I don't get this, you take pictures and
| add ugly stickers to it and send it to people?".
|
| With TikTok, I've seen some good videos, so I get the appeal.
| At the same time, no app has turned me off the way TT has.
|
| - The Grammarly voiceover is like nails on a chalkboard.
|
| - Your feed will always have some fixed % of videos which are
| nothing but bandwagoning on some contrived trend (usually a
| dance, but could be style of video too).
|
| - Samples of popular songs, autotuned and pitched up to within
| an inch of its life.
| MonaroVXR wrote:
| >Don't get me started with all the 20something "Influencers"
| humble bragging about their cars and homes.
|
| Not sure about that, if they have the car, but I only watch one
| influencer. called Supercarblondie, I am not sure if she has
| that expensive car, when she gave her lover a sweet Suzuki
| Jimmy. (I forgot the name of the car, but it's expensive.
|
| I must say, I got Instagram too, I have no clue what to do with
| it. I am too lazy to upload and too lazy to touch the app. It
| isn't easy to upload pictures from the desktop to Instagram.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Does this really mean much? I hate Facebook as much as anyone and
| would love to see them fail, but they have four times the daily
| active users of TikTok. Growth has no choice but to slow when you
| have less room to grow. Also if you lump Facebook and Facebook
| Messenger together, it's still more even just in downloads, and
| they didn't _have_ to split into two apps.
| stevewodil wrote:
| >if you lump Facebook and Facebook Messenger together
|
| As two separate apps there is a massive overlap in the users
| that are downloading the Facebook app and the Messenger app for
| their phone. Combining the total downloads for each and using
| that total number of downloads is not a good measure of
| anything.
| silksowed wrote:
| better content, simple as. if you want a pulse on what youth are
| thinking, go to tik tok. no poll will capture what you can gauge
| on this platform
| hardtke wrote:
| The question is whether TikTok will continue to be as popular as
| they start onboarding more advertisers and showing more ads. Most
| apps tend to get worse when they start attempting to make money.
| Also, TikTok can't be cheap to operate unless they have somehow
| convinced all music labels to behave in a way they have never
| behaved before.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Funny this crops up today: I was in line just a couple of hours
| ago behind a 20-ish lady who was using TikTok on her phone, and I
| got to watch her use it for a good 10mn.
|
| This was both frightening and sad.
|
| Specifically, the speed at which she was switching from content
| to content without _ever_ (in the span of 10mn) actually settling
| on one piece to actually watch it.
|
| The longest she stuck to one piece of content was on the order of
| 10 seconds.
|
| Besides the fact that her brain didn't (couldn't possibly)
| register anything useful out of the whole usage stretch, the only
| think I could think of after witnessing this was pavlov's dog.
|
| TV zapping on steroids.
|
| Ugh.
| mrkramer wrote:
| The question is how do you fit an ad inside a short video if
| attention span of the user is 10 sec?
| underwater wrote:
| I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News
| of all places. TikTok content comes across as completely vapid.
| It's like the worst possible mashup of bad television and social
| media. As a company TikTok seems to have zero goals beyond
| increasing engagement.
| spullara wrote:
| You have to use it a bit and interact with it to find the
| content you like. My guess is that people who like it have done
| this and people that don't haven't yet found their niche.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah, it isn't really comparable to Facebook or Reddit or
| Youtube. They really do different things. TikTok seems most
| optimized for the passive receiver of vapid content use case.
| You can actually do exactly that with reddit if you browse
| without logging in and never click a comment thread. The top 1%
| (and bottom 1%) of interesting TikToks end up on Reddit anyway.
| Facebook/Insta are explicitly about your life and the lives of
| your acquaintances. TikTok seems more like competition for
| Netflix really.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| TikTok is the latest social media on its ascent. Perhaps they
| are impressed by its ability to keep the pigs eating. Or maybe
| they really like short videos. Hard to say.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker
| News of all places.
|
| Could it be addicts trying to justify their addiction to the
| world (and themselves)? It sounds like TikTok is even more
| successful at being addictive than previous social media drugs,
| maybe it's strong enough to hook people who weren't hooked by
| its predecessors.
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Sure it's vapid and I'm glad I've aged out of feeling I need to
| participate in any of these things.
|
| But it's great to see competition with SV, competition FAANG,
| competition with the US even. It's not a solution, but it's a
| breath of fleetingly fresh error for everyone sick of endless
| monopoly, acquisitions, and "tech nationalism for me, free
| trade and dependency for thee".
| m1aw wrote:
| I started using TikTok for a couple of weeks now and started to
| find it fascinating, the communities that are built around the
| bubbles the algorithm creates are quite interesting and have
| discussion between themselves. It's easy to reach out to actual
| subject mater experts for non-technical stuff, people you
| wouldn't typically see on HN or Reddit.
|
| Now does it bring __value__ to my life? No
|
| Will I keep participating and creating content just to engage
| in these niche communities? Yes
| krapp wrote:
| >Now does it bring __value__ to my life? No
|
| You find it fascinating and interesting, you're discovering
| niche communities and engaging with them. You (presumably)
| enjoy creating content. That's value. Fun, entertainment and
| communication all have value.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't really get TikTok. I guess I'm just an old fart.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content
| stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially
| places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression
| inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is
| collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same
| time.
|
| The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by
| being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist.
|
| I guess by now everyone has heard of their legendary discovery
| algorithm so I'm not going there but recently I noticed that some
| of my favourite creators from the Youtube etc. are on TikTok and
| their material is much nicer to consume there. Why? I think this
| is because of the short and fast phased nature of the TikTok
| content. Instead of publishing 10 to 30 min videos(AFAIK Youtube
| encourages that, it is also good for the revenue), they put
| together a short video that shows the gist of the subject. They
| will also be much more responsive, quickly replying with short
| videos to the comments. It's a very dynamic place.
|
| One exception for me is Nile Red, I love watching his 40 min
| chemistry videos. Actually, there are a few more YouTubers who's
| content works best on YouTube but I'm watching far less and I
| have more spare time now.
|
| Maybe the medium is the message still holds? Maybe people are now
| ready to hear the message of the TikTok?
| ren_engineer wrote:
| TikTok's algorithm is just pre 2017 YT and FB cranked up by
| 100X. For some reason the media hasn't gone after TikTok yet
| for pushing people into "echo chambers" but they basically just
| feed the most engaging content with no breaks on the train.
|
| I read an article about the parent company and they have one of
| the most popular news app in India as well despite none of the
| engineers being able to read what content is being pushed to
| the top, they just let their machine learning push the most
| "engaging" content, which is basically stuff that is
| controversial, creates anger, etc.
| dTal wrote:
| >the short and fast phased nature of the TikTok content
|
| Ahh, so it's Twitter for video... is this good? It's my
| impression that there's a growing consensus that Twitter's
| content length restriction optimizes for shallow hot takes and
| angry mobs.
| tomcooks wrote:
| What's fun about stolen videos with a selfie introduction,
| happy dances and lipsync? Does tiktok offer anything else?
|
| Sincerely, the no fun guy
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and
| depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the
| society is collapsing
|
| It's been interesting to watch the steady decline of Reddit and
| Twitter since they launched. They've always had a significant
| amount of doom-and-gloom clickbait headlines, but in the past
| it was far easier to filter out the bad and follow subreddits
| or Twitter people with high signal to noise ratios.
|
| Now, Reddit feels like a lost cause for anything other than
| consuming endless outrage headlines. r/popular is full of
| blatant misinformation that could be disproved with a simple
| Google search or outrage-bait headlines that make every event
| sound like the end of the world. Even the previously useful
| subreddits I subscribed to have been inundated with angry,
| angry people who manage to turn everything into an argument or
| relate it back to politics somehow.
|
| I have to wonder if TikTok is simply enjoying the early days
| where the fun, light-hearted content still outweighs the
| intentionally rage-baity content. There does appear to be vast
| amounts of misinformation and angry content on TikTok, but it
| hasn't yet flooded the platform to a degree that it's
| unavoidable.
|
| I feel like we watched a similar rise and fall of Clubhouse
| during the pandemic. The early days were full of people with
| genuine curiosity and good intentions about socializing, but it
| quickly devolved into lowest common denominator content. I
| haven't opened Clubhouse for months, but the last time I opened
| it I remember scrolling through endless "how to get rich" rooms
| that were keyword stuffing popular terms until I just gave up
| on the platform altogether.
|
| Maybe TikTok's algorithm and model can stave off the Eternal
| September problem, but I feel like it's only a matter of time
| until the signal to noise ratio drops below most people's
| thresholds for decent content.
| excitom wrote:
| Interesting, no one seems to be talking about SnapChat any
| more.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Agreed - HN as well has been trending towards the outrage /
| doom model. The coverage of Apple just rips the worst
| articles (ie, apple committing child porn felonies), and the
| headlines are often wildly overboard (imply all Google
| workers going on strike etc).
|
| TikTok has avoided that somehow - def more fun and
| interesting there - I do keep on getting exposed at times to
| somewhat weird idea, but a bit less of the yell in your face
| while clapping kind of stuff you see elsewhere so they are
| doing something interesting with their algorithm.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular
| subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in
| r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban
| politics or have <100k subscribers, it's a totally different
| website, full of wholesome niche communities.
|
| Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my
| experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates
| an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the
| smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic,
| inflammatory or misleading is nuked into invisibility. After
| getting used to this, I find it really hard to participate in
| places like youtube, Discord or old-style forums where
| conversations can be derailed or turned toxic by only a few
| bad actors.
| cgb223 wrote:
| I tried that approach and found that even in my niche
| interest subreddits that I subscribe too that somehow
| politics always found a way in, and became a top post for
| some cheeky reason.
|
| Moderators also often selectively enforce the "no politics"
| rule either by only removing political things that conflict
| with their personal political views or by defining things
| that are political as not political so they can continue or
| vice versa.
|
| I think a big part of the problem of Reddit is that there's
| a handful of mods who just moderate everything
|
| I wish there was a Reddit without all that crap, I'd pay
| money to use it
| trts wrote:
| This has been my experience as well. There are countless
| amazing, small communities on Reddit, and being able to
| kick the popular subreddits out of my feed makes it feel
| like one of the last places that embodies the spirit of the
| early internet. Namely -- small quasi-anonymous communities
| where people can sincerely discuss niche interests and
| discover new ones through the serendipity of interaction.
|
| Once old.reddit.com gets turned off, I worry about how long
| this can persist. The iOS app has tons of clickbait hooks,
| useless notifications, invitations to join "similar" large,
| emotional subreddits full of toxicity and extremism.
| dharmab wrote:
| The non-default niche subreddits are what replaced the BB
| forums of old.
|
| Interestingly some of the niche subs I'm on also have
| Discord servers which are lively and interesting, like
| the days of IRC.
| this_user wrote:
| Reddit's more popular subs at least used to be usable. But
| over the last couple of years r/all has turned into
| reposts, outrage clickbait, misinformation, and propaganda
| exclusively. I started putting more and more sub on the
| ignore list, but eventually there was nothing worthwhile
| left. I've unsubscribed from an increasing number of mid-
| sized subs as even those have more and more turned into
| complete circlejerks. At this point, I'm down to a handful
| of smaller subs that I visit semi regularly.
|
| Maybe it's just me and my tolerance for this kind of BS has
| declined over the years or maybe the site is steadily
| getting worse as it gets bigger.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| While I agree with you to some extent, niche subreddits are
| still subject to Reddit's overall content moderation and
| policies - which are ultimately based on politics (left-
| biased). This can range from shadowbans on linking to
| certain domains to bans on certain viewpoints that apply
| sitewide to affecting the kind of humor that is allowable
| to whatever else. Yes those niche communities are less
| toxic than the giant subreddits, but it still feels like a
| sort of artificial, inauthentic experience to some extent
| because you can only be the online person that nearly fits
| within the overton window of what is deemed acceptable by
| Reddit's admins and leadership. Others aren't welcome, or
| if they are there, they can't truly express themselves or
| be authentic.
|
| This trend of niche forums becoming politically biased
| isn't limited to Reddit either. For example, much has been
| written from both the left and the right about how Ravelry,
| a knitting community, chose a hard-left political bias
| during the Trump administration
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/style/ravelry-knitting-
| ba...). When that sort of change happens, a whole lot of
| people cannot engage in that niche community because it
| feels like a hostile place to participate, even if the
| typical piece of content is apolitical.
| em500 wrote:
| I agree that many Youtube videos are tedious and needlessly
| dragged out, probably caused by focussing on time spent as KPI.
| Too many Youtube videos nowadays give a strong vibe of creators
| being made only for the money.
|
| For TikTok I feel it's still at the stage where the makers,
| above all else, just want to be seen. But maybe it's only a
| matter of time before it devolves into aggressive monetization.
| danbolt wrote:
| I feel like Vine had a lot of that quirky, comedic energy.
| It's a shame that Twitter decided to discontinue it. I
| sometimes still watch Vine compilation videos when I want to
| feel nostalgic.
| stanislavb wrote:
| You are addicted (most probably). Not exactly "a huge fan"
| (most probably). It shouldn't sound like blaming or something.
| It's just that TikTok has proven having a more addictive algo
| than FB.
| cwkoss wrote:
| It would be really interesting if TikTok allowed users to make
| a sequential thread of videos, and added a scroll control to
| view "next video in sequence". Currently "part 2" videos are
| very tedious to find, if they could make a way to continue a
| sequence from the fyp with a simple gesture or button, I think
| they could seriously challenge longer form videos as well.
| teddyfrozevelt wrote:
| They recently added playlists (they show up as yellow text
| with a gray highlight in the description) but the ability to
| make them may not have rolled out to everyone. They have
| notoriously slow roll outs (like with new TTS voices and the
| captions).
| dizzystar wrote:
| They can make a comment that says "part 2" and respond to it.
| Add a pin and it'll be at the top.
|
| Some creators do this, but not enough. Besides with 3 minute
| videos, this shouldn't be a problem anymore.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I haven't created a TikTok video yet, so don't count on me
| for the details but on some videos I see a link to a
| playlist.
|
| BTW, I skip all multi-part videos unless there is a good
| reason for being multipart. Most are trying to game the
| system.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _I think they could seriously challenge longer form videos
| as well._
|
| Is this like the
|
| Twitter feed readers that take
|
| what should be a blog post on an
|
| external site and stitch them back
|
| into something readable, instead of
|
| a blog post in 40 parts?
|
| There are plenty of sites that focus on long form videos and
| it might make sense to put long form videos there, if one
| wants long form video content.
| spiderice wrote:
| > There are plenty of sites that focus on long form videos
|
| Youtube. It's pretty much just Youtube. They are the only
| player with meaningful market share. Even Facebook video is
| most effective at only 20-40 seconds.
|
| I would welcome any competition to Youtube, even if it
| means TikTok expanding.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Initially, I'm thinking, "but that's just youtube with a
| slightly different presentation."
|
| But then I thought about the fact that a lot of significant
| developements were "just <something else> with a slightly
| different presentation."
| emodendroket wrote:
| I got sick of it in like a week, but clearly my preferences
| aren't representative.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > Maybe the medium is the message still holds?
|
| Was there ever any question? Your whole comment here is a
| perfect demonstration.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Isn't the discovery algorithm something that any media network
| could easily adjust to either favor the entire community of
| creators or to favor the network itself (perhaps by favoring
| creators with more lucrative advertising deals)?
|
| I would expect fairly new networks to adjust their algorithm
| towards the former to attract creators, then eventually tweak
| it towards the latter to please
| investors/shareholders/advertisers.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by
| being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist.
|
| I don't think the only question is "who wins at having the most
| popular social network." The more concerning one is of exerting
| political influence through manipulative
| amplification/suppression (which is something the PRC has a lot
| of experience with). That could be both highly effective and
| extremely subtle and difficult to detect (e.g. activating one
| political tendency with _relatively_ more call to action
| videos, while distracting its opposition with relatively more
| cat videos and relatively fewer calls to action).
| wongarsu wrote:
| That is a real threat, but that's a problem with
| (proprietary, centralized) online media in general. Which
| social network would you trust not to do that? Facebooks
| experiment on manipulating emotions comes to mind [1].
|
| The only way to minimize these effects is to consume a
| multitude of media from multiple sources, so no one entity
| has too much influence. Balancing all the US-based social
| networks with some TikTok certainly seems healthy in that
| regard.
|
| 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebo
| ok...
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Which social network would you trust not to do that?
|
| Well step 1 is to see what country the social network was
| made in, and see if that government has had a strong
| history of using the law to force companies to silence
| criticism.
| godelski wrote:
| Is the network authority the only entity to blame here?
| Looking at the other end of the spectrum, if a popular
| network was fully decentralized and had zero censorship or
| speed bumps to control how viral something goes, then I
| still think that social network would be vulnerable to
| propaganda machines. Specifically still by those with the
| most money to throw at it.
|
| I don't think Facebook and many social networks are doing a
| good job but I think we should also recognize that the
| problem is difficult and unclear how to solve. There's an
| issue with how information naturally flows and how that can
| be manipulated.
|
| Specifically I don't think TikTok is great because the
| focus on short videos (we see this on Facebook too. A meme
| is even shorter). 30 sec to 3 min political videos are more
| likely to be propaganda in my experience (e.g. NowThis).
| Though that isn't too say there aren't longer form versions
| (e.g. PragerU).
| saddlerustle wrote:
| TikTok has _already_ been found to be censoring content
| that criticises the Chinese government [1]. Theres a big
| difference between that and a nonpolitical public research
| project that ended up with a minuscule effect size.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/reve
| aled-...
| the-dude wrote:
| > a nonpolitical public research project
|
| Are you referring to Camebridge Analytica?
| saddlerustle wrote:
| No, the emotional contagion paper the OP linked. Facebook
| had no _active_ role in the Cambridge Analytic affair.
| telxoss wrote:
| Or you could just not waste your time with social media or
| the news in general.
|
| If you didn't check social media or have any input from a
| new sources in the past 2 weeks what would you have missed?
|
| The NASDAQ went down then back up?
|
| Real news could be done with a single web page that updates
| weekly. Even if monthly you wouldn't really miss out on
| much of anything important.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I do think TikTok's chosen format and their algorithm make a
| great product. However, I am also increasingly wary of their
| growing power. Although I didn't expect it because they are
| foreign-owned, they are much more heavy-handed about
| censorship of centrist and conservative views (on the
| American political spectrum) than other platforms like
| Twitter and Facebook. I've seen numerous people I follow get
| banned aggressively, and apart from making me/others feel
| oppressed, such censorship also makes me concerned about the
| degree of influence they have in shaping public conversation
| in our society - particularly with younger generations. A
| feasible explanation is that they are simply conforming to
| the same politically-biased moderation practices seen
| elsewhere, like on Twitter ,and are conforming to what they
| perceive the market is demanding. A more sinister explanation
| is that this is a purposeful plan by the CCP to sow chaos in
| America by fanning the flames of a very fundamental,
| pervasive, ideological division.
| the-dude wrote:
| As opposed to US based networks?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > As opposed to US based networks?
|
| There are important differences between being influenced by
| domestic actors, as part of a domestic political process,
| and being influenced by foreign actors. The latter is a far
| more serious threat to political independence.
|
| It's also pretty well documented that the PRC political
| authorities already use its domestic social networks in
| this way.
| vkou wrote:
| > There are important differences between being
| influenced by domestic actors, as part of a domestic
| political process, and being influenced by foreign actors
|
| Just because the actors are domestic doesn't make it at
| all better. Domestic actors don't have public welfare in
| mind, they have their own welfare in mind.
|
| This influence happens behind close doors, and I, as a
| constituent, don't get to have any input on it.
|
| For a great example, I didn't get to vote on whether or
| not Fox news should peddle absolute nonsense 24/7 that
| radicalizes their base. Its owners made that decision,
| without my input.
|
| If you want 'domestic' influence and oversight over your
| mass media, social networks, etc, use the political
| process to set some ground rules, and make everyone
| operating these businesses in your country follow them.
| Blaming or targeting the foreign boogieman is a
| distraction, when we've got plenty of domestic monsters
| living in our closet.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| You are assuming that the person you respond to is
| american. He's dutch, and is regularly spied on by the
| US.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You are assuming that the person you respond to is
| american.
|
| No, I was responding with my thoughts as an American. And
| frankly, his comment was ambiguous enough to be open to
| multiple interpretations (e.g. 1. to a non-American, US-
| controlled networks are foreign; 2. and
| manipulation/propaganda happens on US-controlled networks
| already, so why should it be any more concerning on one
| from China; 3. etc.).
|
| > He's dutch, and is regularly spied on by the US.
|
| The issue I was talking about isn't spying.
| the-dude wrote:
| If we ever get a _Weapons of mass destruction capable of
| reaching the capitols of Europe_ episode again, I would
| wager FB and YT will start to block content which
| questions that narrative ( or fairytale rather ).
| rchaud wrote:
| It's also documented that Cambridge Analytica used data
| made available to it by Facebook to target millions with
| political propaganda. It wasn't just the US election,
| they had plenty of practice validating the strategy in
| elections in smaller countries.
|
| Where's the evidence that TT has been successfully used
| for nefarious purposes on a similar scale?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Where's the evidence that TT has been successfully used
| for nefarious purposes on a similar scale?
|
| I don't need to see a particular bomb blow up to know
| it'll be dangerous when detonated.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The concern is exactly that such evidence might be much
| harder to find for TikTok. Cambridge Analytica's clients
| included multiple prominent American politicians,
| including the sitting president at the time the scandal
| broke. China would try their hardest to stop a scandal
| involving Xi Jinping from breaking in the first place,
| and certainly the People's Congress wouldn't demand a
| public investigation as the US Congress did.
| the-dude wrote:
| I am Dutch.
| godelski wrote:
| Which country has closer values to your country? US or
| China? Take the parents comment above and turn it from
| binary into a spectrum using this metric.
| tablespoon wrote:
| And I'm an American, speaking as an American. If you want
| to ban Facebook _and_ Tiktok in the Netherlands over
| these issues, it 's totally fine by me. I have no love
| for any social network.
|
| I actually had a thought in the back of my mind that the
| outlook may be different in other countries, but I didn't
| write it down. Especially since American companies have a
| tendency to pursue their own agendas, even against the
| American government.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Both Facebook and TikTok are foreign actors in my country
| (and almost all of them).
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not sure how this is a counter to the above comment.
| Seems to still apply.
|
| To add nuance, it's also not a binary problem. Is it
| influence from a country with closer values to you/your
| country or one further apart? Obviously your country is
| likely to be one end of the spectrum. I'd also say that
| US and China have very different
| cultural/political/economic views and considering a
| significant percentage of HN posters are American, this
| is why the specific comparison is frequently made (and a
| Dutch, for example, social network isn't really a world
| player right now).
| refenestrator wrote:
| What sort of manipulative amplification/suppression,
| specifically? Maybe a skinner box outrage machine that turns
| us into hostile tribes sniping over cultural crap while
| completely unable to govern ourselves as they surpass us?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What sort of manipulative amplification/suppression,
| specifically? Maybe a skinner box outrage machine that
| turns us into hostile tribes sniping over cultural crap
| while completely unable to govern ourselves as they surpass
| us?
|
| Amplifying pre-existing fault lines to encourage general
| weakness is certainly one that's been well explored.
| Another might be amplifying political or ideological that
| serve the foreign power's goals (e.g. general pacifism when
| that power is planning some kind of aggression or military
| build up, or electioneering messages for a candidate with a
| more favorable trade policy to that power).
|
| No one could deliver particular results with certainty
| using any of these methods, but they could definitely put
| their finger on the scales.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Sorry I was describing our current social networks.
| Impossible to gauge how thick to lay it on in text.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Sorry I was describing our current social networks.
| Impossible to gauge how thick to lay it on in text.
|
| I know you were. The issue here isn't that this kind of
| manipulation is totally unheard of, it's that it could be
| done far, _far_ more effectively and stealthily with the
| control of the platform.
| Permit wrote:
| > What sort of manipulative amplification/suppression,
| specifically?
|
| I don't know if this counts but I was surprised to run into
| this pro-DPRK account while scrolling recently:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@dprkorea_?lang=en
|
| It purports to show North Korea through the lens of a
| hidden camera. Plenty of shots of couples holding hands and
| playing badminton without nets.
|
| I get the sense that this is propaganda and not genuinely
| capturing the everyday lives of North Koreans. That said, I
| can't prove that this is the case.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why wouldn't North Koeans hold hands? Most have normal
| lives in an abnormal place.
|
| The best performers train there entire lives and put on
| shows year round. Secretly they hope the leader will show
| up one day.
|
| In America people wait hoirs to get a star to sign
| something. In North Korea the biggest star is the leader.
|
| From the real footage I've seen it's a crazy place with
| normal people who do normal things.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > exerting political influence through manipulative
| amplification/suppression
|
| and social influence
|
| there are a few worrying trends on the internet which are
| difficult to attribute to simply headstrong visionaries
| concerned with the general progress of our species
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| Curious - does TikTok censor content that China would find
| sensitive, like the existence of Taiwan or pro Hong Kong
| protest content?
| saddlerustle wrote:
| It did in 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/s
| ep/25/revealed-...
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Re: the China thing, is Instagram's Reels not a better
| alternative? Where you know your data is only being spied on by
| non-totalitarian regimes?
| phatfish wrote:
| The US has far more influence over most western countries
| than China ever will.
|
| I'm much more worried about about what the US can do with all
| the data it collects on its allies than what China does.
|
| Of course, I'd rather my government were to ensure the
| personal data of its citizens never leaves its boarders
| (similar to Germany). But that's far too much to ask of the
| UK.
| cronix wrote:
| Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are obese,
| queer, or otherwise the target of harassment. Their stance is
| it's easier to get rid of the person being made fun of or limit
| who can see their videos rather than the 10k people harassing
| them.
|
| > According to Netzpolitik, the social media company instructed
| moderators to find users who are "susceptible to harassment or
| cyberbullying based on their physical or mental condition."
| These creators would then be marked with a "Risk 4"
| designation, meaning their videos would only be available to
| view in the country where it was uploaded. Company documents
| obtained by Netzpolitik explain TikTok's reasoning for the ban,
| pointing to the fact that "bullying has been proven to cause
| severe emotional and physical distress, especially in minors."
|
| > TikTok also kept a separate list of "special users" who were
| considered to be "particularly vulnerable." Many of the
| creators on this list, Netzpolitik discovered, made videos with
| the hashtags #fatwoman or #disabled, or had rainbow flags and
| other LGBTQ+ markers in their profile. TikTok moderators marked
| these creators with an "Auto R," which meant that their videos,
| after hitting a certain amount of views, would be banned from
| TikTok's algorithm of suggested videos that appear in every
| user's "For You" feed. As a result, these creators's videos
| would reach a much smaller audience than the average user. For
| many, dreams of going "TikTok viral" and gaining notability on
| the platform would be squashed by the policies.
|
| https://www.them.us/story/tiktok-suppressed-fat-queer-disabl...
|
| > Social video network TikTok apparently limited the reach of
| people with disabilities, including facial disfigurement and
| Down syndrome. According to Netzpolitik.org, which spoke with a
| source inside the company, the policy was supposed to protect
| users with a high risk of bullying. In practice, however, it
| apparently amounted to discrimination -- and the problem was
| compounded by moderators who needed to make snap decisions
| about users' physical and mental traits.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/2/20991843/tiktok-bytedance...
| hhlbf wrote:
| >Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are
| obese, queer, or otherwise the target of harassment.
|
| As a user: nice.
| Drew_ wrote:
| You're not going to include the excerpt where a TikTok
| representative stated this was a bad practice and that they
| don't do those these things anymore?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, that's about as credible as Facebook claiming to be
| turning over a new leaf on privacy, isn't it?
| corobo wrote:
| True or not it's still dishonest to exclude information
| that moots the point
| stale2002 wrote:
| It doesn't really moot the point. If they did stuff as
| egregious as that, we can make inferences about the
| company, their goals, and other stuff that they could be
| doing.
| [deleted]
| corobo wrote:
| We can make those inferences with the additional
| information too, more informed inferences even
| kixiQu wrote:
| But I mean, we can all still find evidence of FB
| malfeasance, and I can find evidence of cool fat queer
| people showing up in _my_ For You feed at the very least
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article says "limited the reach", not "banned them".
| There's not a great way for you or I to evaluate if
| that's still happening.
| vernie wrote:
| It would appear that they've changed their strategy with
| these types of users to one of aggressive reply moderation as
| I'm regularly seeing content from all of the mentioned "high-
| risk" categories getting millions of likes and the comment
| sections are generally positive.
| slownews45 wrote:
| I'm getting a lot of lesbian couples in my feed. And there
| are extremely obese folks dancing on tiktok. So I'm not sure
| what you mean by tiktok getting rid of folks who are the
| target of harassment.
|
| That said, I do think care should be taken to avoid
| exploiting folks on things like social media - and that's a
| bit too complex to discuss here.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I would have to disagree with you about the anti-queer slant.
| Maye it's what I've tuned the algorithm to, but I see far,
| far, far more queer and people of color on TikTok than any
| media form I have previously encountered.
| nielsbot wrote:
| They can (and do?) definitely firewall US content from
| China content.
| romwell wrote:
| Is this a statement about geography, or language?
|
| Something tells me we don't have too many Chinese
| nationals living in China on hackernews either.
|
| Or on Reddit. Or Facebook.
|
| In fact, I saw the most content from China.. on TikTok.
| And since those were dance videos, I quickly skipped
| them. But I don't know if Chinese-speaking people in the
| US have the same experience.
| yann2 wrote:
| Ah yes the Fundamental Right to Reach.
|
| If you go by what Trump or Obama say its the most important
| thing. Not because they used it to generate Outcomes for
| everyone but because They are Good at using it to generate
| outcomes for themselves.
|
| Nature discovering "Reach" is how we end up stuck with an
| "Endocrine system". Flood the whole body/system with a signal
| and hope for the best. Thats great in producing a pheremone
| driven anthill. Its not how we end up with a Nervous system
| and the Human Brain.
|
| Understanding the difference between the 2 models is key to
| understanding where social media has actual value and where
| it does not.
| dilap wrote:
| I'm not sure about the allegations, but this certainly does
| not match my experience -- I have seen an incredibly diverse
| set of people in my FYP feed.
|
| (I wish YouTube had content discovery like TikTok -- YouTube
| seems to always want to steer me to either something that's
| an exact clone of the last thing I watched, or something
| that's just dumb and super-popular. TikTok is amazing at
| ferreting out all kinds of veins of interest. It's great.)
| pantalaimon wrote:
| My for you page is full of dancing fat girls because I like
| those videos -\\_(tsu)_/-
| cma wrote:
| > TikTok apparently limited the reach of people with
| disabilities, including facial disfigurement and Down
| syndrome.
|
| Hollywood and Youtube Originals presumably do this too, based
| on proportion of actors with these issues compared to what
| you see out and about.
| warning26 wrote:
| On an abstract level, that sounds terrible, doesn't it?
|
| At the same time though, I feel like this seems like the
| "least bad" possible solution. If a subset of accounts are
| only going viral because people want to bully them, it seems
| reasonable to limit that content's reach.
| whoaisme wrote:
| I agree. It is with that same subservient mentality that I
| insist my daughters stay inside the house and never go
| outside. After all, I imagine there are lots of degenerates
| that want to abuse them. It's reasonable to limit my
| children's possible exposure to such people. Victim blaming
| is such a reasonable policy. Lol
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This really only makes sense if you ignore the fact that
| this is happening to a person. Being punished for being
| harassed sounds like some kind of hell.
| foldr wrote:
| Surely not. The best solution is to ban the people
| harassing others based on their sexuality.
| cronix wrote:
| Yes, it does sound terrible, on any level. Just get rid of
| minority viewpoints rather than enforce some sort of basic
| civility when discussing them? Just get rid of the harassed
| rather than the harassers? How will that iterate over time?
|
| That would be like firing the current women coming forward
| against Governor Cuomo and leaving the governor alone to
| continue his ways, to put it in a current headline context.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Do minorities have the right to force the majority to
| listen? That is the abstract question this policy is
| dancing around. Or, do you let the minority talk to the
| minority...
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This isn't really the case anymore. And I am someone that has
| been super critical of tiktok.
|
| In fact, the most recent viral tiktok reposted on twitter
| yesterday was that dude in the white house, and it was
| getting reposted to both praise and criticize how queer-
| positive it was.
| johny_walks wrote:
| Oh no. No more drama from mentally unstable people with weird
| pronouns.
| mysterEFrank wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/style/tiktok-gay-
| homiesex... Tik Tok is the queerest video platform out there.
| At least 20% of the videos I get are queer.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Anecdotally, I browse r/TikTokCringe (which, despite the
| name, is not exclusively cringe TikToks) and it sometimes
| feels like that number is much closer 50% or higher.
|
| It's nice to see the data supports my observation.
| kshacker wrote:
| It is an anecdote but over the last 2 weeks, a few times
| (3-4) when I clicked on the top live videos, it is the live
| of a man too obese to even walk
| n8cpdx wrote:
| This is an out of touch take from the TikTok=China=bad days
| of 2019/2020.
|
| I see queer creators on TikTok all the time. Quite frequently
| actually.
|
| This was the second video that showed up for me today, with
| 500k views (it is propaganda out of the White House, in
| collaboration with a popular queer creator):
| https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdosCgTr/
|
| Only 50k views from an amateur creator, because TikTok hates
| queers: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdoss9jL/
|
| 90k likes because TikTok hates fat people:
| https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdosn9PW/
|
| 100k: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdoGfVKH/
| bartread wrote:
| > 90k likes because TikTok hates fat people:
| https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdosn9PW/
|
| I dunno: this bad posture video is some BS. It seems to be
| teaching just a different bad posture. People might be
| liking it, and TikTok might not be discriminating against
| it (which at least is positive), but that is no indication
| that the content is of any quality.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| No one said that there are no queer people on TikTok, or
| that they get no exposure. They said that TikTok
| _artificially limits_ their exposure in several ways,
| especially outside their home country. That 's probably not
| a big deal if they're in the US, but potentially a very big
| deal elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| 50k is really amateur numbers. 50k people have probably
| already read you comment. Charli Damelio's last post was
| her eating a bag of Takis for 20 seconds and it got 15
| MILLION views. We're just not seeing those numbers in
| marginalized communities on tiktok but we do see queer
| creators with top-tier numbers on youtube, facebook, insta,
| etc. Where's the trans Charli or the obese Charli or the
| anti-capitalist Charli?
|
| Secondly, you're cherry picking examples. First you can't
| see how much more exposure these people would have had.
| Secondly, you're probably not in a country where these
| people would be invisible to you.
|
| Cherry-picking model minorities isn't helping your case at
| all. I'm not seeing anything too upsetting to the status
| quo here or to anything that might threaten tiktok
| economically. Those voices certainly aren't going to be
| heard as much. This is like cherry picking popular books,
| movies, and posters in China and saying, "So where's all
| the censorship then?" Survivorship bias is at work here,
| you're only really seeing the survivors.
|
| Its incredible that tiktok literally has admitted to this:
|
| https://www.dazeddigital.com/science-
| tech/article/50444/1/ti...
|
| Yet somehow the popular HN response is alt-right denial and
| dismissal of anything that remotely sounds "SJW" to them.
| Literally after The Intercept and Netzpolitik broke these
| stories to the public. Its not even in the realm of "wow
| are they doing this?" As much as it is in the realm of "How
| much of this are they doing and how much do we not know?"
|
| "TikTok users posting videos with these hashtags are given
| the impression their posts are just as searchable as posts
| by other users, but in fact they aren't," the report said.
| "In practice, most of these hashtags are categorised in
| TikTok's code in the same way that terrorist groups,
| illicit substances, and swear words are treated on the
| platform."
|
| Its incredible to me that the oppression could not be more
| obvious, yet bigoted attitudes guarantee that some people
| will refuse to believe even what tiktok says. The fact that
| this company is grouping terrorists with queer and disabled
| people is completely and utterly inexcusable.
|
| Also encouraging vaccinations isn't "propaganda" but sane
| and safe health policy.
| aerosmile wrote:
| If you had an issue with Zuck calling early Facebook users
| "dumb f**ks," wait until you find out what's going on behind
| the closed Tik Tok doors. You have to remember - we're still
| in the honeymoon phase with Tik Tok and haven't learned to
| hate them yet. Once the media and all your friends start
| sharing hatred about Tik Tok, leaks are going to start coming
| out, and there will be all the other fun ways through which
| we discover the true nature of the beast. My money is on Tik
| Tok setting new standards for how evil a corporation can be.
|
| > The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them
| by being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist.
|
| You got used to the idea that the US has the ability to be
| better at anything we set our mind to. For our sake, I really
| hope that truism to continue to be true for a long time. But
| unless you believe in American Exceptionalism, there are no
| reasons why that should be guaranteed - or even likely. China
| is more supportive of growth-at-all-costs, their population
| is willing to work harder, and the idea that Americans are
| more innovative hasn't been true for quite a while - look at
| Nio, Xiaomi, Huawei, ByteDance, and countless other examples.
| A lot of cutting edge stuff is coming out of China these
| days, with the trend only accelerating.
|
| We might even start longing for days when we used to have a
| strong domestic competitor in the social media space. The
| same thing happened in Germany - back in 2008 when Facebook
| was tiny on a global scale, there was a German EUR100m
| company called StudiVZ that dominated the social networking
| in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with about 10m active
| users. I don't have to tell you how that story ended - the
| company is no more and all those users are on FB/IG now.
| Germany and Austria also happen to now be the ground zero of
| the global Facebook hatred [1], and I bet you they wish they
| had shown their domestic company a bit more love back when
| this would have made a difference.
|
| [1] https://www.ft.com/content/86d1ce50-3799-11e8-8eee-e06bde
| 01c...
| romwell wrote:
| Yeah, no.
|
| TikTok's algorithm has introduced me to my (now) favorite
| neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ content makers. Some of them have
| hundreds of thousands of followers, some a few hundred.
|
| I've learned more about these subjects (and myself!) than
| from most other sources.
|
| The _value_ of TikTok for me was that it linked up a bunch
| of neurodivergent /lgbtq+ people into a vibrant, supportive
| community.
|
| Honestly, if they decide to keep it a clique... I don't
| mind at all. All the people I interact with there _get me_.
| I 've never felt this anywhere else.
|
| If my content is seen only by a small subset of people who
| are on the same page with me -- awesome! That's who I'm
| making content in the first place.
|
| I don't care about the ominous fear mongering. TikTok has
| made my life better _already_. It brings a lot of people
| together _now_ in ways that other places don 't.
|
| More importantly, it inspires people not just to make
| content, but simply being themselves. And it takes away so
| many barriers for creating, it's insane.
|
| Anyway, we are talking about specific things we like about
| TikTok as a platform that make it unique (so far), and you
| are talking in abstract. _Anything_ can be potentially bad
| in the future. But _currently_ , TikTok is the best thing
| to have happened to the Internet.
|
| I can give my long list of reasons why if anyone is
| interested.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The social media functionality is the secondary purpose
| of the app, the first being surveillance and data
| collection.
|
| Of course Google, Facebook, and a million other companies
| do the same thing, all completely disregarding user
| privacy in favor of selling your information for a quick
| buck, thereby making the internet a more hostile
| environment for taking advantage of the technologically
| uninitiated than ever before. TikTok is just the latest
| in a line of the worst thing to happen to the internet.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| China was supposed to start overtaking the US, but the one
| child policy knee-capped that route. Now their workforce is
| getting much smaller and the burden of care for the elderly
| is growing fast.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Unless you count farmers as part of the workforce, then
| China will not see a reduction of their workforce for
| 10-15 years.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The thesis for America exceeding China in the near term
| future that I have heard is "Our Chinese will beat their
| Chinese." [1]
|
| 1 - https://alphastar.academy/us-team-wins-1st-place-at-
| internat...
| nos4A2 wrote:
| I wouldn't take that for granted at all, the last 4 years
| will definitely have a lasting impact on any brain gain
| the US might've had.
| fumar wrote:
| Does a US competitor need to be FB? I would like to see a
| new more privacy focused social experience prop up. It
| doesn't need to be a network per se, but it can be. How do
| we create a fertile bed for development of new connected
| experiences? Do we already have it? I am wary of venture
| capital culture that requires outsized gains. Isn't there a
| slow stock market concept now?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Is there honestly a market for it? I bet it's too
| expensive to run it without ads, and I don't think people
| would pay for social media.
|
| I would love a system as good as FB actually is (except
| their site is quite heavy on a decent Laptop) which
| doesn't eat my data.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Facebook won because people from Germany, Austria, and
| Switzerland could not only connect with friends in their
| domestic and neighboring countries but because they could
| connect with friends all around the globe.
|
| That's what pretty much happened all around the world with
| FB/IG or in one word standardization.
| dragosmocrii wrote:
| I've been using Coub since before TikTok was around for feel-
| good content.
| durpleDrank wrote:
| That's crazy that you mentioned Nile Red. I coincidentally just
| finished watching his tiktok and thought "boy am I glad I
| didn't have to sit through 40 minutes of beaker swapping just
| to see the end result". I much prefer his tiktok channel over
| the youtube channel.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Because it does not give a shit about your privacy, equality,
| inclusion, misinformation.
| standardUser wrote:
| I figured I would be dragged kicking and screaming into using
| TikTok. At first it was my youngest friends, then my same-age
| friends, and now my older family members. Really Uncle Steve?
| It's fine, I like to be in the know, but I will continue to draw
| my line at SnapChat.
| deminature wrote:
| It's fascinating to see Facebook threatened by a company they
| can't just acquire to put down their competition. Their response
| in the form of Reels is consistently much worse at recommending
| quality content than Tiktok is and generally just comprises re-
| uploads from Tiktok, which is a bad look (people aren't making
| their content for Reels first). Tiktok is also addictive in a way
| that no competing app has managed to capture.
|
| I'm still optimistic Facebook can recover based on the quality
| and abundance of talent they have working on the product, but
| it's been a year and Tiktok only continues to strengthen their
| position while Reels doesn't appear to have improved, at least
| from the customer-facing side. We may be witnessing the early
| stages of a shift in social media apps that Facebook cannot stop.
| karmasimida wrote:
| TikTok is not social media and can be used without 'engaging'
| with anyone, is an incredible useful feature to me.
| phatfish wrote:
| I've never used TikTok, but that sounds nice.
|
| The "comment" section that has appeared under every piece of
| content on the internet in the last 10 years is the source of
| so much wasted effort and conflict it's truly depressing.
|
| If TikTok is breaking that pattern then it's a step in the
| right direction.
| sltkr wrote:
| ... he wrote, unironically, in the Hacker News comment
| section.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Tiktok is fun, I have tremendous problems with it being so
| closely tied to the CCP...but you can't deny that it's a good
| app/service.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I'm just continually amazed at how Twitter bought vine and then
| allowed this to happen.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Maybe just the right app at the wrong time? To be honest I
| think TikTok is 20% short videos and 80% AI, so even if you had
| vine today it would feel totally off compared to TikTok.
|
| If you look at social medias evolution the "Feed" concept was
| first a cronological list of friends' posts then evolved to mix
| of ads and random friends post to allow for more engagement +
| monetization. TikTok just got rid of the concept at all, the
| feed gauge what you want to see by how you interact with the
| content. I think this was their biggest differential.
|
| It's the difference between showing me just stuff that I really
| like doesn't matter from whom and showing me some ads while
| holding the content of my friends hostage.
| psyc wrote:
| Seems like a pretty good example of "Ideas are nothing,
| execution is everything." The for me page, the longer video
| length, all the particular UI decisions all add up to a big
| difference in stickiness.
| mtc010170 wrote:
| I'm not a TikTok user.. or really a fan or user of any social
| media (and yes I realize I'm on HN).. but I find it silly that
| people are saying TikTok is somehow "better" for society or
| peoples' psyches than any of the alternatives.
|
| Do you remember when Facebook wasn't considered terrible?
| Twitter? Reddit? Instagram? Snapchat?
|
| This is just the latest one to rise to the top.. following very
| predictable patterns. It's got something novel (in this case I
| guess a better algorithm and UX).. an attracts an early community
| (which largely always seems like the youth rebelling against the
| current top dog). Then the masses come. Pretty soon.. that
| original spirit and thing that makes it "better" is taken away by
| greedy advertisers or "influencers" and the party's basically
| ruined. And then the next one comes along.
|
| So consider me skeptical of TikTok being any fundamentally
| different. In another 2-3 years, the next social network will
| emerge and take over the zeitgeist. Rinse. repeat.
| root-z wrote:
| FB to me today is mostly a modern phonebook rather than real
| content platform.
|
| TikTok's power lies in how much they encourage creators to
| develop new and fun contents. Every other social media I tried
| feels way too static and full of propaganda these days, built
| only for the famous and powerful. Instagram (not including reels)
| is nice but the picture format is restrictive and the interface
| feels less immersive. TikTok has a better interface imo since
| their videos occupy the entire screen.
|
| I think the main challenge for TikTok would be to commercialize
| without degrading their content, but I doubt other companies
| could do it better at this point with the same medium. A TikTok
| challenger would probably need to have a substantial edge on
| technologies such as VR/AR to beat them.
| mrkramer wrote:
| TikTok is addictive; while I don't use it I saw reposted TikTok
| videos in YouTube Shorts, all I can see yea they are fun but they
| are meaningless engagement.
| franczesko wrote:
| TikTok feels like YouTube in it's very beginning, when it was
| cool and consisted mostly of "sunny" content.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| A lot of talk about how amazing the app is amazing at drawing
| people in but the conjecture comes off more that these are users
| looking to being drawn in. Whatever trick the app pulls, these
| users want that attraction. Kind of comes off as willful
| gullibility to me.
| spideymans wrote:
| Well... yea.
|
| People go on TikTok seeking to be entertained. Is this
| different than any other entertainment platform?
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Not exactly. I seek out entertainment all the time and yet
| I'm not surprised that I couldn't look away.
|
| With this app, responses mostly revolve around the novelty of
| being tricked into binge watching. Not necessarily the
| enjoyment of said entertainment.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| And I'd probably use TikTok if the "Oh no" and "Astronaut in the
| Ocean" weren't used in damn near every video. People overusing
| the everloving crap out of those two songs has ruined that
| platform for me.
| firechickenbird wrote:
| I have Facebook on my phone at least since 2013 and I haven't
| ever re-downloaded it. I also downloaded tiktok last year. Do the
| math
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| base698 wrote:
| TikTok is mainlining Instagram. I'm sure whatever malignancy
| Instagram causes will be an order of magnitude worse after this
| generation consumes the firehouse of TikTok.
|
| I created an account when my wife went to run an errand. After
| two hours she returned and I was still using it. Immediately
| deleted. It's flawlessly executed and addictive, but so is
| fentanyl.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| What is the advantage of installing the app over using your web
| browser?
| ev1 wrote:
| The app collects orders of magnitude more private information,
| permanent device identifiers, phone numbers as a requirement of
| service.
| travoc wrote:
| You can't even browse the website anymore unless you download
| the app or log in.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| No thanks.
| mftb wrote:
| I thought fb had moved on from being downloaded, to taking over
| whole countries, by co-opting their internet access?
| omot wrote:
| Finally some real competition to the US domination of social
| media. Definitely would love to see other countries step up and
| make unique and interesting social media apps that are relevant
| globally.
| jjaammee wrote:
| Never been a TikTok or Facebook user, although I had installed
| both apps a while ago and deleted within a day. Maybe I missed
| something interesting but I'm sure it's trivial and would forget
| soon. But I'll buy TikTok stock if available since it's likely
| very profitable like FB.
| nonfamous wrote:
| I think one of the reasons for TikTok's success is that the
| content exists outside a timeline. Every tried to figure out when
| a particular TikTok was posted? It's very hidden. That means two
| things:
|
| * More content for the algorithm to present. It's quite happy to
| reach way back into the past to show you something you'll like.
|
| * No time-sensitive content. This suppresses a lot of the
| political and outrage-driven content that plagues Twitter and
| Facebook (and to a lesser extent, YouTube, which does seem to
| favor recent content)
|
| As a result, like others I find TikTok a breath of fresh air on
| the internet.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Are we seeing apex Facebook?
|
| I still have a lot of friends that use it daily but it's all for
| things that don't hold a company with a 1T market cap.
|
| Anecdotal data:
|
| - Facebook usage from my feed it's just older family members
| posting cheesy political posts and selling items on marketplace
|
| - Instagram became a selling channel for brands, be it with their
| accounts or with "partnerships" with meme/influencer pages. I see
| less and less content from friends. SO has a professional account
| there, she always has the feeling that if she doesn't pay them
| her posts are rarely seen, even by people that follows her. I'm
| using it less and less every week.
|
| - I still use WhatsApp a lot, and I'm quite scared how they could
| leverage their ad network with my private communications to
| improve bottom line
|
| - I don't use and don't see the point of downloading Messenger,
| Threads, Reels, Lasso and any of the other weird knockoff apps
| they release every few months
|
| I remember the last chapter of Chaos Monkey and the author hit a
| very good point that Facebook bought their extension ticket of
| relevance two times with Instagram and WhatsApp, since then (if
| you disconsider Oculus) the company didn't manage to create or
| acquire their next ticket. Maybe they're going the same route as
| MySpace?
|
| edit: small typos, posted from phone
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Are we seeing apex Facebook?
|
| One can only wish.
|
| Except for the fact that it's being replaced by something
| worse.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Back around 1990 I had the thought 'every new communications
| medium turns to sh*t eventually'. I think because it
| eventually gets dominated by grifters swindling marks of the
| lowest common denominator.
|
| 30 years on and I'm not wrong yet.
| kirse wrote:
| _Are we seeing apex Facebook?_
|
| I've been thinking this for years now, but there's really
| nothing to replace it, it has a huge lock-in, and there's not
| been an underlying technical shift that enables product re-
| invention.
|
| "Social networking" has obviously been around forever, IMO that
| core technical landscape shift we've seen for 70+ years that
| results in product evolution has been increasing network
| connection speed. Faster connections drive re-invention on just
| about every layer of the internet. In this case:
| 300b ---> 14k+ -> 56k --> DSL/Cable > Mobile 3G -> ??
| Email --> BBS --> AOL --> MySpace --> Facebook --> ??
|
| My guess is we'll see a true Facebook killer emerge once mmWave
| 5G hits widespread adoption. Of course FB will have their own
| products to compete, but talking to many Gen-Z they are not
| really interested in Facebook and typically use
| Snapchat/TikTok/etc. Facebook is losing the mindshare game, so
| we're waiting on the tech to seal the blow.
|
| On the devil's advocate side, FB has made some shrewd
| acquisitions like IG/WhatsApp, and tech itself is increasingly
| headed towards a "cereal box" mindset where a few core
| companies make all the products you consume under separate
| labels. A new competitor would need the guts to avoid an early
| exit.
| dimmke wrote:
| There probably won't ever be another big social site that is
| supposed to be "you" online. But who wants that? The results
| haven't been great.
|
| TikTok doesn't work the same way - the algorithm learns who
| you are, you don't tell it, and you don't need to use your
| "real" identity for it. There's no pressure to curate an
| image of yourself on there or compete with others. It meets
| you where you're at, it doesn't try to make you feel like you
| aren't good enough.
| tootie wrote:
| Facebook (and YouTube) are at peak awareness and penetration
| and now moving along the maturity model to squeeze more and
| more revenue from the audience they have. It will 1000% percent
| happen to TikTok and probably way faster than the others.
| marketingtech wrote:
| Per the latest earnings release on https://investor.fb.com on
| July 28:
|
| * Facebook daily active users (DAUs) - DAUs were 1.91 billion
| on average for June 2021, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
|
| * Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) - MAUs were 2.90 billion
| as of June 30, 2021, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
|
| * Family daily active people (DAP) - DAP was 2.76 billion on
| average for June 2021, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
|
| * Family monthly active people (MAP) - MAP was 3.51 billion as
| of June 30, 2021, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
|
| It's hard to show large growth rates when you already count
| most of the +16, non-Chinese internet population as your users,
| but it doesn't look like an apex.
| joelbondurant wrote:
| Communist tyranny isn't going to fly. TikTok has 2570% less
| censorship than USA based tax cattle platforms.
| jlduan wrote:
| There are some problems about TikTok, but it just reminds me how
| fun internet could be.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| Is there any chance for facebook to buy them like they did
| instagram and whatsapp?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| It's possible but extremely unlikely, being a Chinese company.
| I'm sure the Chinese Government has no interest in letting Mark
| Zuckerberg own the platform. And it's certainly not like they
| need the money from Facebook.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| Both of those owners (a chinese company vs facebook) seem
| terrible for the public interest in the US.
| mciancia wrote:
| Bytedance would have to want to sell TikTok first ;) Unlikely
| IMO, unless there will be drama similar to what trump did a
| year ago, but even then I would expect that someone else will
| buy it
| 310260 wrote:
| That's unlikely to happen. Hence why Instagram created Reels to
| compete with TikTok.
| code_duck wrote:
| I'm quite sure that Mark Zuckerberg has been pondering that day
| and night for a couple years now.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I love to see well deserved success and well deserved decline.
|
| Tiktok's experience is making you like people you don't know.
| Facebook's experience is making you disappointed with people you
| know.
| balozi wrote:
| A few day ago some kids told me that TikTok is for old people.
| Not sure what's hip anymore.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| I am honestly stunned that so many people apparently use both HN
| & TikTok.
|
| What does it offer you? Why isn't it the reserve of teens and
| younger that I thought it was? (I'm in my twenties, it's not news
| to me that I'm out of touch with the modal person my age/younger,
| but I'm not totally obliviously removed, and seemingly it's not
| just used by people my age/younger anyway.)
| ericcholis wrote:
| Pro TikTok take. It's easier and friendlier to consume. The
| algorithm is good at tailoring interests. But, it's more like TV
| than FB.
| minikites wrote:
| There are plenty of arguments and issues with the politics and
| moderation of Facebook, but TikTok is more simple than
| Facebook, and it appeals at that level in the same way
| Instagram does.
| spullara wrote:
| 100% agree. The "for you page" is absolutely the best
| automatically curated feed I have ever seen.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| I don't use it, but it looks so painful to me. I couldn't
| imagine having to 'stage' my life so frequently for the
| temporary enjoyment of people I do and don't know.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| So...don't post? Every platform has (read: is _primarily_ )
| lurkers.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Lurking doesn't seem all that appealing to me either.
|
| I just checked the tiktok homepage and the top two videos I
| saw were of a woman failing a sobriety test and a guy
| scaring a drive-through woman with a blow horn.
|
| I realize this isn't the content you might see once your
| algo is calculated, but it's obviously popular stuff on the
| platform and it just doesn't seem like very positive
| content for me.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| Oh, that's nothing. There's also things like "if this
| $optical_illusion moves, you have $disorder", or people
| faking DID and showing off their "alters".
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > it's obviously popular stuff on the platform and it
| just doesn't seem like very positive content for me.
|
| This is true of everything. If I look at the front page
| of YouTube in a private browser window, it's all bullshit
| too, obviously. But there's plenty of quality stuff on
| YouTube that I do like, ya know?
|
| The point is that the well is deep and broad enough that
| there is probably a whole community of people making
| content you'd like, and TikTok is _extraordinarily_ good
| at finding that stuff for you sooner rather than later. I
| watch tons of diorama-building tutorials and recipe
| videos, for example. And I 'm better both at painting and
| cooking as a result.
|
| Look: I'm not a shill, here. I'm not trying to convince
| you to get into TikTok (I mean? who cares, honestly) but
| I find a lot of talk about it tends to boil down to "kids
| these days" dismissiveness.
|
| And yeah I don't post anything there - nobody wants to
| see my grizzled old-ass face.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > I find a lot of talk about it tends to boil down to
| "kids these days" dismissiveness
|
| These platforms are the products of megacorps, using
| incredibly sophisticated technology. Just contrast even a
| single CPU, versus, say, kids using their language
| faculties and markers to be funny or naughty, or using a
| bunch of stuff they found outside to invent a game. And
| then think of how many CPU and other things are involved
| in the pipeline. Kids being kids is as far from it as it
| could be.
|
| During the peak of the outrage about and the being in
| denial about Elsagate, there were plenty of people
| actually saying "these videos probably are this way
| because AI generated them based on the things toddlers
| like". People getting stabbed, raped, kids in trunks and
| crying over being separated from their family, endless
| body horror -- all brushed aside with "meh, they like
| that".
|
| Pointing to good content that one could pay attention to
| instead is a bit like saying "ignore the spam email from
| the Nigerian prince, you obviously aren't in the target
| demographic for it [let the people who are fend for
| themselves]". That's what people did with content
| literally aimed at children who couldn't even speak, why
| _wouldn 't_ they do it for teenagers, and of course for
| adults. This doesn't affect me, so it doesn't get shown
| to me, so it's fine.
|
| And while online mobs are certainly not a TikTok
| specialty, just to counter the general fluffy happy
| picture that so many comments here are painting based on
| things being fine for themselves:
|
| https://www.fluentlyforward.com/home4/my-experience-
| being-ca...
|
| > But let me tell you, reading a hate comment about
| yourself that's relatively true (I mean hey, I do have
| thin lips) said by 1 person stings at a level 1 on the
| pain chart. But reading hate comments about yourself that
| aren't true, and are said by tens of thousands of people
| is....well, it's a physical feeling. That's the only way
| I can describe it.
|
| And then there is this:
| https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-
| moderators-us...
|
| They weakly claim to no longer use these rules, without
| saying what rules they use instead. I would bet you that
| certain political topics are hard filtered though, and
| some things being censored while fluff being tailored to
| be addictive is a net negative effect in my books. It's
| not exclusive to TikTok, but that doesn't absolve it,
| just like TikTok doesn't absolve others.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's also much more positive.
|
| If I spend 20 minutes on TikTok I usually laugh and smile a few
| times. And regularly I'm impressed at human creativity.
|
| 20 minutes on Instagram or Facebook is usually either boring or
| leaves me comparing myself to others.
|
| 20 minutes on YouTube and I feel like I've watched 10 minutes
| of ads and 10 minutes of fluff.
|
| 20 minutes on Reddit and I hate the world.
| Lendal wrote:
| It only takes a few bad-faith actors to infect, exploit and
| ruin a platform. Give it time. They will figure out how to
| ruin TikTok, too.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Specialized reddits about programming topics, drugs, do it
| yourself stuff etc are quite good TBH. People are much more
| helpful then on some other popular places such as Stack
| Exchange in my opinion which hoards achievement people which
| do not generally answer unless there is a chance they will
| get a vote or something.
|
| Mainstream reddits could be junk ..
| keewee7 wrote:
| reddit and twitter are the most depressing places on the
| Internet. So much doomerism and political outrage.
|
| It's on TikTok too but the TikTok algorithm quickly learns
| I'm not interested in political outrage and actually directs
| me toward content I'm interested in.
| arsome wrote:
| Yeah, no kidding with that reddit one, every time I go there
| I feel like everyone is just in constant fear or anger,
| especially going to subreddits for my city/state.
|
| I've near completely stopped using it due to this. Now I just
| spend way too much time on YouTube instead. It may be a
| terrible waste of time, but at least it's less angry and
| fearful.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > every time I go there I feel like everyone is just in
| constant fear or anger
|
| Hell, HN feels like this often.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I think about this post a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/s
| latestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
| belorn wrote:
| Most times I read reddit it is either in context of diving
| or a video game. Neither make me want to hate the world.
|
| In particular, the rim world subreddit is great. That kind
| of game makes for a lot of crazy situations, and much of it
| is captured there.
|
| When games has game breaking bugs, reddit is often a common
| search results with people discussing it and providing
| solutions. In many way it serve the same purpose for gaming
| as stackoverflow does for programming.
|
| Is this just because the way I am reading reddit, or the
| subject matter?
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Then unsubscribe from the subreddits that cause you angst
| and subscribe to subreddits that you enjoy.
| code_duck wrote:
| Regional subs are the worst, for whatever reason. My theory
| is it's because they bring together people with nothing in
| common besides their geographic location.
|
| Even subs that should be neutral, fun or supportive have
| attitude problems. One about a game I'm playing, for
| instance, consists mainly of dramatic complaints with a
| feeling of impending doom.
| oehpr wrote:
| Topic Subreddits tend to be joyful, but there are things
| that can turn communities very toxic. It could be the
| demographic the topic appeals to. It could be that some
| moderation decision for the subreddit is festering and
| creating a lot of hurt feelings. It could be that there's
| some underlying issue that the community is uncomfortable
| with, or divisive, and a loud minority are dominating the
| discussion.
|
| I have two examples of this from otherwise extremely
| positive communities. /r/factorio and /r/satisfactory
| (same genra, but I like this genre)
|
| /r/factorio initially had no issue with self promotion of
| videos and series. This caused a ton of consternation and
| all kinds of other subjects turned very very negative.
| Moderators created another subreddit dedicated for self
| promotion of series, and the community stayed angry about
| everything for about 2 months, before things regressed to
| /r/factorio's mean, which was very positive.
|
| I saw a similar thing happen in /r/satisfactory. Before
| the game was released people on the subreddit had nothing
| to talk about for the most part, and satisfactory
| announced that it was going to be epic exclusive for 6
| months before release. Given that many people really
| hated Epic, and because we didn't actually get to play
| the game, anything that didn't talk about the Epic
| exclusivity, was subject to the conversation. Eventually
| moderators placed dedicated threads for epic exclusivity
| discussion but still, the whole subreddits tone was
| extremely vitriolic. Even on things that didn't have
| anything to do with Epic Exclusivity.
|
| Then the game released. And that toxic discussion was
| totally wiped out by people actually playing the game.
| The subreddits snapped to positive tone instantly.
| bredren wrote:
| Reddit is wonderful compared to Next Door. Next Door's feed
| is pure trigger content and quickly escalated arguments.
| Super toxic.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Something more toxic than reddit? I have only seen it in
| sites that start as "free-speech reddit clones". Outside
| those I find it hard to believe anything can be more toxic
| than Reddit. Unless you digg really deep into niche subs
| even Facebook is better.
| slohr wrote:
| this!
|
| TikTok regularly leaves me inspired, and across many
| different creative realms: Amazing makeup, mindblowing
| parkour, beautiful original music and eye opening covers. Oh
| and some of the short comedy sketches have left me thoroughly
| incapacitated due to laughter. The list goes on for me.
|
| In general, I'm happier after viewing, even when the "you
| should stop watching too much TikTok guy" comes on.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Spending 20 minutes in any of those apps is 20 minutes you
| didn't do something productive. None of them are good for
| you.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| So says a guy with 1,000 comments on Hacker News.
| dmitriy_ko wrote:
| I learned a lot from watching YouTube. I was able to
| complete many home improvement projects based on DIY
| videos. And learned about many different subjects: history,
| science, engineering. I probably learned more from YouTube
| than from books. I do have YouTube Premium subscription so
| I don't need to watch ads -- makes a big difference.
| arsome wrote:
| I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to be doing
| productive things 24x7. You're going to want a break at
| some point.
| Dah00n wrote:
| _"The time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time"_
|
| - John Lennon
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have learned something valuable from reading something on
| Reddit or watching a how to video or explanation video on
| youtube.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| I could also just drink Huel and save an hour a day not
| eating but I don't because I like eating.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| How do you feel after 20 minutes on HN?
|
| Also, what subreddits/communmities are you in on Reddit that
| make you hate the world after 20 minutes? Are you on
| /r/popular or /r/all, or filtered down to your niche
| interests?
| Dah00n wrote:
| HN is mostly like a good day on Facebook but once in awhile
| it transcends every other social media. IMO it is going
| downhill fast though and the really good discussions are
| getting drowned out by China hate, nationalism, brand
| loyalty, etc. more often than not. All in all 30 minutes of
| Tiktok is likely to make me smile a lot more than HN but
| then there's not any real discussions so hard to compare
| the two.
|
| All of Reddit makes me hate the world. No sub doesn't. If
| it does just visit it one or two times more and bingo.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I've found the following to be free of negativity:
| r/bread r/oatmeal r/RICE r/nutrition r/velo r/Zwift
| moonchrome wrote:
| HN is still relatively balanced, but I see a lot more
| reddit style comments. Usually 20 min on HN I find nothing
| really new, tons of polarizing topics, discussions are
| decent but ultimately pointless, I really feel like I need
| to take a break.
|
| Even niche reddit communities end up being full of newbies
| and self promotion spam. There are exceptions (/r/steroids
| comes to mind back when I was into that) but
| programming/tech subreddits are just noise.
| rchaud wrote:
| HN is a slow-cooker, where TT is a microwave.
|
| I spend time on HN if a post I read also results in a
| meaningful conversation among the commenters. Usually I
| will try to add a comment as well, so there can be a bit of
| back and forth. It's not all one-way the way it is on TT.
|
| Of course it's not always that way. I know to steer clear
| of posts related to H1B visas, because the exact same
| conversation plays out each time.
| drewg123 wrote:
| For YT, try a client like NewPipe or SmartTubeNext that can
| be configured with adbock & sponsor block, and which is less
| "in your face" about suggesting/autoplaying rabbit-hole
| content.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| How do they pull of this off? I'm assuming Google would
| defend aggressively against these type of clients.
| ghawr wrote:
| Con. The algorithm seems to dish out similarly structured
| videos for all users. For example, it generally includes music
| that is extremely annoying. (That "No no no" song that is on
| every other video). At the same time, I also recognize how
| addictive the app is and because of it I would never download
| it myself.
| psyc wrote:
| This is why I stopped looking at TikTok altogether. "Trends"
| just seem to be too enormous a use case for creators, to be
| avoided. I never wanted to know who Megan Thee Stallion or
| $NOT are, but here we are.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > That "No no no" song that is on every other video
|
| Oh, every generation of internet users has made repetitive
| memes like this; we just have more bandwidth now.
| Kiro wrote:
| I get "No no no" videos but when I mentioned them to my
| friend who is using TikTok a lot she had never heard of them.
| I presumed that was too big of a trend not to leak into
| everyone's For You feed but I was wrong.
| thisisnico wrote:
| Honestly, from a social media perspective, TikTok feels like
| the least toxic environment. Nobody is showing off their new
| homes, cars, kids, spending. It feels like a significantly
| reduced pressure to produce. Many of my friends are just
| consumers of content. Most of the content I'm seeing are memes
| and are funny. Even the advertising is more light hearted.
| Zandikar wrote:
| >TikTok feels like the least toxic environment.
|
| That's because It's the least commercialized of the social
| platforms and dominated by youth (for now). AKA we're at the
| end of it's honeymoon hip-new-platform phase. The company
| cannot maintain meteoric user-growth forever as there's only
| so many people in the world, and their primary target
| demographic that is responsible for much of their growth is
| already nearing saturation (the youth).
|
| As such, they're at an inflection point in their user growth
| and their operating costs have never been higher. Billions in
| revenue will only tempt investors for so long when they're
| still netting a loss in the billions a year and their growth
| curve is starting to relax. This will see the implementation
| of more dark patterns to monetize the revenue per user while
| simultaneously the users on the platform will search for any
| and every possible advantage to leverage their following for
| clout and profit (especially as the userbase ages into
| adulthood and has bills to pay) and ultimately we'll see the
| same poisoning of the well that we've seen with every other
| social media platform to date. Question is just how bad it
| will get.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I wonder if this is because TikTok targets a younger
| demographic that is digital native and practices better
| internet hygiene.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >younger demographic that is digital native and practices
| better internet hygiene
|
| Unfortunately 13-25 year olds are less tech sawy than a
| decade ago because they were raised on locked down
| platforms like iOS and Android.
| gruez wrote:
| >TikTok targets a younger demographic that is digital
| native and practices better internet hygiene.
|
| Or maybe they're a younger demographic that doesn't have
| "new homes, cars, kids, spending"?
|
| Also, the bit about "practices better internet hygiene"
| because they're "digital native" is kind of funny. Prior to
| the mid 2000s the standard advice was not to put public
| info about yourself online. "internet hygiene" was the
| norm, even when most people weren't "digital natives".
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Beware TikTok is also available for download as APK on Android
| TV, at the end now TV are smarts but the same outcome follows
| get stuck watching TV.
| code_duck wrote:
| Certain types of people have been trying to turn the internet
| into television since at least 1997. They're getting closer.
| MSEmployed wrote:
| There is a time and place for everything. Connecting with all
| your friends and relatives (over Facebook) was a novelty but is
| cooling down. We are rather going back to the "celebrities
| model", admiring influencers on better suited platforms for
| asynchronous (fan>star, rather than friend<>friend)
| interactions: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder what the most downloaded app would be if free
| apps simply didn't exist. Let's put $1 as the minimum. Would
| TikTok still be #1?
|
| Apparently Minecraft is the #1 downloaded paid app. Would TikTok
| beat Minecraft? It's kind of fascinating. TikTok's ability to
| hook you in is truly amazing.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The barrier is what you pay for the phone, either with Apple's
| margins (both in the up-front cost of the phone and via the 30%
| paid via in-app purchases) or, on Android, Google's ability to
| target ads at you. If consumers didn't have to pay these
| (arguably hidden) costs, and had to pay $1 minimum per app,
| then yes, it wouldn't exist or be nearly as popular.
| hkmurakami wrote:
| Was WhatsApp $1 to download back in the day, or did users pay
| after download via some kind of subscription?
| eruleman wrote:
| WhatsApp used to cost $1 to download when it was just
| starting out -- this was before Apple added subscriptions to
| iOS apps.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| It didn't cost a dollar a lot of the time on iOS. Very few
| people ever paid for Whatsapp.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Most people on the planet don't use ios, and in 2016 when
| whatsapp had, IIRC about 900 million users was about when
| they cancelled it. It's fair to assume a lot of people
| paid that dollar.
| [deleted]
| lol1lol wrote:
| ayooo ayooo ok
| yarsanich wrote:
| The only issue I see that it can be quite addictive without
| proper moderation.
|
| From tech perspective I think that it brings something new to
| social media world and that creates some movement in industry.
| Look at YouTube "Shorts".
| tom7 wrote:
| Isn't facebook shit app preinstalled on all android phones now
| and hard to remove?
| hiddencache wrote:
| Time suckage... and suddenly, it's 3am...
| root-z wrote:
| been there done that. deleted tiktok from my phone and
| reinstalled multiple times too
| soheil wrote:
| There is a lot of copyrighted music in TikTok clips. I wonder
| what percentage of their growth is because of that. Do they get
| away with it because they're a Chinese company or is it because
| the music industry hasn't wisen up to it yet?
| dizzystar wrote:
| I find Facebook fascinating. I started using it later than most,
| maybe 2 years ago. What stopped me from using it was, everyone I
| knew that was on it never said anything positive about it. They
| got upset over deleting "their friends" who they never met. They
| talked about how annoying the cat videos were. In sum, I sensed
| they received nothing positive from it. I could never understand
| how people could get so attached to something they downright
| hate.
|
| Instagram became a uh... a bunch of advertisers advertising to
| each other. I think 9 out of 10 photos are promotional material.
| Nothing personal, nothing funny, nothing enlightening. Most all
| of my friends stopped using it about 1 year ago. I won't get into
| reasons why, but I think you can add 2 and 2 together.
|
| TikTok just feels more genuine. If someone is dancing, what are
| they trying to sell? Nothing at all. It's amazing how much talent
| is on that app. It's only a matter of time before the marketers
| figure it out and destroy that app too.
| lbarrow wrote:
| Remember, though, social media giants are monopolists and it's
| impossible to compete against them.
| megaman821 wrote:
| These social media companies are so young, and most of them had
| to topple the previously largest company in their space to
| obtain their position now. I think with a little time that the
| social media giants will start bleeding market share, any
| monopoly regulation will be wildly out of touch by the time it
| makes it through the courts.
| sosborn wrote:
| Every social media entity took its position from an entrenched
| giant.
| cthor wrote:
| The main antitrust complaint against social media giants is
| that competitors are either acquired or bullied out of the
| market.
|
| The only reason this hasn't happened with TikTok is it's based
| in China.
| bitlax wrote:
| You just have to be the Chinese government?
| bun_at_work wrote:
| This isn't really small startups competing, though. It's a
| state sponsored/backed entity with more goals than just
| disrupting the market.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Unless you say that Chinese government is forcing appstores
| to fake numbers, then it's not relevant. Products with great
| market fit can get infinite amount of money from VC and other
| investors.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| You must surely see the parallels between the US Government
| agencies' interest on even small email providers, the US
| Government threatening to prohibit TikTok on the grounds of
| doing the same as several near-monopolies based on US soil do
| all over the world but in TikTok's case being Chinese, and
| what you're saying?
|
| That the US Govt can just reap without sowing as the Chinese
| Govt does through state-run banks is just a convenience.
| paxys wrote:
| How is TikTok state sponsored?
| reggieband wrote:
| I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive
| social media. I used to think my dopamine receptors were burned
| out by the constant barrage of memes I received from reddit,
| Facebook and Twitter but TikTok proves they can refine that
| product to make it even more potent.
|
| When I visit reddit now it feels behind in the same way Facebook
| used to feel behind. Facebook's video feature (which they shove
| into my feed as the third or fourth card during scrolling) is 90%
| stuff stolen from and that I already saw a few days ago on
| TikTok. But absent their algorithm it isn't nearly as effective.
|
| I often have to remind myself how good TikTok's algorithm is.
| After using it for just a couple of days I can tell it knows more
| about me than I am comfortable with, even though I just scroll
| the FYP (For You Page) without logging into an account. The
| unbelievably narrow category of content it serves me clearly
| panders to my personality in a way that almost lets me believe I
| have a majority opinion. It creates a nearly perfectly personally
| tailored media bubble.
|
| A lot of people from my generation (Gen X) and even from the
| older Millennial's don't use it, thinking it is just for the
| kids. That is probably for the best. If you are susceptible to
| media addiction I suggest never downloading it. TikTok: Not Even
| Once.
| smoldesu wrote:
| >I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive
| social media.
|
| >If you are susceptible to media addiction I suggest never
| downloading it.
|
| These are the two big takeaways I've had from using the app for
| a day. Everything about it is designed to be a sinkhole, like a
| modern casino where they're gambling with your attention. I
| know a lot of people who use Facebook/Instagram/TikTok
| compulsively, and it ruins them to a degree. I think (or hope,
| at least) the future is headed towards more personal communique
| (a-la Discord, Slack, Matrix, etc.)
| linspace wrote:
| I don't think the algorithm is that good, it's simply that the
| content is better.
|
| I used TikTok for a couple of weeks and the product is very
| good. I uninstalled it not because I didn't like it but because
| I think it's another step in the wrong direction, for society
| and for me personally.
| cruano wrote:
| > I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive
| social media.
|
| I'd compare it more to something like coffee, somehow every
| time I leave TikTok I'm happier than I was before. This did not
| happen with Facebook, Instagram, etc.
| baby wrote:
| I'm not sure why people keep comparing these. I go on
| facebook for friends, I go on twitter for work, I go on
| instagram for showing off, and I go on tiktok to consume
| cocain directly to my brain
| mrtksn wrote:
| I first discovered the app when it was Musically but I was
| scared away by peer pressure, even then had a bad reputation.
| Then I noticed that the icon changed(or read an article about
| it becoming something else, not sure), gave it another shot
| secretly. I still don't have friends who use TikTok, at least
| that's what they say but they laugh to videos stolen from
| TikTok all day. They are late of course.
|
| According to iPhone's screen time I use TikTok 29 minutes a day
| on average. For contrast, it says 2 hours 15 minutes for
| Twitter.[0]
|
| I need to cut Twitter down, I mostly doomscroll on Twitter
| whenever I get bored. TikTok is great before sleep, I don't get
| the urge to check it all the time, I don't feel FOMO.
|
| [0]: Here is my usage data: https://ibb.co/Ytb6Hbt
| rvz wrote:
| Let the children be free to download this app and let them play
| in it. They are going to realise soon how much of an addictive
| nightmare this app is and it just takes a slip up or a scandal
| from ByteDance to anger the majority users on the platform.
|
| The news about it being the most downloaded app is great news
| if you are an investor in ByteDance; I don't know what you get
| out of it if you're a mere user. As always you're basically the
| product (again), providing them with shareholder value by being
| addicted and posting continuously to other addicted users.
| Making your data and their algorithm more valuable.
|
| Since we're comparing these platforms to being like drugs, and
| given you are saying that TikTok is proven to be even more
| potent, the description of such a drug sounds more like
| heroine, than crack. Addictive and dangerous. That isn't going
| to end well.
| npteljes wrote:
| >They are going to realise soon how much of an addictive
| nightmare this app is and it just takes a slip up or a
| scandal from ByteDance to anger the majority users on the
| platform.
|
| Have you seen this previously anywhere? Sounds like a pipe
| dream to me. Did, for example, Facebook's scandals kill
| Facebook? The spywares that Lenovo bundled even make a dent
| in Lenovo's brand? Reddit's constant push of dark pattern
| shrink their userbase?
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| TikTok is probably the best social media app, the only problem is
| the terrible search function. It doesn't have the sorting and
| filters that youtube does, fixing this one thing would make it so
| much more useful to me...
| thomasahle wrote:
| What makes it good other than being addictive? If social media
| is defined by "sharing ideas with other people" is TikTok even
| social media? Or is it more like Netflix?
| reidjs wrote:
| Tiktoks video editor is by far the best phone based video
| editor I've ever used.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| It's not meant to be useful, it's meant to be engaging.
| jjice wrote:
| Lots of positivity in this thread, and I don't think that's
| entirely a bad thing, but I think TikTok is the worst of the
| social media platforms in terms of addictiveness, based on my
| peers.
|
| As a recent grad, so many of my friends are heavily invested in
| TikTok and have been since quarantine began, some of them for a
| bit before. The amount of time they spend there is absurd.
| Consuming 30 second content for three hours can't be good for
| concentration, right? It helps add to the 'always online' mindset
| that has grown more popular with social media and smart phones.
|
| Instead of going for a walk, some of my friends would opt to lie
| in bed and watch TikToks, creating empty, basically non-existent
| connections with people across the world. Connections with people
| across the world are awesome, and one of the best things about
| the internet, but TikTok connections are basically UDP.
|
| Most TikTok content I've been shown is shallow, the same way so
| much social media content is shallow. My having to get to the
| point immediately, we leave out key details and we want to catch
| your attention before you scroll away. Of course there is the
| other end of the spectrum with YouTube where a 2 minute tutorial
| takes 15 minutes.
|
| I try not to use much social media, and honestly, I probably
| should limit my time on HN more as well. Doom scrolling is a real
| thing, and TikTok is not immune to that. I've seen plenty of
| dread inducing content that comes from TikTok as well.
|
| TikTok keeps you logged on, as it's supposed it. I just don't
| think that's a good thing. If you can control and limit your
| usage to something that's healthy for you, then I don't think
| there's a problem. For me though, that healthy limit is 0,
| because I know myself and I have little self control with social
| media in the past.
| twoquestions wrote:
| > As a recent grad, so many of my friends are heavily invested
| in TikTok and have been since quarantine began, some of them
| for a bit before. The amount of time they spend there is
| absurd. Consuming 30 second content for three hours can't be
| good for concentration, right? It helps add to the 'always
| online' mindset that has grown more popular with social media
| and smart phones.
|
| How do they keep on it for 3 hours?! I've doomscrolled FB quite
| a bit, but I find even the less doomy stuff on TikTok much more
| exhausting to watch, like one of those Japanese game shows or
| shouty YouTube video game meme channels. I can maybe do 10
| minutes at most until I need to put the phone down.
|
| Maybe I'm just getting old.
| rvz wrote:
| Well everything in this HN thread about TikTok is music to the
| ears of the investors who are almost certainly looking for a
| massive exit when ByteDance eventually IPOs.
|
| As for TikTok itself, all I see is another social network that
| is no different to Facebook or YouTube that tracks every single
| action, video and comment you make and watch which that feeds
| to the 'algorithm' to make you more even more addicted as
| possible. On top of that, Bytedance gets to control what is
| seen or unseen on the platform depending on what their
| guidelines are which can benefit some users over others. I do
| not know what is so positive about that.
|
| So given that TikTok has screwed up on their users in the past,
| the question is how long until they do it again?, but on the
| seriousness of a massive scandal; just like how other social
| networks have done already.
| [deleted]
| Dah00n wrote:
| From what I've seen Tiktok is no worse than Instagram, Facebook
| or Snapchat. If anything there's less toxicity which in itself
| makes Tiktok better than the rest.
|
| With that said I don't use social media much (like maybe an
| hour a week? I have neither Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or
| Snapchat accounts) and if I had to pick only one it would be
| Tiktok (even though I don't use it now) except if there were a
| curated HN page with all the toxicity filtered out (that would
| be awesome).
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I'm really curious if China will go after bytedance next in its
| crackdown.
|
| My guess would be no. Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, Meituan all are
| either local champions that have no competitive advantage
| overseas - and thus does not help China's growth. But TikTok
| actually represents that China might have a competitive advantage
| in deep learning algos that takes massive amount of data -
| therefore it would be spare from crackdowns.
|
| FB, Google, AWS, and Azue all have a competitive advantage that
| China don't - English.
| adventured wrote:
| > FB, Google, AWS, and Azue all have a competitive advantage
| that China don't - English.
|
| While true, that's the lesser of the competitive advantages.
| China's companies are locked in a highly restrictive CCP
| control box, which they're not allowed out of. That box will
| shrink further, suffocating the companies as it goes. It
| heavily limits how they can compete, what they can do, how fast
| they can move, and those restrictions will keep getting worse.
| This isn't even the middle part of the craziness that we'll see
| out of the dictatorship in China. Dictatorships always get
| ferociously psychotic as they age, hyper paranoid, increasingly
| detached from reality (nobody dares to tell them the truth,
| fear of reprisal increases drastically, so the ability to
| govern gets worse with time). The purges will get worse, the
| controls will get worse. It'll make it far more difficult for
| China's big tech companies to operate, they'll be increasingly
| hamstrung.
|
| The CCP probably won't need to directly hit ByteDance at this
| point. They've already restrained the company, it got the
| message as everybody else has. ByteDance will reaffirm that it
| understands its place in the scheme of things and comply with
| Beijing's understood wishes. ByteDance was planning an IPO and
| cancelled it at the behest of Beijing.
|
| The fake cover reason was data security. The real reason is
| that Xi and the CCP want China's tech giants pulled back home
| and away from foreign listings (foreign ownership, foreign
| influence). China ideally wants those listings to be domestic-
| only in the future.
|
| Had ByteDance pressed forward with the IPO, they would have
| been mauled with a giant fine and investigated (turned over) as
| Didi was.
|
| July 12, Wall Street Journal -
|
| "ByteDance Shelved IPO Intentions After Chinese Regulators
| Warned About Data Security"
|
| "The Beijing-based social-media giant, last valued at $180
| billion in a funding round in December, had been weighing an
| initial public offering of all or some of its businesses in the
| U.S. or Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the
| company's plans.
|
| But the company's founder, Zhang Yiming, decided it would be
| wiser to put the plans on ice in late March, after meetings
| with cyberspace and securities regulators in which they asked
| the company to focus on addressing data-security risks and
| other issues, the people familiar with the matter said."
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/bytedance-shelvedipo-intentions...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > While true, that's the lesser of the competitive
| advantages. China's companies are locked in a highly
| restrictive CCP control box, which they're not allowed out
| of. That box will shrink further, suffocating the companies
| as it goes. It heavily limits how they can compete, what they
| can do, how fast they can move, and those restrictions will
| keep getting worse....The purges will get worse, the controls
| will get worse. It'll make it far more difficult for China's
| big tech companies to operate, they'll be increasingly
| hamstrung.
|
| Is that insight or reassuring complacency?
|
| I don't think China will be a replay of the Soviet Union.
| It's clear that the CCP wants remind people it's top dog, but
| it's not clear that will make those companies uncompetitive
| failures in the world market.
|
| > The fake cover reason was data security. The real reason is
| that Xi and the CCP want China's tech giants pulled back home
| and away from foreign listings (foreign ownership, foreign
| influence). China ideally wants those listings to be
| domestic-only in the future.
|
| How is this bad for the PRC? If anything, embrace of foreign
| ownership and foreign influence has weakened Western
| economies.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I think this is a bear case on China - essentially you're
| saying that authoritarian government is unstable by nature,
| democracy is the end of history, etc.
|
| I'm a bit less certain. Past is no indication of future, but
| China has been the most successful authoritarian country to
| date. Enough for me to start questioning whether democracy is
| truly the only way.
|
| For example, I look at their recent crack down rather
| enviously - to pivot from consumer internet which they
| realized they have no competitive advantage over into the
| "German model" where industrialization is key, is a much
| better approach considering their industrial base and current
| political climate. In the US, things are moving much slower.
|
| So IDK - I'm not sure if I buy the "it'll get worse" effect.
| Besides, you could be right, just off by 500 years. In the
| longrun - we're all dead
| bnt wrote:
| Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, all have lots of AI and ML/DS
| experience
| yuy910616 wrote:
| None have products that "you can only get it here". They have
| experience but no product that is competitive, if not
| protected by government action
| lalos wrote:
| Few global powers have their home made social networks spread
| in other countries, let alone in another global power. There's
| a reason why Russia and China don't let American social
| networks operate in their countries. They'll protect TikTok,
| it's valuable or will be.
| kokekolo wrote:
| Russia does allow American social networks. Facebook and
| Twitter are alive and kicking in Russia.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The march away from language continues. Facial expressions may be
| a rich form of communication but the kinds of ideas you can
| communicate with them are severely restricted. Literacy was hard
| won and now it seems like we're letting it go. Then again, maybe
| I'm just too old to understand.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Literacy will always have its place. Short, meme centered,
| entertainment isn't one of them I suppose.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| Actions, in this case what someone uses their time on and
| fills their mind with, aren't in a place, they're _in place
| of_ the other actions one could have taken. And hey, one
| could say literacy also "had its place" when the church
| ruled over the illiterate in medieval times, so that itself
| isn't much of a consolation.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Most popular online things exist because the concept of
| "opportunity cost" (in time, attention, money, whatever) is
| no longer taught.
|
| Apparently it's quite profitable to have endless eyeballs
| refreshing ads.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm just getting tired of seeing SHOCKED faces everywhere.
| Clearly, exaggerated faces lead to video views but I'm growing
| so averse to seeing it.
| nostromo wrote:
| That's YouTube, not TikTok. You don't even click on videos on
| TikTok.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Yeah, I'm just saying in-general. You see plenty of
| exaggerated expressions in tiktok videos as well.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| That's primarily a YouTube thing from what I've seen. And
| more recently I've seen it on Google News article thumbnails.
| WesleyHale wrote:
| I don't use much social media, but Snapchats discovery
| cards are over run with creators using that face. It's
| excessively abundant in the channels there.
|
| It feels like a forced attempt at viral marketing. "Maybe
| if we act shocked, they'll be shocked too!"
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My best guess is, that as humans our brains are
| especially sensitive to the facial expressions of other
| people. And, a shocked expression is an incredibly
| important signal. Looking at someone wide-eyed with an
| open mouth in front of you implies there is something you
| _really_ need to pay attention to.
|
| Just watch how babies react when you make the same face.
|
| I suspect social media just hijacked and metastasized the
| response.
| tux3 wrote:
| Is sculpting, or painting, a step in the march away from
| language, too? Is dancing?
|
| What about videos of people dancing is going to hurt literacy.
| People will consume Apps instead of TV, neither are literature,
| but one you can participate in.
|
| You may be too old to let yourself like new things. Where's the
| childlike wonder?
|
| I don't use The Tik toks either, but let me not lose mine.
| ciconia wrote:
| Sculpting, painting, dancing etc is creation. Watching other
| people do it is not.
| 310260 wrote:
| People go to museums to look at art. That's solely
| consumption that does not require being literate.
| zmk5 wrote:
| There is a difference between a museum, which curates
| culturally significant art from places around the world
| and at home, to TikTok, a social media app that is for
| making money.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| The 'culturally significant art' you're talking about was
| created for money. It's not any different than TikTok,
| it's just from long ago. TikTok is refined Vine and some
| of those Vines were worth preserving and spawned careers
| like ProZD.
| zmk5 wrote:
| Culturally significant art was created for money in a
| different way than a global brand like TikTok creates
| content for money habibi. They are not equivalent no
| matter how hard you try to fit your square block in the
| circular hole.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| It's made by individuals, not TikTok? I'm not really sure
| if you know what TikTok is after this comment.
|
| Just to clarify, TikTok does not do ad revenue sharing.
| They have a creator fund, but TikTok creators really make
| money via brand deals, merch sales and direct donations
| from fans.
| zmk5 wrote:
| TikTok is a social media platform that makes money from
| other people creating content for others to consume.
| Individuals get money for either sponsoring a product or
| getting many views. How is this the same as someone
| paying for a clay pot in Ancient Egypt that we admire at
| today in a museum? The act of getting money is not devoid
| of the context of which it was acquired.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| In one case, people are viewing something created
| specifically for people's entertainment. In the other
| case, it's detritus or grave goods we're viewing.
| zmk5 wrote:
| What a shockingly simplistic view of art you have. It
| pains me to know that the cultural artifacts of my people
| will be viewed by you in the same vein as a 30 second
| TikTok video.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| Are you serious? How do you think the clay pot ended up
| being recovered by an archeologist? There's pretty much
| two ways...
|
| You should look up some TikTok creators from Egypt, there
| is plenty of great stuff out there.
|
| The basic premise of your argument as I understand it is
| that art is something you see in museums or art is
| something that has been gated by age or by scholars or by
| "cultural significance". This is not how art works, some
| great works were discovered long after the artist had
| died. TikTok creators create art, some of it good, some
| of it bad, but it's art all the same.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Going through a museum, and _actively_ studying
| individual art deeply is a very different activity
| mentally, and much more stimulating, than scrolling
| through a feed passively 15 second clip after clip.
|
| It does actually take a sort of literacy to understand
| and appreciate art. Go talk to anyone about art who has
| spent a lot of time studying it and then talk to someone
| who just walks through the museum to take instagram
| pictures and you get very different answers about what
| they see.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >much more stimulating
|
| To you, yes. Not everyone is you though.
|
| >It does actually take a sort of literacy to understand
| and appreciate art.
|
| No it doesn't. It might add something (or nothing at all
| or detract from it) but if it is a hard requirement then
| it isn't art.
|
| > Go talk to anyone about art who has spent a lot of time
| studying it and then talk to someone who just walks
| through the museum to take instagram pictures and you get
| very different answers about what they see.
|
| Exactly, and both are equally correct in their view on
| the art pieces. I'm sorry but your post sound like one of
| those snob magazines that try to make art only something
| for the rich and well educated. It is neither. If
| anything money detracts from art and studying something
| too much can too. A young child can appreciate art by
| Leonardo da Vinci or Mr. Brainwash just as well as an art
| professor. They just appreciate it in different, equally
| correct, ways.
| goodlifeodyssey wrote:
| It seems like passive consumption, be it of books or
| tiktok, is unlikely to improve someone very much. You may
| learn some new facts but I doubt you'll be able to revise
| any of your deep assumptions about the world.
|
| That being said, it's much more natural to actively read
| than to actively watch TikTok. Thus, in practice, reading
| is often a better activity than watching TikTok. The
| first chapter or Robert Adler's "How to Read a Book"
| talks about active reading in more detail; he has a few
| more arguments too.
|
| Side note: unless you are a relativist and think
| everyone's view about art is equally correct no matter
| what, the person who studies art is probably "more
| correct" than the Instagramer; a lot of art requires
| cultural context (e.g, familiarity with the Bible and
| Ovid) to understand. If you are a relativist, then why
| does nearly everyone agree some art belongs in a museum
| and a lot of art is garbage that nobody cares about?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| No they don't. It's a popular view nowadays because
| people want to have egalitarian views on everything but
| someone who has played Bach for 20 years has a deeper
| understanding of (his) music than someone who listened
| for ten minutes and can pick up on things that someone
| else cannot.
|
| E.F. Schumacher coined the term 'adaequatio' for this.
|
| _" What enables man to know anything at all about the
| world around him? ... Nothing can be known without there
| being an appropriate "instrument" in the makeup of the
| knower. This is the Great Truth of "adaequatio"
| (adequateness), which defines knowledge as adaequatio rei
| et intellectus -- the understanding of the knower must be
| adequate to the thing to be known.[...]
|
| Beethoven's musical abilities, even in deafness, were
| incomparably greater than mine, and the difference did
| not lie in the sense of hearing; it lay in the mind. Some
| people are incapable of grasping and appreciating a given
| piece of music, not because they are deaf but because of
| a lack of adaequatio in the mind. The music is grasped by
| intellectual powers which some people possess to such a
| degree that they can grasp, and retain in their memory,
| an entire symphony on one hearing or one reading of the
| score; while others are so weakly endowed that they
| cannot get it at all, no matter how often and how
| attentively they listen to it. For the former, the
| symphony is as real as it was for the composer; for the
| latter, there is no symphony: there is nothing but a
| succession of more or less agreeable but altogether
| meaningless noises. The former's mind is adequate to the
| symphony; the latter's mind is inadequate, and thus
| incapable of recognizing the existence of the
| symphony.[...]
|
| For every one of us only those facts and phenomena
| "exist" for which we posses adaequatio, and as we are not
| entitled to assume that we are necessarily adequate to
| everything, at all times, and in whatever condition we
| may find ourselves, so we are not entitled to insist that
| something inaccessible to us has no existence at all and
| is nothing but a phantom of other people's
| imaginations."_
|
| It's absolutely childish to even for a minute assume that
| my perception and understanding of chess is "equally
| correct" as Magnus Carlsen's. He sees complexity and
| depth in the game that I cannot, because I do not have
| the capacity for it, learned or otherwise. And the
| consequences of not recognizing this, are equally dire,
| again Schumacher:
|
| _" When the level of the knower is not adequate to the
| level (or grade of significance) of the object of
| knowledge, the result is not factual error but something
| much more serious: an inadequate and impoverished view of
| reality."_
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| Reading this, I just want to see the "scholarly approach"
| to TikTok. That sounds like some nice performance art.
|
| Alternatively, this is the kind of thing guys like Banksy
| and Warhol were doing with their art. It's a pretty
| narrow minded view of art to not include some of the
| stuff going on on TikTok.
| filoleg wrote:
| Well, in the same way, producing TikTok content is
| creation, but watching TikTok content of others isn't (just
| like looking at other people dancing isn't creation
| either).
|
| What's your point with this?
| burnished wrote:
| So, what do you think happens to those creations? They just
| go right into the dumpster, having fulfilled the moral
| obligation of their creators to constantly be producing
| things?
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > Watching other people do it is not.
|
| Are you equally as dismissive of reading books other people
| wrote?
|
| The heart of TikTok is video creation and remix. That's why
| memes spread so quickly there.
| Retric wrote:
| My niece and nephew both learned to read and write at very
| young ages due to computer games. Kids being at a 3rd grade
| reading level at 5 years old suggests literacy has if anything
| become more important.
| reidjs wrote:
| I disagree entirely. There's still plenty of stuff to read
| online and plenty of ways to share writing. Short creative
| clips are just another form of expression.
| svachalek wrote:
| If Facebook was the end game for language then 8-O :-) ;-D
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| In a way, language has always been the comprise.
|
| We only came up with words and writing to cover the gaps with
| facial expressions and motions.
|
| Truly, from the dawn of writing we've been dealing with the
| faults of expressing ourselves via words. The issues have been
| worth it however, because communicating complicated ideas
| across time and space was impossible otherwise.
|
| Now, video has progressed to the point where it is trivial to
| use as a storage medium of ideas. We are still in the very
| early days of "moving pictures," and with any technology, the
| first iterations often look like toys. In the far future, we
| may look back at this very moment as the start of a surge of
| _better_ communication across all boundaries; time, space,
| country of origin, species perhaps?
|
| This is all baseless speculation of course, but it's fun to
| speculate.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| these are the drills of the 21st century oil fields. they can
| stimulate you instantly with personalized content feeds, with
| no thought or effort required from you. inevitably you'll blow
| a geyser of ego. like oil wells people will be drained from the
| inside and uninhabitable on the out. don't mind the placid
| smiles illuminated by the glow of phone displays when your eyes
| venture forth from your own pixelscape, it's another oil rig.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| "literacy" itself is not some transhistorical, transcultural
| "achievement" that is now being lost. we do not live in a civ
| game, and there is no rubric to compare ourselves against.
| chansiky wrote:
| I've never used tiktok, but I do have one question. Does the fact
| that its in video make it harder for influencers to fake their
| lives? Or is superficiality still highly prevalent?
| testmasterflex wrote:
| Images are easier to manipulate and show less context so it's
| definitely less shallow in that sense. TikTok also has a more
| personal and comedic culture in my experience.
| tintt wrote:
| Well, Facebook held the crown for way too long, it was bound to
| happen, but honestly I don't see TikTok as a Facebook killer. It
| feels too niche to be popular in the long run.
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