I found it funny that the author of this post is trying to defend liberal values like the free flow of information on the internet by...making Apple and Google remove Tiktok from people's phones. He's correct that the primary political risk of Tiktok is the recommendation algorithm being manipulated. However, American tech companies manipulate their recommendation algorithms for political reasons (in the loose sense of the word political) all the time and I'm sure not everyone in the world likes that either.
This would have been a good chance to really defend free flow of information on the internet, open and swappable recommendation algorithms, personal data ownership, and so on, but the conclusion is basically "it's bad because a China-affiliated company does it". Generally, everything that Tiktok does that is wrong is also wrong when Facebook does it. The reality is that Tiktok is (for now) a superior product in many ways to anything from American tech companies. Why is this?
I replied to the parent comment by accident, but:
That's the kind of content that survives the crucibles of Chinese censorship, "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics (especially politics) is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. It's why TikTok's content policy is designed to protect the status quo, often misinterpreted as being pro-Beijing when it's broadly pro-establishment. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. That said, I guess it's possible for TikTok to be weaponized to sow division, but why would they need to when the whole of western media sphere is doing so already.
IMO the style has it's place, whole of China has no choice but to live under it, but in the west, a plurality of content management philosophies calibrated for different audiences is good. There's lessons in managing toxicity to learn from TikTok even if it gets banned.
This is what the posted article is about. I cannot write a rebuttal to this that is better than what Ben Thompson wrote, and I won't. The section "A Reluctant Prescription" section is directly about this.
I can rebut this, however:
"However, American tech companies manipulate their recommendation algorithms for political reasons (in the loose sense of the word political) all the time and I'm sure not everyone in the world likes that either."
They don't do it in China.
In reality we don't regulate them nearly as much as we can, so the end result is that FB and Tiktok both invade your privacy.
I prefer the idea of a US based social media company to a Chinese one. But only slightly. I would much rather the company be based somewhere with genuine intent to create consumer safety and privacy focused laws.
It’s pretty trivial to do that, and nobody would be the wiser.
Incentive for TikTok is to keep the CCP happy.
Given the geopolitical aims and ambitions of the latter, you can see why they aren't comparable.
The same can't be said of the Chinese Government. That seems like a pretty distinct reason to be more OK with FB/Insta/Snap than TikTok.
All Chinese Internet companies are compelled by the country’s National Intelligence Law to turn over any and all data that the government demands, and that power is not limited by China’s borders. Moreover, this requisition of data is not subject to warrants or courts, as is the case with U.S. government requests for data from Facebook or any other entity;
Their privacy policy notes data may be shared as well:
while TikTok claims that it is independent from ByteDance and stores data in the U.S. and Singapore, its privacy policy is clear:
"We may share your information with a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group."
>Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees.
This was an analysis on TikTok vs YouTube and focuses on how TikTok leverages mimcry to overcome the initial burden of ideation and yields significant content creation for its platform.
"On Youtube, 79% of views accrue to only 10% of its creators. While on TikTok 55% of viewers also create videos. " https://4thquadrant.io/freearticles/business-models/tiktok-a...
I haven't used Tiktok, but from what I understand you can only post videos taken using the phone's camera and they can only be edited using whatever filters are available within the app, effectively limiting how manipulated or manufactured the content can be. Sort of like a Snapchat for videos (with the caveat that you can save and post videos at a later time in Tiktok, whereas with Snapchat it's "now or never"). Coupled with not having an associated text component where you can easily post testimonials and links to a site where you're selling a self help book, get rich quick scheme, juice cleanse or gym routine, it should limit how easy it is to use it as a promotion platform.
If you do, you already have the answer. If you don't, I suggest you get to know a bit more about China before CCP's alternative facts become the facts.
I'm genuinely curious if posts relating to China's treatment of Uyghurs are already meeting censors on tik tok.
I really thought it was invaluable (TikTok is banned now). For us city dwelling upper middle class people, it gave a rare glimpse into the lives of people less privileged. And it wasn't maudlin or patronizing as a lot of narratives about the poor tend to be. Rather it was fun and authentic.
I remember when the lockdown happened and a lot of migrant workers were left stranded, the news channels were filled with horror stories and heartbreaking videos of poor families walking hundreds of kilometres to their homes. But on TikTok, there were plenty of videos shot by the same migrant workers where they shared their woes, but would sometimes break into a dance or make fun of their situation.
Has anyone made an Indian TikTok clone, and if so has it got any traction? Seems like an obvious thing to do, if it was that popular.
[0]: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/mitron-app-tiktok-indian-...
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
TikTok actively pressured the moderators to filter out 'ugly, poor or disabled'[1].
I haven't used TikTok, but I think such apps of mass appeal at this age of intense screen time competition will resort activities like this; there is no magical reason for TikTok to be better than other limited attention social networks.
Even though I never thought of using TikTok, now as a disabled person I feel morally obliged to not use it.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tr...
It was known to be a safe haven for much worse type of people(X) because the app was predominantly used by teens in Asian countries where child protection online laws are nearly nonexistent.
Apart from turning a blind eye to it, along with moderation principles which made sure X got what they want, TikTok rose to market leader due to sheer number of Asian population.
TikTok (Musically) was an Asian first app unlike Instagram, high Smartphone/Internet penetration acted as a catalyst.
Only when they got prominence in western market, they started regulating the content for vulgarity.
All these apps use behavioral design to get you hooked.
Tiktok is oversocialization on steroids. You have people not only acting out the behavioral scripts embedded and triggered in some meme music or voice you have people mimetically acting out what others are acting out. The psychological manipulation possible though TikTok is immense.
I guarantee this: children who use TikTok (and YouTube to an extent, etc), will have issues in the future keeping attention on work, and other forms of important and difficult problems and introspection.
Our roommate who used it in our house is a dopamine addict. He never reads, is by far the laziest and sloppiest, he’s also unapologetic about it and unwilling to acknowledge it, sucks at conversation generally because he has nothing to add because all he does is game, YouTube, TikTok and work, and they all feed into each other. And worst - he’s just totally comfortable being the laggard. Everyone else is happier. They contribute more. They clean, they maintain. They do more and have more to talk about because of that.
I fear a generation of children raised on constant dopamine drip. I already see how hard it’s become for me to sit and read or sit and meditate and I try and avoid all that (Twitter is my vice). But I have a friend with a daughter who is addicted to YouTube/TikTok and I fear greatly for a generation raised like that.
I remember my local high school's motto when I was growing up was something like, "we're not here to teach, we're here to create good, informed consumers".
Never mind the obvious problems with that statement, but just considering it on face-value: how can people become good, informed consumers without having some kind of exposure to the concepts of how easily information can be collected about and used to manipulate people?
I don't expect most high school students to inculcate the full breadth of the topic, just as so few seem to actually learn and retain anything about history, social studies, or even the freaking alphabet (I've met way too many people who think the English alphabet has 25 letters). But currently, the general populace has no idea the extent to which they and their data can be manipulated. It would be enough if all they learned was "you and your data can be manipulated".
Wow, whatever happened to trying to create good, informed citizens?
Glad I didn't go there.
I don't get it, was this the actual real motto, or something people said tongue in cheek?
That's the kind of content that survives the crucibles of Chinese censorship, "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics (especially politics) is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. It's why TikTok's content policy is designed to protect the status quo, often misinterpreted as being pro-Beijing when it's broadly pro-establishment. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place.
E: IMO the style has it's place, whole of China has no choice but to live under it, but in the west, a plurality of content management philosophies calibrated for different audiences is good. There's lessons in managing toxicity to learn from TikTok even if it gets banned.
Maybe every 5th video in my feed is extremely political. It's not all just la-di-da dance and cat videos.
They all encourage a lot of nasty / outrageous content over time as that's what gets eyeballs.
I think much more positive, authentic, curated / focused content would be great. I'm done with filtering twitter, youtube, instagram ... endlessly as content eventually goes sour.
How did you get there? I played with TikTok for a while, but never escaped the "teenagers making videos about other teenagers to pop music" ghetto, and it didn't seem like there was a way for me to tell the algorithm what I wanted without just hoping it surfaced something that I could like.
push like on the stuff you do.
For some reason, IG thinks I'm a track athlete (among many other things). Even for stuff I am legitimately into (like mountain biking), my IG explore page mostly serves me up these random accounts called things like 'MTBdaze' or 'bike247' that just seem to repost random pics/memes as a way to grow the follower count.
The traditional social media dominated by US companies is about sharing what you eat what you do where you are who do you sleep with and what you are angry about. People are essentially misbehaving when they post funny videos.
TikTok on the other hand is playful and the encouraged behaviour is to be creative.
When someone misbehaves on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook they would post videos that someone else made and A lot of that content is made on TikTok. The only creative space is in YouTube but it's not because YouTube encourages it but because there are people capable if using it like that.
I am not convinced that the issue with TikTok is a security issue, It's just that SV lost it's edge on culture and technology, and the crusade against TikTok or Huawei is mostly protectionism and this protectionism will eventually lead to Israel, EU, Japan, Korea, UK, Australia to spit domestic and global success stories like China does these days.
If the concerns were about security, there would have been regulations to ensure security(like requiring storing US users data on US soil and so on). USA is not doing that, USA is in war mode.
What even worse? People don't even want to hear it.
I am not the biggest fan of Peter Theil but I think he has a point on the monoculture, group thinking, high rents.
I see maybe one selfie a week. I also know people who use it for home workouts. I’m sure there are a bunch of other, non-shallow, non-bland uses I haven’t heard of.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Hacker News all look seriously dated in comparison.
Yes please make a movie about your next it projekt ;)
I even hate repair-videos on youtube, it's slow and lame, the fix-it manuals are 1000s times better (since i know what a torx is and that most screws open counter-clock-wise)
Here are some TikTok tutorials on light painting [0]. I'm not saying that I like them, or that they are good, but they are incredibly pacey compared with the YouTube equivalents
One major difference (that some may care about less than I do) is that the TikTok format is great for seeing a variety of content, but does little to help me create. Admittedly, YouTube is filled with lots of filler information (to please their own algorithms) but I could probably figure out what cameras/lights to use, software settings, how to edit, etc... The best TikTok can do is show me what others are capable of.
You do typically have to wade through a lot of crappy "Hey Guys Like and Subscribe!" garbage with 30 second title sequences to find the good ones though.
Seriously.
Social media for techies - what will that look like in ten years? Like HN? Or more like TikTok ...
I have a suspicion that HN will outlast TikTok, but it'll take a decade to find out.
https://ayende.com/blog/Images/Windows-Live-Writer/Pair-Prog...
EDIT: Wow i clicked on #Coding and it is like i taught about it...pure waste of time with Rainbowhairs and talking needle slim guy's with more grease on top than the hole movie 'Grease'
If you play around with it for a bit, the algorithm will adapt to your taste.
For those us whose Internet citizenship pre-dates Friendster and MySpace, the term "social media" has a particular meaning.
But for many younger "social media natives", the term basically just means "any website or app where you can make posts or comments".
When I think about it, it seems like a somewhat arbitrary distinction to make. I suppose the main difference is that the forums were self-hosted and I could have different identities for each one. And while I generally reused the same username, the fact that it wasn't just a matter of 'clicking on my profile' to see all my activity was something I really liked.
Maybe to me the term "social media" has come to mean "social media /companies/"? That doesn't quite satisfy, but it really does feel like the primary difference is that on these forums I knew that they were generally not run for profit, and the 'gods' were just individuals who volunteered their time to host or moderate. It felt safer, and more personal.
You are right.
There are big diffferences.
For one: You can joke on TikTok ...
Choke not joke...big difference
Closest I can get to HN ⋂ dancing is 1:34-1:48 in Virus' "You should ask" (where the video is about the difficulty of source attribution on a LAN, let alone an entire internet)
and the one I have curated the least has TikTok teenage lip sync videos as default.
Its literally Charlie De Malio all over the explore page. And no, this is not based on things I have liked. Its Hype House stuff promoted straight from Bytedance.
Isn't that because Tiktock's content is manually curated (for better or worse)?
TouTiao was about the feed and the algorithm from the beginning. The first time a user opened TouTiao, the news might be rather generic, but every scroll, every linger over a story, every click, was fed into a feedback loop that refined what it was the user saw.
Meanwhile all of that data fed back into TouTiao’s larger machine learning processes, which effectively ran billions of A/B tests a day on content of all types, cross-referenced against all of the user data it could collect. Soon the app was indispensable to its users, able to anticipate the news they cared about with nary a friend recommendation in sight.
I guess no way to be 100% sure of the validity of the claims, but here is one article reporting on it: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
I don't have any evidence, but I believe human evaluation in the whole recommendation is the remedy that makes TikTok excels.
Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
Btw, I checked your profile and I was sad to find that your blog doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd love to read more about accessibility and the particulars of being a blind developer. I can't imagine what that's like, but I have at times wondered how I would approach it. I imagine many of us web developers could benefit from more awareness when it comes to accessibility in general!
That said, your Twitter appears to still be operational and relevant to the topic.
But, there is a very different ethical and practical divide between a company implementing systematic discrimination and discrimination by individual users. This divide is large enough that most western nations have decided to draw their legislative lines there.
There is a word average just you know.
Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.
Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.