‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy

Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by adaisadais on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @07:50PM (#22754791)

Recently finished “Civilization: The West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson. Ferguson argues that competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and western-Protestant work ethic allowed the West to make “advancements” while others “stagnated”. (1)

In the section on consumerism he talks about how the USSR in many ways was equal or stronger than US or other western countries but couldn’t seem to make a single decent pair of blue jeans.

The Chinese government has made some incredible strides and has taken note of the many things that the west did right and the west did wrong. I believe TikTok is one of the best ways China has been able to study western culture. It won’t be long before it will be the East and the rest. And the west gave most of it away for free.

(1) https://archive.org/details/civilizationwest00ferg

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by altoidaltoid on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @07:56PM (#22754838)

Similar arguments made by Paul Kennedy in his seminal work Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great...

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by ahelwer on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @07:54PM (#22754831)

Any book purporting to explain why the west was so successful without including the practices of colonialism is just utterly without merit, sorry. Enormous transfer of wealth and resources from the rest of the world are very handy.

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by fastball on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @08:10PM (#22754934)

Somewhat of a chicken-and-egg problem. If the West was successful due to colonization, how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place, and not the colonized?

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by nemothekid on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @08:30PM (#22755060)

>how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place

The Industrial Revolution? Colonization has existed hand-in-hand with empires, the West has been colonized by Rome, Britain, France, in a massive tug-o-war. The Industrial Revolution took that fight global. There's a clear "egg" here.

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by pjc50 on Thursday April 02, 2020 @05:22AM (#22757389)

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" has a go at explaining this.

The role of germs should not be underestimated; the pandemics the colonizers brought and spread (in some cases deliberately) killed far more than the guns. Thus offering the illusion that there was empty space for the taking.

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by fastball on Thursday April 02, 2020 @05:27AM (#22757411)

But the reason that Europe had germs is because Europe had dense cities for far longer than the places they were colonizing.

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by Uhuhreally on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @11:20PM (#22755941)

easy. Imagine twin brothers each with identical wealth and then one of them steals the other one's money. Now one has twice the wealth of the other.

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Re:‘Content network effect’ makes TikTok tough to copy by fastball on Thursday April 02, 2020 @05:28AM (#22757420)

If my brother stole from me, I'd steal it back. If that failed, I could always kill him. Why couldn't the colonized do the same?

The Europeans succeeded in their colonization efforts because they were more technologically advanced than anyone they were colonizing. It is not a case of twin brothers. It is the case of an older brother stealing from his baby brother.

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