I'm 24 and my iPhone tells me I spend 2 hours on TikTok a day. This is up from about a year and a half ago, when i consumed it exclusively in YouTube compilations.

Their targeting and algorithmic curation is extremely, scary good.

Maybe you are just not the target audience here? YouTube also has videos like TikTok and it still has a bazillion users...

Yeah the TikTok core audience and the Hacker News crowd have maybe a 1% overlap.

Well, YouTube's core audience isn't going there for TikTok-style content (no judgement on that content either way.) They mostly come for vlogs, let's play's, tutorial videos, video essays, etc.

Also worth noting that YouTube is a money sink so it's not like it's the most lucrative business model.

I've heard the argument a few times YouTube actually loses money, besides just being a money sink. Does anyone have anything from Google talking about margins or profit/loss of youtube? I've never been able to find anything concrete on the issue. This is the best I've ever been able to find [1]

1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

It exposes the level of mental illness in America and around the world.

You have teens threatening to kill themselves if it gets banned. What will all these girls do if they can't get some attention and a dopamine hit every few hours. Woman are taking to Tik Tok and posting farewells crying and dancing. Some are even threatening the President.

The app is poison but perhaps it's no worse than Insta, Twatter and FB and all social media.

How many lives this shit ruins everyday, little by little is unimaginable. People living in the digital world instead of the real one.

Please don’t bring this kind of holier than thou preaching to this forum. Just because you’re not the target audience doesn’t mean you can call the users as being “mentally ill”. ALL humans crave dopamine hits (what brought you to this forum?).

Dance and music is how a certain demographic of humanity lives to express themselves, and there is an app that lets them do so. What the hell is your problem? Who are you to take it away from them?

just because people crave for dopamine hits so we should allow all kind of things? maybe we should allow durgs/heroin as well ? you do understand there are different consequences when you addicted to different things right, dancing vs estacy ? not to mention the potential privacy / national security issue with this app

You are not the target audience of his comment.

I appreciated the comment. It exposed me to something I didn't know was going on.

With regards to "who are you to take it away from them..."

I don't think the parent poster has that power.

The president does and he may ban it to protect users privacy.

Some people are parents of kids who use it and they would have the right to limit where and how their children can express themselves.

Countries like Egpyt are putting girls in jail for dancing on tiktok.

This has all of the making of the next footloose.

The President does not have the power to ban an Internet service. He may order executive agencies to investigate the company and take action based on what they find. There is no (non emergency) statute that allows the President to unilaterally shut down the service.

Parents of kids do have the authority to curtail their children’s online presence. This is not limited to TikTok, it is a common theme across all social media properties.

What Egypt does should not affect what technologies are permitted in the US. China bans Google and Facebook. Should we ban it too? This line of reasoning makes no sense.

>what brought you to this forum?

I am only here for information/educational reasons, not entertainment. This is more about educating my mind.

>Dance and music is how a certain demographic of humanity lives to express themselves, and there is an app that lets them do so. What the hell is your problem? Who are you to take it away from them?

Maybe you haven't seen all the videos of young ladies threatening to kill themselves if the President goes through with it. Or the 1000's of people who have come to name calling and threats against the President.

I don't find that normal and I have a problem with it.

> Or the 1000's of people who have come to name calling and threats against the President.

Interesting that you would have an issue with “name calling” and “making threats” when that is all that the current POTUS does on Twitter. That is also a person who has real power, so the threats are not idle. By your own measure, Twitter should be banned before tiktok.

Maybe Hacker News is next on Trumps ban list. Would you be happy about that?

Also, I would think carefully how productive your time spend here really is. Is surfing and commenting on HN providing any substantial "education"?

Personally i find it an entertaining way to waste some time, that does now and then enlighten me on a topic I didn't know about before, and have cause to want to learn more. But any real knowledge gained is through effort outside of HN.

if my life is going to get ruined anyway, I'd prefer to choose the option to pick my poison than to take the government/corporate mandated one.

The most successful global consumer-facing company in world history sells sugar water.

If you mean Coca Cola, you're wrong.

If anything he would mean Pepsi, which is twice as big as Coca Cola (based on revenue). However, that you immediately think about Coca-Cola speaks for their superior branding.

Is that based on soft drink revenues or because Pepsi owns dozens of other non soft drink companies?

Can you support this with a counter example? This statement by itself is a bit of a tease!

If he's basing his comment on the source, he probably means that Apple has a higher market cap.

why? coke is easily the most recognized brand on the planet.