• Youtube is consumed A LOT on the website, including some people using the mobile website (not the app) to keep it playing in the background (duh). This only compares average time on app.

• It could also be totally skewed, if let's say 100M people spend 2h/day on average on Youtube, and 1k (a tiny amount) spend 2.5h/day on average on Tiktok, that'd be already good enough to say "average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok".

I haven't read the report, but wanted to point out these two warnings. As we say in Spanish, the easiest way to lie is with statistics. And of course any half-decent PR person will take any numbers and blow it up into a headline, so tread with caution.

(Absolutely not wanting to discount on Tiktok, which has been growing at an incredible rate, just wanted to say that the wording on how exactly they are "winning" sounded a bit contrieved).

Now, I don't know for sure, but I cant imagine that YouTube is integrating App Annie metrics into their YouTube App, right?

It's not like Google dont have their own metrics platform...

And is TikTok really using App Annie?

So where are they getting the data from?

Are they including media streaming devices like ATV, Chromecast, Roku, and so on?

Overall it's a misleading report that misrepresents the attention graph of platform consumption!

It's based on Android battery stats. You can download 3rd party battery stats from Google Play and view other app's usage time.

An inefficient video codec would result in higher battery usage.

I wouldn't be surprised if publishers directly pay App Annie under the table to boost their stats.

As far as YouTube screen-time is concerned Web, Game Consoles, Media centers & smart TVs would account significant screen-time and it's unlikely App Annie's data hoarding apps are installed in them(Unless say shoddy media center bought from Ali express).

That said, TikTok might well indeed take over YouTube sometime in the future as they are doing what YouTube did in the beginning - Home videos sans shitty cameras, Now YouTube is all about top 1% creators with Michael Bay movie budget for each video.

P.S. Not an endorsement for TikTok, Never used it, Will never use it for their moderation practice against the disabled.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

I am now combining YouTube Premium with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlok to get a decent experience.

These are mostly regular people trying to earn a living making high quality content. I’m not seeing how you can begrudge them the few seconds of skippable ad copy.

https://old.reddit.com/r/thewalkingdead/comments/86o9du/i_ti...

AMC does it in the spinoffs too.

The same happend with youtube. I cant stand it anymore.

(Yes, I've heard of NewPipe - I want to use the official app.)

It's been a while, but last I checked Premium views were worth more on a per-view basis than ad-watching views. We're talking tiny fractions of a cent, but they obviously add up. Moreover, so-called "demonetized" videos remain eligible for Premium revenue, despite the reality that they will earn little to nothing from ads.

I nearly always use the web site, even though I have the app on my phone. Full screen browser tab on the desktop just feels more “TV-like” and engaging than staring at the phone screen.

I don’t mind the price - I love the straightforward model.

I watch a ton of YouTube and want to support the business as well as creators (they get a cut of the subscription).

It would be interesting to see what kind of content TikTok excels in if such a list exists.

Truly, I can't remember watching a single advertisement on tiktok because it's so easy to skip them. The moment they force ad watching ala youtube I'm out.

> However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall.

The HN title directly implies this, not the real start. It's misleading and needs to be changed.

I watched one video by a creator I already follow about their solar panel installation and water-catcher garden irrigation.

What do I get in my recommendations? Dozens and dozens of videos from completely random channels about solar panel installation and gardening.

I very rarely find new creators on YouTube, who produce consistent high quality content. I follow a handful of channels and even from them I lookat 20-40% of their videos.

TikTok on the other hand I swore I'd never use. Then came Covid19 and lockdowns. I reached the end of HN, Reddit and Youtube, so I installed it.

The Algorthm is fucking amazing. Dunno how they do it, but 80-90% of stuff it shows me I end up watching (it is 10secs to 3 mins so the investment isn't that huge =) ).

I've ended up following, among others, an opthalmologist who does sketches about hospital stuff, to mechanics who show the most f'd up cars they get to service, to farrier and sheep shearing videos to a guy who does comedy about weird animal facts.

I'd never actually go search anything like that on purpose, but I actually kinda found out I enjoy looking at. It's a good way to space out for 30 minutes and relax. Most TikTok videos get to the point before a stereotypical YouTuber has gone through their intro and sponsor segments :)

I bet some of the uptick in quality of content on tiktok vs youtube is based on the length of videos. If they only have three minutes, all the interesting things will be shoehorned into the available time. Whereas youtube creators are incentivized by the payment structure to lengthen their content to increase their adshare pay so they extend their content to 10 minutes + leading to a lot of filler and "heyyyyy guys let me tell you about my day blah blah blah before we jump into the meat and potatoes" etc.

YouTube, for years even post acquisition made no money, kept bleeding to aquire users. At one point a revenue stream is implemented, which must keep growing to recoup the large investments. Not to mention, pure greed.

The algorithm isn't designed to promote quality content to enhance the user experience and love for the product. It's designed to keep users engaged, while allowing for as much ads time possible. So, the 10 or or 16 mins length was identified as sweet spots to allow for at least one ad placement without loosing engagement. Click bait videos aren't demoted, they work. They keep users engaged as they get promoted to watch yet another video, until brain saturation. They maximised profit, they didn't strike the right balance, perhaps too naive to imagine competition could steal from their market share.

Here we have tiktok, knowing very well they would need to be order of magnitude better to gain traction, at least where the market was already taken up by YouTube. They created an app making it easier and faster to push well cut content, with better tech, better suited UI and overall UX proven to be attracting younger audiences who tend to make trends with their creativity.

Take a good look at the YouTube app, despite the few visual improvements it feels like a decade old library system with auto play, ported to mobile phones. Look at tiktok, it's mobile first, it's fluid and design for touch interaction, the social features are right there, not outside the video in the form of two thumbs button and a thread of text blobs.

Google clearly don't understand or refuses to understand trends. They build minimalist systems , boring to look at but that perform very well, and it is now capitalist greed that set the direction of the company, the bottom line is to squeeze more and more money before the competitions finishes them. They got a few years to go on like that.

The funny thing is that most of the people I follow on TikTok are over 30, a good portion is over 40 =)

It is getting more input and it is getting faster input so it can course correct quicker and more aggressively.

The youtube algorithm wants to optimize for time on the site, and the creators try and have 10 minute videos it seems.

In that time you can consume 60 tiktok videos at 10s each and skipping the ones you dont want and watching the ones you do.

Since 10s is such a small investment they can throw random videos at you and it is pretty low cost.

Its a hard problem and perhaps im an exception, but if you are searching for new stuff, and finding amd watching it, that’s a miss by the algorithm. Especially if that becomes the main thing you do.

I can't stand that. Every video I watch these days is 50% filler just to make that 10mins. I'm forced to watch everything at 2x speed.

When I go on youtube it shows me 10-20 minute science and engineering videos which I can put on and sit on the couch watching. This provides lasting value for me because I never get bored of these like I do with 20 second comedy videos.

There is something weirdly mesmerizing about that. watching them scrape away the stuff from the hoof like it's butter...

Americans and Brits, at least in average watch time, are now consuming media ultimately controlled by the Chinese government.

And the previous election was influenced by a foreign government using American social media networks to influence, not to mention influencing the president-elect directly.

Either America's own social networks are used against them or social networks controlled by other countries are gaining dominance.

It seems nothing other than a decline in American influence in the world. And it comes from other countries outperforming the Americans.

Whether America reacts to this or ignores it through the arrogance of the current greatest will define American power in the world for generations.

Heavily influenced is a massive overstatement. Russia spent less money on US election influence than most individual mega-churches.

You have no idea how much money they spent. What we do know from sworn testimony is that they reached 126 million users through Facebook alone [1] We also know they funneled millions into NRA to influence our elections with dark money.[2] They also had an army of social media influencers working at the IRA with a $1.25 million monthly budget. [3] And, what is the value of the influence from their state sponsored hackers that stole data and leaked through WikiLeaks? [4] No megachurch can do that.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-googl...

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troll-farm-spent-mil...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

They basically took all the money and people they would have put into their regular army and put it into a social media army.

Anyways. Yeah, phished. Maybe it's super secret agents or maybe it was a teenager from 4chan.

The Hilary personal email server used for government business that contained classified information that was illegal was hacked by Russian agents the fbi alledged.

I think you're confusing the DNC and campaign server hacks with Hillary's personal server she used while at State. No indications her personal server was hacked: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-ha...

Actually Hillary was hacked by a lone wolf from Romania, and he received jail for this https://youtu.be/8gfzNyZ3trI

> The Mueller report detailed that the IRA spent $100,000 for over 3,500 Facebook advertisements, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Social_media_ca...

Fun fact, 100k is 0.4% of the price of the Mueller report itself, at 25M.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016s-price-tag-6-8-bi...

https://time.com/5557693/mueller-report-cost

It doesn't include other things described in the paragraph that the IRA did, like organizing Trump rallies and running troll farms where they posed as Americans on social media.

It also doesn't cover things like paying for the operation to infiltrate the NRA etc.

And then of course there could be stuff we don't know about

How so? Almost everything I watch on tiktok is made by American content creators..Is TikTok proper even available to Chinese residents?

Other countries’ companies can succeed whiteout diminishing America. Even China’s.

[1] https://help.pandora.com/s/login/?language=en_US&startURL=%2...

Which would mean that they weren’t doing too well anyway.

Selection is control.

That's a good thing, they will learn quickly why mass media monopoly is bad, when they now have the fear that drive them to actually look at the giant monsters...

In the face of an overwhelming US monopoly of popular entertainment --- cinema, television, music, comics, and books --- the rest of the world ... had relatively little power. Yes, there are localised (and often government-supported / encouraged / incentivised) instances of each. But it was US pop culture that defined the direction and movement from the 1950s onward.

(For the pedants, 1) I love you, you're my third favourite people, except on the second Thursday of the month, and 2) "defined" != "there were no other influences.)

So I wonder if the algorithm the switched to had something to do with them potentially losing attention from users.

I can't speak to tik tok, never used it, never will.

I now find it over-calibrates to recommend based on recently watched videos, whether the same channel or the same style.

For example, I watched a video the other day, something like "Boris Johnson pronouncing the word _____". Next thing I know, my recommendations are flooded with similar videos that I don't really want to spend my time on.

This deters me from watching videos that come up that I'm mildly curious in watching, but don't really want to watch more of.

I feel like this is what really helps TikTok always have fresh content. If you want to become a YouTuber, the path to having a good following can be years of grind. With TikTok, there is a good shot your first video might just propel you to stardom. Thus more people are inclined to create content for TikTok. It creates a feedback loop

You can make really great content on YT and reach an audience. Creators like Tom Scott prove it's possible. But you have to hit a minimum production quality or the algorithm is going to discard you. Mostly this means that you still need a team of people to make it on YT. On TT, it's still totally fine to make bad production quality that has great informational content. So yes, YT has niche content, when considered against TV, but TT has one more factor of magnitude more niche content.

For a bit of anecdotes of the people that I am following: About 30% come from YouTube/Other Internet Media and produce TikTok style content, about 20% are TT Stars, and 50% are these small creators that YT wouldn't even consider. This group, checking their followers, averages about 10k. On YT I don't subscribe to a single person below 100k followers.

I have Category Theory TT accounts followed, but no Category Theory YT channels subscribed. Do CT have YT accounts? Possibly. But not once has YT shown me that content. This might be a problem with me, but TT resolves it through their natural flow, and as I am significantly more advanced than the average user, a problem with me is a problem for the platform.

At this point the path is going to be to start on TT and only move to YT once you have established a following that can make it over the YT recommendation escape velocity.

Developers! Developers! Developers!

Something definitely stinks with the algo on YT currently. At least for me

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

The algorithm does a decent job of showing the stuff I have been interested in recently over just a simple mix of my subscriptions.

Tiktok expanded allowed uploaded video duration up to 3 minutes. The For You Page algorithm (which drives the content you see in the feed) is scarily impressive in how it can match the viewer with content they would most want to see. Lastly, and probably most importantly (in my opinion) Tiktok fosters a home for a vast number of entertaining and informative content creators that give them an edge. Vine mostly went for entertainment in quick six second bursts.

Vine did this too which is a big part of why it's so surprising to me: Vine didn't just have the tech but they had the community. You can still find Vine compilations on YouTube with millions of views that capture the vibrant set of content creators that Vine once had.

Honestly the only real difference between Vine and TikTok in my mind is that Vine was more focused on comedy while TikTok is more focused on music. Otherwise the two services were pretty much identical.

I would add: the world was not ready for Vine.

The amount of content, the type of it, and the number of people out there willing to make goofy content - I mean young and old alike ... is amazing.

The number of people with cellphones and decent cameras recording 'everything' means we now have all sorts of vidoes of 'guy fishing and whale breaches' or literal lighting strikes etc..

And the normalization of content creation, of likes, of views, the possibility of making money from it etc..

Basically the tools, cultural norms, media and social systems - all reached a critical mass some time after Vine.

If Vine were to have held on, evolved along the lines you indicated, they might have beak TikTok to it.

Oh - and one last point: TikTok started with cute dancing girls among teens. That content category is a great place to start, break through, and get a critical mass going before breaking into parrots swearing, cute babies, and funny challenges.

Just want to add that the content consumption was also hindered by the technology.

Fun Fact: Vine was created in the same year the first CNN completed ImageNet with (much) higher accuracy than others contestants.

Twitter wouldn't know a good product idea or how to find one if it hit them in the face.

They got lucky with the original Twitter product, but the biggest change since it has launched is increasing tweet length from 140 to 280 characters.

Compare that to Facebook who - for all their faults - know how to iterate on product ideas and leverage their platform to build new markets.

When Vine started in 2012 there were only ~1B smartphone users.

No, they have in-app purchases?

At the very least it's an interesting parable of how short-sighted "innovative" big tech companies can be.

there's countless examples

The CCP can afford to lose money with TikTok for a long time. Straight from the propaganda budget really.

Update: here’s a reference to leaked documents to this effect: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...

What seems odd is how TikTok is managing this. YouTube is popular among all demographics, the diversity of content is mind bogglingly high whereas (I presume) TikTok is popular among the crowd who are either going to highschool or in college. Its primary purpose is entertainment, so how did it beat YouTube exactly?

I've been assuming TikTok is the equivalent of "what is trending today", where "what" is something related to dance moves, or other stuff I don't find very interesting. (Or, it's not that I find dance moves uninteresting, it's just that it's not something I'd want to spend time consuming). Are my assumptions wrong, and there is genuinely interesting, and more in depth content on TikTok?

Also, the whole thought of a video platform devoted to teenagers filming themselves dance ... is... well, to be honest, a bit creepy. But I suppose this is a concern for just a part of the content if my assumptions are wrong.

Ps: Just to clear, I'm not saying there isn't creative things or something to learn or expand some kind of understanding through TikTok. Just that, surely, there isn't much overlap between YouTube and a platform limited to 15 second video clips? Especially one, that for someone who has never used it, seems mostly limited to teenagers filming themselves dance?

There are lots of different corners of TikTok, and for good or bad it's generally pretty good at forming some fairly niche communities. I have a couple of primarily dance-oriented creators I follow—none of them teenagers, fwiw—but the most interesting are the ones who use their platform to educate, whether it be about science-y stuff or music or history or whatever; I've learned a lot from following a substantial group of Black creators who've taken the time to talk about their lived experiences. These communities with somewhat deeper content really took off when the platform opened up 60 second videos (I gather that was late in 2020?) and they've mostly gotten even better now that creators (at least some of us?) can make 3-minute videos.

It's all based on what you like and follow, though. Very early on, it's worthwhile to go out-of-band to track down names of a few creators that you can seed your for-you-page with, otherwise you'll get the lowest common denominator stuff. Sometimes someone will "duet" or "stitch" another video and then you're introduced to another creator and can follow them directly; other times the FYP itself will serve up someone you've never seen or heard of but that has content (and presumably like-and-follow patterns) similar to the ones you do follow. And then you can like and/or follow the new person.

I mean, there's thirst traps too. If those were the only videos you liked, then that's what it would show you.

I have a more niche hobbies like 3d printing and electronics which I'm sure it'll pick up within enough time, but, not a single video of what I assumed almost all videos were.

I'm happy to be wrong, and I get why TikTok is so popular.

There's a ton of content that isn't thirst traps (aka teenagers dancing), but while that's an interesting question to dig in to, if enough people switch mediums (from newspapers to radio to TV to YouTube to Tiktok), there doesn't have to be an overlap for one to largely supplant the next. How's the New York Times doing these days?

Tiktok is mostly competing with the Insta/Facebook I need distraction so I'll let myself be numbed with external impulses as fast as I can get. Most similar was the story feature in Instagram, often also videos, although nobody every compared viewing them with Youtube.

Although Youtube also has it's scroll/impulsive it's not a direct competition. Although you could argue any form of time consumption (online) is competition.

I agree YouTube /Instagram/Snapchat stories feature is closer to the experience of TikTok.

Though I making a guess since I have only read about it and seen some screenshots.

The algorithms is insane, and it works for any age.

The age demographic for now is probably because young people tend to download new apps first than old people.

Also, they spent many, many millions on ads to get the app everywhere.

That's always been the game, inside and outside of countries.

- algo is a black box, and uncalibrated youtube makes my eyes bleed;

- own by the biggest spy on the planet, google, known for manipulating information, monopolistic behavior, participation in the worst gov programs (e.g: PRISM);

- impose American censorship rules to the entire world, and makes creators do inane cuts to fit some terrible metrics

Besides, the typical Tik Tok customer doesn't give a damn about those things. They didn't on facebook, insta, whatsapp, or whatever. They don't even know it's an issue, "have nothing to hide", don't care about privacy, power centralization, citizen spying and so on.

So Tik Tok or something else doesn't matter.

And, objectively speaking, the US government is far preferable to the CCP. The US has it's issues and has made mistakes in the past, the CCP is still putting Muslims in concentration camps and exercises regular authoritarian controll over it's citizens. Militarily, the US is allied with most EU powers (including France) and generally has good intentions for it's allies. China, on the other hand, finds itself on the outside of most alliances, and considering that even their own people are treated poorly, I can only imagine that their intentions for others are not positive.

American tech companies take your data and sell it to advertisers, I don't like it, but they do. The US government only accesses it if they have a reason to do so and subpoena the specific information needed. The Chinese government? I have no doubt that they're collecting data for much more nefarious purposes. Intelligence indicates that they've been improving their military forces massively in the last several decades. It wouldn't be hard for them to subtly start slipping in propaganda into the tiktok feeds of countries they intend to invade, and then they'll have local-national support.

I think it's easy to look at this and say objectively that it's worse. If Youtube or Facebook were owned by France or Germany I would hold the same belief that tiktok is worse. It's not fear of some mysterious "other", but fear of a proven enemy to freedom and human rights, China.

As Snowden revelations have shown, this is not the case.

> It wouldn't be hard for them to subtly start slipping in propaganda into the tiktok feeds of countries they intend to invade

Last time I checked, the USA were the number one warmonger in the world, sometimes by lying about WMD and going against the vote of the UN.

I'm not defending China, I do think Tiktok is a dictatorship honeypot, but the USA is only good to the USA. A cancer is worst than diabetes, but I still don't think diabetes is a good thing.

And google is only good to google.

I'm in the good graces of neither, being in Europe, and consider both as services that will try to get as much of me as possible when I use them. And the minute our interest are not aligned with theirs, they will bite us.

Wouldn’t this be an argument for preferring TikTok over YouTube?

There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West. On the other hand, I could very well be sold out by Google to the US government, which could easily have me extradited from the EU.

If you use TikTok they can manipulate what you see.

Which I think is awesome personally but I get how some people will see all of that as huge red flags.

You don’t think that is a result of manipulation?

But K-12 in the US tries to hammer so much “so misleading it might as well be false” pro-America propaganda during exactly the age that kids are generally rebelling against anything authority tells them that’s it’s not all that surprising that during a major economic downturn that’s only benefiting those with capital that people would start to have a distaste for the system that produced this mess.

The irony of this is telling. I have to assume you are unvaccinated, and unaware that you are being publicly critical of the government.

I just think it’s weird to attribute the things you are complaining about to ‘capitalism’, and that if you are going to make such broad statements, then it’s weird to claim there are no benefits to those ‘without capital’ when there plainly are.

I happen to also be critical of most of the things you are criticizing. Blaming ‘capitalism’ doesn’t seem to offer anything. The word has become interchangeable with ‘the bogeyman’.

I largely disagree with the first half of this, and agree with the second half. I think ‘individualism’ is a chimera and not a cause.

I do agree that Americans are generally more suspicious of the state than people in most other countries, but that’s to be expected given both the founding and history of the country, and the experiences of minorities.

On the other hand, the disconnectedness of those in power and the lack of solutions is definitely evident.

My dislike of ‘anti-capitalism’ is that is just a complaint, but without any solutions.

There are numerous Uyghurs in the West who would disagree with your assessment given the harassments they have had to endure. This will only become worse as China continues to become more powerful.

I don't want to enter this debate because it detracts from the main point, but the US has been putting Latino people in concentration camps.

As a fellow frenchman I can only agree with what was said before: TikTok is bad, but Youtube isn't much better.

This is a bad faith comparison

Lets not forget the war time concentration camps in the US, or the torture camps, or the rendition programme, or gitmo.

But yes, tiktok is trash. But it is the trash that the people love.

But we do. :)

All the "data gathering" mentioned in all the FUD around tiktok in recent years is done by google/facebook too, and noone mentiones it at all.

Note that non american feel the same way about google, netflix, amazon &co

But I still think that 'chinese company owning a majority of internet video traffic' is WAY more scary than 'US company owning a majority of internet traffic'. Maybe thats just bias, maybe not.

But yes, I think there should be more relevant non-US big IT players to add more variety. But for a lot of reasons, the EU, and especially germany, just does not cut it in regard of IT expertise anymore. I am not saying this from a perspective of "disappointed patriotism" or something like that. Its more about having more choice would make thinks more interessting.

But on the other hand: more choice makes thinks like movie streaming less attractive. I do not want to have to sign with Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO, Apple TV AND Maxdome.

I guess we still cannot have the cake, and eat it, too.

No maybe about it, it is.

The USA has its problems, but they are all extremely publicized compared to the secret nightmare going on in China.

I have noticed that there are armies of Chinese and Russian shill accounts on HN now that brigade with "whataboutisms" whenever criticism of Putin or Jinping's dictatorships arise.

Tiktok gives your data to China. I don't know what they are doing with it but they are not using it for better targetted ads. I guess when they request permission for my phone contacts, clipboard content, private photos at least I know they aren't using it for ads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Of course, that's just development aid. US blows away all other countries in humanitarian aid too: https://www.statista.com/statistics/275597/largers-donor-cou...

The problem is that they often do blow stuff away, quite literally. People aren't going to sing your praise for the new well you've dug after you've bombed their wedding and killed all their friends and family.

If you want to do some good, take some refugees. Like, a significant number, not a homeopathic amount.

Is that the only reason you do not think they are civilized? Any countries that have dropped bombs are not civilized?

195 countries in the world... Only have to find ~100 countries that have bombed another country in the last century. Only thing I can see that is going to save that assumption is going to be ww2.

- How many governments has the US toppled in an undemocratic process ?

- How many governments has China toppled in an undemocratic process ?

We could go on and on about this, to make a clear opinion on the subject requires far more than a single question.

That's absolutely a fallacious comparison.

1. We don't have accurate data from China on the number imprisoned and killed by them, so no one can make absolutely comparisons like you did.

2. The Chinese do this to people living peacefully inside their borders. If the US started rounding up and killing ethnic minorities WW2 concentration camp style then you could make this comparison. The US was engaged in active conflict with a group that itself was detrimental to human (specifically, women's) rights and that engaged us first.

I dont agree with a lot of what happened in the middle east, but you can't in good fairh stretch that as a comparison to fit your own narrative.

China is bringing economic development, secular institutions and women's rights, in a heavy handed way, whether the residents want it or not, with minimal regard for costs to those residents. It's the exact same thing as we've been doing, minus a fig leaf of democracy.

In neither case is the word genocide or ethnic cleansing appropriate, body counts don't support it. But it's especially rich to level the accusation 5 seconds after our 20 year war ended.

I don't understand how you can sit here and compare a war in the middle east to literal concentration camps. Stop performing mental gymnastics to fit your own narrative.

It's counterinsurgency in both cases, attempting to modernize a tribal Muslim society in hopes of improving security from terror attacks.

You are aware there were terror attacks in Urumqi?

There are differences between their style and ours, the re-education camps vs the drone bombs. Maybe there's an argument about freedoms vs deaths. But Americans clearly do not actually give a shit about Muslim lives, it's just a political talking point. 300k dead in Yemen with our weapons doesn't even make the news, Afghanistan barely cracked the news for a decade, etc etc.

How many Americans were baying at the moon to invade Iraq and now they're the world's greatest humanitarians about Xinjiang?

This kind of whitewashing is what allows us as Americans to ignore the mass scale death we inflict while pointing fingers at other kettles. You don't even have the cause of events correct - we invaded afghanistan first, America were the aggressors. Do you think we invaded Afghanistan to preserve women's rights? Do you know that American soldiers were told to turn a blind eye to the afghan national army raping little boys? You mention that we don't have accurate numbers about china's tyranny, but under Trump, we repealed the rule that the USG had to report drone strike casualties. I'm not surprised other countries don't see a functional difference between the US and China, after all only one of those countries has a solid track record of overturning democratically conducted elections because they didn't like the outcome.

* Not that the US would be interested in me personally either. But they do take an interest in citizens from other countries.

TikTok is imo goddamn scary. It is explicitly set up to hook people with gamification techniques, showering likes on new users so they come back for more. Only the subject matter is often politics, activism and intertribal warfare.

Being a US-based company doesn't make this any better, just look at Facebook.

The only people who worry are people on HN. Most other people aren't aware of what's going on, or just don't care.

Letting that on your phone is allowing your contacts, photos and text messages to be read.

Same goes with facebook. But facebook will try to profit off of your data. Tiktok data goes to China. I don't know what they are doing with it..

FB data also goes to the US government. I don't know what they are doing with it..

China want to blackmail me to do their bidding. I dont actually have much shame, so probably wont work so good.

There are days where I think the lesser of two evils when it comes to invading my privacy might be the regime whos jurisdiction I am not, and likely never will be present in.

One reason China does it to monitor and control their own people. Speaking out against China in the west will often put family in China at risk and any business interests. Monitoring journalist, tracking western movement, cyberwar faire, are all reasons.

Where does it read text messages?

I wouldn't be nearly as worried if Tiktok were owned by Italy or Germany or France. But China, with it'a ongoing genocide of Muslims and totalitarian oppression, yeah that is worse than Netflix selling your data to advertisers.

It's also clearly designed around a different experience, a constant consume-or-scroll feed as popularized by Instagram. YouTube shorts also has this, but regular YouTube clearly doesn't, given that there's just enough latency between video skips that it feels like the algorithm is "making mistakes" at a much lower number of skips.

The algo also doesnt seem to get the hint - it suggests a video over and over again, an no matter how many times I dont ever watch a video on X channel or on Y subject, it keeps on trying.

While I am complaining, Netflix algo is getting worse too. Stop reccomending the movie I watched earlier in the week, I watched it. I clicked thumbs down on it. I dont want to waste another 90 minutes on it.

Unless you've read some new news I haven't, not any more than Google (YouTube) or Facebook have. Why is TikTok different?

Try watching this video on Youtube without giving Google your passport or credit card info. I found it impossible, even with youtube-dl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhmoyoOR1s

As opposed to whomever controls Facebook/Google?

The ship has sailed. And with upcoming decentralized web technologies that ship will cross the point of no return.

Even the "china controls it" part isn't persuasive because, I mean, what isn't china influencing these days? And TBH I don't give a shit if it's Chinese or American powers collecting my information, I don't want either of them doing it. And consider that these American corporations influence other nations in the same way China may influence America and they accept it -- of course Americans would accept it too.

My word to people who hate TikTok's privacy invading tech and practices is to lobby to pass a sweeping privacy law or shut up, basically. But that would mean wrecking a huge part of the parasitic tech industry so it's not going to happen.

Money > ethics.

Even if you use the website?

this just complete fear mongering, let the kids play on it.

A democracy.

You can have pacifist government against war. You can have the opposite.

Norway is a democracy but doesn't have an aggressive miliary posture. The US has the largest army and probably spends 800b on their military.

Authoritarian government manage by suppressing their own people. This requires an aggressive military presence locally. All of the conditions above could be true as well for these types of governments.

Just don't call them brainwashed while uncritically swallowing a story about how we're all free and they're all oppressed, no matter what they say about it.

In a democracy you have many parties and points of view which would naturally lead to lower popularity as it spreads over many ideas. Each takes turns and this system renews ideas.

Why is it so hard to believe people are happy with this?

Did you see that photo in China?

Consider, even if you're that hardcore about it, 'know your enemy' has some value. They understand us but we don't understand them, and sometimes it's willful on our part. We'd rather tell ourselves a story.

I don't think happy with the government is a concept. The question becomes are you happy with society

That's not a defense of those actions, but there's an incredibly bizarre trend these days to act as if words don't have any actual meaning beyond their mood affiliation. Just pick a word from a vaguely-related grab bag ("living wage", "misinformation", "democratic", white supremacy ") and hurl it blindly at the conversation and you get all the retweets you want.

I live in New Zealand and there are people driving around thinking we are a communist country and feeling oppressed by government. They express as much through the signs and stickers all over their vehicles.

I wish that good and evil existed in a measurable way but I fear that we live in a world of grey and everyone sees the shades differently from their different perspectives.

> The point is that a company that is controlled by an authoritarian regime

Hard evidence for this claim? Is TikTok Inc, controlled by China?

What has this got to do with TikTok?

Beyond that, the data collection and the way it mixes young-but-of-age mildly sexual content with underage guys imitating them makes me stay far away. I enjoyed the handsome men in various states of undress but couldn’t find a way to make the app not veer into underage content, no matter how many times I told it what I liked. Disturbing.

What's concerning about this? I don't mean this rhetorically: I'm genuinely curious, as I've heard people say similar things recently.

It seems to me that, like metabolic health, there's a pretty large body of basic mental health advice that's safe and salutary, and that doesn't displace heavy-duty mental Healthcare for those who need it (in the same way that healthy recipe tips don't displace insulin shots).

It struck me as the kind of thing that leads people to, for example, ingeste chloroquine phosphate [0] on the advice of a celebrity.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-cu...

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying!

Concretely, what privacy concern do you see in watching a video with mental health tips? Do you think this privacy concern similarly extends to reading a Wikipedia article on (eg) CBT techniques?

Or am I misunderstanding, and "Mental health tiktok" involves users describing their mental health issues in videos that they post, and a back-and-forth with those who are claiming to "treat" them?

Also, the English Wikipedia article on cognitive behavioural therapy cites Cochrane reviews, psych textbooks and a whole volley of journal articles from prestigious journals like the Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association etc. describing clinical trial results, plus guidance from the UK's National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence.

Presumably, the TikTok version makes up for this by having a better dance routine.

Yes, of course. I wasn't clear, but I was referring to going through a search engine, not going directly to Wikipedia.

> Presumably, the TikTok version makes up for this by having a better dance routine.

I'm afraid you've completely misunderstood what this subthread is about. The _quality_ of medical information and the privacy concerns involved in finding it (whether through Google or via tiktok's algorithm) are completely different topics. To be honest, I can't imagine how anyone could read these comments and come away thinking any comparison was being made (let alone equivalence being drawn) between quality vs privacy concerns.

If the key variable is the search engine, then, yes, you probably don't want to be feeding details of your possible mental health problems into Google. Maybe DuckDuckGo would be preferable. Once you've put your symptoms or diagnosis into a search engine, where you end up is going to likely not be the main issue. If you type, say, "autism spectrum disorder" into Google, Google will make certain assumptions about you regardless of whether you end up clicking on a Wikipedia link, an NHS.uk link, some academic paper on bioRxiv, or a TikTok video with someone describing their autism diagnosis.

This is worth elaborating on, since I know HN tends to have a bizarre fantasy conception of the medical system where patients arent supposed to understand anything that's happening. I have to wonder if the HNers contributing to this conception have ever engaged with the medical system, or if they have, I have to pity those that they're responsible for.

There are plenty of doctors in my family, and I've been responsible for managing both chronic and severe acute health issues for family members. Every single one of the doctors I've been in contact with would be shocked by the notion that patients shouldn't be informing thenselves at a basic level. This goes quadruply for basic preventive measures like nutrition, exercise, or basic mental health practices: there's a reason that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

Eg,

> Cheng believes the website that doxed him by publishing his personal information online was started by pro-Beijing supporters in Hong Kong.

> “I feel fear,” he admitted. His family, too, was scared and told him not to walk home alone anymore. But part of Cheng remains defiant as he considers the doxing website a component of a larger campaign to incite fear in protesters as mass demonstrations continue into their third month.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/hong-kong...

https://mashable.com/article/doj-accuses-zoom-employee-china...

The premise of my pushing back against privacy concerns was mental health advice of the basic, fundamental kind: mindfulness, productive thought patterns, healthy work habits, sleep hygiene, etc etc etc.

Even taking for granted that tiktok's access to this information is scarier than eg Google's, the signal they can glean from this type of usage is little more than "I get anxious sometimes", not things like "I have bipolar disorder". I don't think it's controversial at all to say that getting advice for serious mental disorders via social network isn't a good idea for multiple reasons (again, this is why I clarified with the OP of the story what sort of mental health advice they were seeking).

To make it clear by analogy: one maintains their physical health through a million 24/7 day-to-day decisions, and nobody would blink twice at getting information about eg yoga or healthy recipes from YouTube or other non-medical sources. OTOH, trying to treat your pneumonia or MS via YouTube or tiktok would be an obvious disaster. Similarly, there are a million and one day-to-day actions one takes to maintain their mental health, eg mindfulness or other basic CBT techniques. Researching these independently is not just harmless, it's what people _should_ be doing, regardless of whether they're also seeking treatment (and the privacy concerns are similarly minimal). Again in stark contrast, serious mental health issues shouldn't be treated via casual research.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/biden-revokes-and-replaces-t...

   # TikTok
   abtest-va-tiktok.byteoversea.com
   api16-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-va.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api16-va.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-va.tiktokv.com
   api19-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api19-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api19-va.tiktokv.com
   api21-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api21-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com
   api21-h2.tiktokv.com
   api21-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api21-va.tiktokv.com
   api22-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                              
   api22-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                           
   api22-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                           
   api22-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                            
   api22-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   api22-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   api30-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                  
   api30-h2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                        
   api-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                    
   api-h2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   api-t2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   api.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                             
   api-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   dm16-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                      
   dm16-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                   
   frontier-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                     
   gecko16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                       
   i.byteoversea.com                                                                                                                                           
   ichannel.musical.ly                                                                                                                                         
   ichannel-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                     
   imapi-16.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                        
   imapi-mu.isnssdk.com                                                                                                                                        
   im-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                           
   log16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   log.byteoversea.com                                                                                                                                         
   log-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   mon.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                             
   mon-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   muscdn.com                                                                                                                                                  
   musical.ly                                                                                                                                                  
   p16-tiktokcdn-com.akamaized.net                                                                                                                             
   p16-tiktok-sg.ibyteimg.com                                                                                                                                  
   p16-tiktok-va.ibyteimg.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-cmaf-f16-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                              
   pull-cmaf-f16.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-cmaf-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-f5-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                    
   pull-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   pull-flv-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-flv-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-flv-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-flv-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-flv-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-flv-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-hls-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-hls-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-hls-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-f5-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-hls-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-hls-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-q5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-w5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-q5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   pull-rtmp-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                              
   pull-rtmp-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-rtmp-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-rtmp-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-rtmp-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-rtmp-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-w5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                               
   tiktokcdn.com.c.worldfcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   tiktokcdn.com.wsdvs.com                                                                                                                                     
   tiktokcdn.liveplay.myqcloud.com                                                                                                                             
   tiktok.com                                                                                                                                                  
   tiktok.com.c.footprint.net                                                                                                                                  
   tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                                 
   webcast16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                     
   xlog-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                         
   # /TikTok

   # TikTok
   (\.|^)tiktok\.com$
   (\.|^)tiktokcdn\.com$
   (\.|^)tiktokv\.com$
   muscdn.com                                                                                                                                                  
   musical.ly                                                           
   # /TikTok

In the meanwhile they'll have permanently degraded some part of their core service offerings chasing this, maybe putting 10 second videos in place of every street view shot in google maps, or making search favor short video content or some nonsense.

Burying the lede here BBC...

I gave it a shot, and once I got the algorithm to recognize me... it was addictive, but fake as fuck. Nothing really felt like it had love in it. And as much as I tried to push the algorithm towards educational content that actually taught me something new, it could only really show me silly "life hacks" that were clever, but I'll probably never use.

With television, there are[were] a limited number of channels. Airtime was a scarce resource, and making a TV show cost money so the companies funding it wanted to make sure they got the best bang for their buck. So they had lots of experts tweaking every show to make sure it was juuust right. Little if anything was truly off-the-cusp. Seemingly impromptu conversations on talk shows are scripted and rehearsed. Too much money on the line for anything more casual. When less money is on the line, fewer people are involved and everything can be a lot more casual. Public access television is cruder but feels more authentic. Low budget art films can experiment more than big budget movies. The production of MST3K was casual and crude when it was on public access, but became serious business when they moved to Comedy Central.

A similar dynamic is in play on youtube. When a channel is just some rando uploading videos with little investment and little expectation of financial return, the content is generally cruder and quirkier. When a channel is run by a major corporation with lots of money on the line, lots of people involved in it, and high expectations for the reception, then everything is taken more seriously. Professional cameras, professional lighting, professional editing. It feels more like television because it is more like television.

This same overproduced aesthetic doesn't only come from corporations though; I think the dynamic is in play whenever the content producer has high expectations or aspirations. An individual creator working alone who has aspirations of becoming an "influencer" will put more effort into their content than somebody who has no expectations or aspirations for their content. Their content will become overproduced as a consequence of their lofty aspirations. Maybe tiktok inspires or nurtures these lofty aspirations more than youtube did in the early years.

TikTok does it by pairing Twitter-level burnout-causing engagement juicing with short videos with no option to turn off autoplay.

a couple of examples are manually ignoring click-baits, overly long videos and explanations, multiple parts videos (some are genuine, but most are bad-intentioned), creators and channels i don't care about, etc.

ETA: I basically never see teenagers dancing badly. Those videos exist in a different wing of TikTok from the ones I frequent.

I don't think I ever saw a TikTok feed I really liked, maybe that one guy singing the sea shanties? But yeah that's about it

YT now has their "shorts" as well that they're desperately trying to push to fill the gap that TikTok (well actually Vine) has created. But their big mistake was only allowing people to watch shorts on mobile...

What's the longest length video that TikTok supports? (I don't use it)

[1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktoks-testing-even-l...

I remember when YouTube had quite a short cap on length years ago (10-15 minutes iirc), which is why I started using vimeo at the time.

in the article: "average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok... However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall."

The average TikTok user spents more time, which is still interesting. Maybe kids just have more time on their hands.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-video-investig...

Where Facebook has a weakpoint is that the content they server you is rather limited. It's a newsfeed of your friends, your friends friends (maybe) and the groups you've joined. Maybe they'll recommend something for you. But most of the time, it's stuff you've more or less opted into.

TikTok on the other hand - has at its disposal videos made by anyone, at anytime in the history of its app. That's a lot of content. I can be on Facebook and be done scrolling in 15 minutes. Same with Instagram, Twitter. TikTok, because it has essentially an infinite amount of assets it can serve...you're there forever, watching short snippets of videos to get a dopamine hit.

Not comparable to other social media, IMHO...more dangerous, regardless of which country owns it.

I post short permaculture videos: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRfVWm76/

I can take toxic Reddit, HN, and even Twitter comments, and while I found the whole situation hilarious there’s something frightening about opening my whole identity for hordes of anonymous people to judge. There’s a power imbalance that doesn’t seem to bother a subset of Gen Z or the general population who continue uploading content there.

it's still there.

> formerly

>https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

>And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!