Edit: I should clarify. This might mean most content you see is English, if you're interested in English content. However it matters where the video was geographically uploaded from. If you upload a tiktok video and check the stats you'll see most views are from your region or country.
Tiktok shows videos locally, then regionally and then finally worldwide if yoo have a big hit.
It would be interesting to know what fraction of the English content people see is posted geographically from within America.
What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.
In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than French. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitarian when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).
In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.
And even though I probably tend to agree with both of you, it's kinda funny to blame French or German speakers about being elitist against English speakers, of which native speakers are notoriously monolingual :-)
I'm just saying that in the French part of Switzerland English wasn't a given among any generation and it neither was common in the German/Italian parts too if you exclude the expats.
And yes, francophone tend to be very elitist about consuming exclusively french content, regardless of them being from France, Switzerland or Belgium.
It's litteraly your mother tongue man, everyone outside of the elite has a mother, and therefore a mother tongue, it's not expansive, it's your basic birth right.
Why don't people consume audio/video in a foreign language ?
I'm a polyglot myself, so I enjoy that very much, but the simple truth is that most people don't invest the time for becoming fluent in other languages in countries with a "big" language. Works for France, the US, the UK, Spain, Mexico, Japan or China.
Why ? Pretty obvious. Become fluent in a foreign language is a huge effort. Making that effort really only works if you either WANT to do it or if you NEED to do it. The WANT factor is the same everywhere but the NEED to learn a language is way lower if your mother tongue is in the top 5 - or top 10 languages of the world.
The only thing that is specific to French is that French & English have this weird shared history that makes the written langauges very similar and the oral languages very different. So a frequent compromise for french speakers is to become fluent enough at reading/writing, but quite bad at hearing/speaking.
You haven't. Francophones are different and way more elitist about their language.
I'm not gonna go in a long spree of anecdotes I've seen everyday.
Italian cantons usually focus on German and English, German rather learn English or Italian, French put up with English, and most stop learning the other official languages after the school year where they are compulsory.
Naturally a bit of stereotype, and each as a different experience.
Everyone always forgets Romansh...
This is wrong. In cities where there's a lot of tourism, they might understand. Most Swiss people only speak their local languages (German or French). As for those living in Ticino, they tend to be better polyglots.
About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].
Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.
[1]: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun...
We learn the other's respective language for 7 years, too. Yet, as you pointed out, people speak in English because there is no willingness to learn and apply the other's language.
Some of my friends speak English fluently, but I have a very hard bias as I work in IT. My whole family doesn't speak any language other than French. Most of the people I've been to school with don't come close to speaking English casually. None would watch an English content creator.
Due to the shared heritage between the English and German languages, perhaps it's different in the German-speaking region. If you ask someone slightly complicated English questions, they might not be completely lost - after all, some words share the same etymology. But Switzerland is absolutely not an English-speaking country at all.
But yes, I can mostly speak of the German-speaking part. People generally have little problems switching to English, and are used to speaking as well.
Many older people I know have no problems communicating in English when they‘re abroad.
Would be interesting to have the BFS statistics split by age group and region as well…
There are also other factors at play. Montréal has a fairly large community of native English speakers and receives a lot of tourism from Anglophone Canada and the United States due to its status as the largest city in Québec (and second largest in Canada). It also gets a lot of immigrants, many of which are (at least initially) more proficient in English than in French.
I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English. It also doesn't border any English-speaking countries. It seems English is mostly used as a lingua franca for communication between citizens who don't otherwise share a language rather than due to the direct presence of native Anglophones. Also, Romansh aside, all national languages of Switzerland (French, German and Italian) are spoken in areas that directly border a country where that language is the national language (France, Italy, Germany/Austria). With Switzerland being in the Schengen Area, its linguistic regions may be considered to be part of a much larger individual linguistic communities, which I feel may also diminish the need to learn other languages.
The language of French Switzerland is French. You'll never hear German, Italian, or Romansch. If you only spoke German and not French or English, you really couldn't live there very effectively (only places like Bern or Basel are truly multi-lingual), yes you'll get your official docs in German but then what? I assume the same is true in German speaking Switzerland, and I have no idea about Italian Switzerland.
If a Swiss German and Swiss French met for coffee, what language do you think they would wind up speaking? Perhaps English if neither had comfortable fluency in the other language. Not to take away from your point, but English can get you really far in this world.
Until they think you're a tourist. If they hear you speak another language than English and you seem like you're a tourist, then almost every Quebecer will try his best to speak English even if it means using hand and feet to communicate.
But if they think even for a second that you're actually Canadian, then outside Montreal and even in some parts of Montreal you will be met with the full force of Quebecois pride and nationalism and you better speak French to them.
You definitely won't get 'Southern Charm' or small town feel in NYC. Of course, trying to nail down what exactly is American is gonna be hard to do.
I would definitely not say that if you go to Tokyo you can get the Japanese experience. You get some of it, of course but to say you can get a grasp or even a handful of understanding without ever seeing rice fields and gardens interspersed with houses, beaches with people fishing and immediately turning the catch into sashimi, towns where nothing new has been built since the bubble...
You can't see and feel that in the hustle and bustle, where everyone moves to get away from having neighbors who know all about you, where night is erased by the neon glow.
This is true but also because the US is geographically and culturally diverse this is impossible in any given city. And that applies equally to none-touristy cities. You're not going to get a broad sense of America from Oklahoma City, either.
The smaller and more homogeneous the country, the easier it is to generalize and get a sense from even a single sample point.
Montreal, never mind tourism, is more English than the rest of Quebec. Depending on which part you're in nobody bats an eye if you don't speak French to them.
In other parts of Montreal and definitely in the rest of Quebec, big city or not, you better speak French unless they think you are a tourist. You can be out in the Beauce but if you look, act and speak like a (non Canadian) tourist they suddenly try their best at English. Quebec City is definitely a city and representative of the rest of Quebec with regards to language (minus tourists). Montreal much less so. There are a bunch of small towns across Quebec that are also very English.
That exists in other provinces as well, where things are very French in the middle of an English speaking province. Acadia comes to mind. Manitoba has some French parts.
> Swiss German (Standard German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwiizerdütsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch Mundart, and others; Romansh: Svizzers Tudestg) is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy bordering Switzerland.
All Swiss-German is an Alemannic dialect, not all Alemannic dialects are Swiss-German, is how I'd interpret that.
I find kind of ironic that I have better fluency between the official languages than many of my Swiss friends and work colleagues.
My anecdotal evidence of watching TikTok usage on others’ phones while riding subway systems in Paris suggest there’s plenty of English-language content out there.
For instance my partner sees almost only spanish content, and a huge majority is from latin america.
We are living in Europe.
I would lean for the latter, the simple explanation may be that people just prefer local content.
So essentially both I guess?
Mastodon only had the raw feed and that drove European network operators insane, so much so that they effectively GFW'd itself.
English is used as a lot as a fallback language for inter-cultural exchanges. In that sense it's kind of dominating, but that's it. Intra-cultural communications happens in local languages, and even if that preferred language happened to be one of en-* locales, that only means everyone is functionally bilingual, and it doesn't mean cultural informational borders don't exist. Data still only goes through bridging connections.
This is the inverse to the situation you describe but it makes me doubtful that non-US don't see a lot of American content.
You can even find guides by people trying to make their phone seem american so they can reach us audiences.
Very common for ppl to be served Chinese or asian influencer content after 12pm (EST). So common, in fact, most of the western users begin posting "whelp, time to go to bed!"
The majority of the content feels regional, though.
Or is this like a general US freedom China dictator logic
What matters is that it has the __capability__ of doing it, in ways that would be difficult to detect, when it proves expedient to do so.
This is just not true. There are objective facts eg. the earth is round. We can all agree on this, and any information to the contrary should be banned.
The majority of us agree that racism is bad for society. Racist content should be banned.
Yes there are always going to be humans who think the earth is flat or has a core of cheese, but these people can be relegated to the fringes of society.
The earth isn't round in many ways. It's vaguely spheroid but not a sphere and it has a rough shaped surface.
> We can all agree on this, and any information to the contrary should be banned.
If we can all agree then there is no need to ban anything. By definition, bans for information are means to suppress those who don't agree.
> The majority of us agree that racism is bad for society.
On the contrary, the majority seems to be very happy with racism. They just don't agree who you can be racist towards.
> Racist content should be banned.
I'd rather not have you or anyone else decide what is too racist to say. Especially when existing inforcement shows that "racism" often includes factual but inconvenient information. I do not support banning facts.
> Yes there are always going to be humans who think the earth is flat or has a core of cheese, but these people can be relegated to the fringes of society.
There are many more people that have much more reasonable (and often provably true) views but are going to be targetted with the speech policing your kind wants.
See this 2019 article outlining Chinese Communist moderation policies that (obviously) were attached to the app when TikTok was new, but were removed for non-Chinese user communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
And it's quite easy to steer it towards a certain topic if you want to
No need. If it’s Chinese and has more than 100mm (EDIT: 1mm) users, Commerce can designate it a foreign-adversary controlled application and designate it for app-store delisting.
Also, I wonder who is the foreign-based "reviews" site that lobbied for the exclusion clause immediately following that?
https://www.congress.gov/118/plaws/publ50/PLAW-118publ50.pdf
[1] https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521ih....
As in Mao's Little Red Book - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34932800
It feels like a joke, and if you can somehow create enough space to actually see the humor in it, its kind of funny.
0. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
Maybe then we will see we are all more alike than we are different
The irony is that China bans essentially all US social media. I guess these users don’t care a ton their selfish bans?
As per Mitt Romney, it was banned because TikTok contained too much anti-Israel content (remember, the push for the ban became really strong very soon after Oct 7 when the genocide began)
Source: https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1787288209963290753
Americans want freedom of speech without interference from the US government.
TikTok was banned because of sharing anti-zionist videos documenting the genocide of Palestinians.
I call bullshit.
Americans on red book are surprised to see the actual life in China and are shocked how different it is from american MSM propaganda about China, you can find plenty of these threads on Twitter how tiktok refugees are amazed by how brainwashed they were by US mass media
What in the actual hell, why wouldn't they go to one of the various other free sites that isn't controlled by such an obvious bad actor? Unless of course they don't care at all about that and they're really being quite dumb.
And yes, of course real life in China is different than that displayed in corporate US media. Real life in France, Australia, Nigeria and Svalbard are all different than what is displayed there too. None of that makes it a good idea to be so outrageously stupid as to adopt such a platform.
US however, if it has data on US users, has all the means to cause harm to US users, starting from censorship and persecution.
UK and Germany for example are jailing people for social media posts
https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...
More like jailing people for inciting riots by repeatedly and vehemently posting proven wrong information. Freedom of speech is great and all, but you are advocating for freedom from consequences
You cannot jail people for their thoughts. Unless a person is physically present in public and is inciting violence in person, they do not violate anything
Anyways, those alternatives are not so algorithmically driven, and especially if it's forcing actual user interaction and discussion that certainly would be good for Americans to understand what the mainland Chinese are really thinking and saying domestically. Because if you go to the actual main discussion forums like Weibo, oh boy it's not going to be pretty.
For whom? UK users?
TikTok users who use the Chinese version are not consuming content from US creators. They won't notice this ban at all.
Literally every TikTok user from around the world? There's more than just the US, UK, and China, y'know.
Also, TikTok is banned in India and—ironically—China [1].
That country’s creators belong to the largest native-speaking bloc of the most-commonly spoken language (native or not) in the world.
That’s at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers.
Canada, UK, US, is where you find the bulk of native speakers. In say Germany or whatever they may become fluent but it’s relatively rare for parents to be speaking English to each other in casual conversation.
Not how a lingua franca works.
There are 1.5 to 2 billion English speakers [2]. By far the largest number of people to speak a single language. Most of them are in America. (If you count English learners, No. 2 is China [3].)
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/articl...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236986651_The_stati...
first language = A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth
[1] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/pages/stat/default.a...
> Plurality of the world ... speak English
Sorry, what point are you trying to make?
While that has consistently been their point, it's also wrong.
Their bar for "speaking English" is "Native Language". Absolutely no one uses that as a bar when talking about how many people can consume content in $LANGUAGE.
> 1/3 of the global population is at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers.
1/3 of the population speaks English “at all” (by which they mean speaking fluently, not learning) and 380 million people (roughly 5% of the population) is native.
Not trying to throw shade at anyone but it’s really... not hard for a reader to pause a little when one reads something that sounds wrong; it’s possible the reader misread. It’s even in the guidelines under different words:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
There was a lot of failure to follow to this guideline in this comment thread.
But this number is dubious as it's largely from self response. Here [2] is a list by country. So 25% of Thais, 50% of Ukrainians, 50% of Poles, and so on "speak English."
In the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true. But "my name is Bob" maketh not a common tongue. If we narrowed it down to the percent of people that could hold a basic conversation, the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
70% of Chinese speak Mandarin as a first language [1].
> the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true
This is English learners. If you count English learners, a third of Chinese speak English and a majority of the internet-connected world.
China's also been pushing Mandarin lately and claim 85%.
...
> there’s only 380 million native English speakers.
So? Having only 1/3 of the planet speak English natively is not the same as 2/3 of the planet not speaking English at all.
As for people who learned it later, even in Europe, only about 40% self-identify as being able to speak English. If you visit places like China or Indonesia, you'll soon notice that very few people know more than a few basic words in English once you leave the tourist areas.
Only about 60 million Nigerians speak English. Hausa is the most commonly spoken native language. Just because English is the official language doesn't mean that it's people's native language.
I'm not just making stuff up. The 400 million number is from The Ethnologue, a source which linguists generally consider as reliable.
No you don’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria
~60 million people in Nigeria speak English out of 230 million people, but that 60 million isn’t almost exclusively native speakers.
Not all Nigerians can speak English. But there are a lot who can. It honestly felt about 50/50 to me. And I see some other commenters saying that 60 million Nigerians have some ability to speak it. (But you need to think of that like if I was to say 60 million Americans have some ability to speak Spanish.)
However, even for those with some facility with English,I don't know that I'd classify it as their native language.
Of that 1/3 a significant percentage have extremely limited skills, though the threshold is above knowing a few random words.
wikipedia. You are a bit off...
As for native you have US+UK+Canada+Australia+NZ+Ireland. So more then your 380M.
Where does it state this?
Do you assume that all immigrants are non-native english speakers?
There are also some native born Americans to immigrants who also don’t have English as their first language and People born in China whose first language is English, but that’s ever smaller refinements on a specific estimate.
> ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country.
Your link says 46M total which includes native speakers. So it does not state how many non-native speakers. (not that it would matter as most would be proficient english speakers, just pointing out you're exagerating and your numbers are wrong)
“About 47.8 million immigrants in 2023” https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-...
That said, the English-speaking world clearly extends well beyond the US and English commonwealth countries nowadays. Also, a lot of videos don't have any dialogue and can also cross the language barrier.
The what now? There are no Chinese nationals using TikTok. It's banned there. Like it's now banned in the US.
If you are in Brazil or the Philippines or Germany, you're using TikTok.
But there's a biger issue than loss of American content should this come to pass: the loss os American ad revenue for the platform and creators. A lot of people create content aimed at Americans because an American audience is lucrative for ad revenue. If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?
Trump can blame Biden and move on.
> If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?
Bytedance makes most of its money from Douyin.
He has a major donor who owns part of Bytedance. They’re not losing their investment with this ban.
2. Bytedance will certainly lose value if its main product loses one of its main markets.
He also has a daughter who is the only American to hold patents in China without having to license IP to a Chinese company.
We are about to see some strange mental gymnastics out of 1600 Penn.
And yet..
He kind of sat out this election cycle (despite being a major Democrat donor previously) because I guess he saw where the wind is blowing…
TikTok-based social media campaigns also e.g. managed to unexpectedly swing an election in Romania (for Georgescu, was later annulled).
[1] https://www.absatzwirtschaft.de/tiktok-vs-instagram-ein-verg... - sorry, I only found a German source
This specific campaign was done via TikTok, though, and had massive impact, which shows that TikTok has heavy usage and is popular, outside of the US and China.
(I'm not American, I have no horse in this "ban foreign TikTok" race. :D)
Why they've done it via TikTok - I simply don't know. :D
Maybe better discoverability via the For You page?
maybe next Christmas if I'm not on the Santa naughty list
China has had such social networks for a long time. Their Weibo and Xiaohongshu are two prominent examples. Weibo started as a copycat of Twitter, but then beats Twitter hands-down with faster iterations, better features, and more vibrant user engagement despite the gross censorship imposed by the government.
My guess is that TT can still thrive without American content, as long as other governments do not interfere as the US did. A potential threat to TT is that the US still has the best consumer market, so creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization, thus snatching away TT's current user base in other countries.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/chinese-app-rednote-hits-1-i...
It's called Dispo. You probably haven't heard of it because it became almost irrelevant a few weeks after launch. #1 on the app store doesn't mean a whole lot.
It may not retain all the new users, but it is not going to become irrelevant.
My experience in the UK is that the whole Chinese community is on it for anything (discussions, classifieds...) instead of Facebook, Insta, etc.
Seems people are already mass migrating to Rednote. I’m not sure how that plays out though.
For many it was a revelation that the US government/media complex has been systematically lying to them about China. They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho.
However I think that the US-based population of Tiktok refugees will subside once the novelty effect has worn off. Probably shrink by half in a month. Hopefully there will remain a positive lingering effect.
The rational and data-based take is that the CCP censors negative content about China on Red Book. See [1], [2] and [3] from David Zhang, and you can verify this on your own.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LKR8-AxFvJY
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4tMxW77lFBA
[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/N65jFr061_o
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290627.shtml
> They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho.
Try making this comment about China in Red Book and see how long it lasts.
Can you post a video about use of gutter oil in China on Red Book? You can post a video about drug use in SF on Twitter and not get banned.
Because "developing nation" status confers certain exemptions and benefits.
China is ruthless about (ab)using every possible trick in the rulebook to take and hold the higher ground, this is just one such example.
Because overall, China is still much poorer than the developed world (Western Europe, USA, Japan, etc.).
China has some amazing infrastructure and beautiful cities, and many cities, like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, are now quite developed, but on the whole, the country still has a ways to go.
> The rational and data-based take is that the CCP censors negative content about China on Red Book. [...] Can you post a video about use of gutter oil in China on Red Book?
There is heavy censorship in China, but there's also heavy propaganda about China in the US. Case in point: the videos you linked to come from Falun Gong media, run by a Scientology-like cult that somehow has tons of money (maybe from a 3-letter agency) to spread their own propaganda in the US.
Yes, but it's also singularly focused on its core experience rather than being a bolted-on experience that is confusingly blended into an ecosystem where it's not the primary experience.
Instagram Reels is a bit better but it feels very "sanitized" and fake.
I can let Spotify play on its own for hours and it will be just right...Even with songs I know nothing about, it's just very good.
I tried Tik Tok once and I could see how easily it could pick content.
But Youtube and Youtube Music are a disaster. Youtube Music is a decent service, but it's hard to get suggested anything really.
Youtube Shorts are a disaster. Sure I like the Sopranos, I find some Joe Rogan's interview interesting and sure I like the NBA, but that's virtually all it feeds me, even if I start scrolling away to other topics.
OTOH, with tiktok I got surprised of how much "viral content" is tailored to me. I mean in the sense that I get a huge amount of videos from different trends from different creators, that indicates should be a big thing but then I realize that people around me, heavy tiktok users, barely get recommended or even not aware of.
It would be pretty cool if there was a respectable capitalist with enough money, or if that won't do it then a bigger more-respectable political organization or something, and Tiktok would be nothing but a memory of how things used to be before they got better.
Think about it, a social force or financial pressure strong enough to reverse unfavorable trends, even after they have already gained momentum.
And all it takes is focusing that pressure in an unfamiliar direction that could probably best be described as "anti-enshittification".
I know, that's a tall ask, never mind . . .
It also seems… sort of bad if an individual has the ability to be strong enough to reverse a social trend, right? So we basically would have to expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence. In general it is unreasonable to expect individuals to be so enlightened as to work against their own existence, I think.
Could very well be why Tiktok appeared to begin with, as the original owner's mission.
You're right, anyone who replaced it would most likely have the same mission.
Otherwise,
>expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence.
Yeah, that won't happen.
Very few could afford it anyway, probably only the usual suspects.
Ah, so Confucius say "Enshittification will be its own reward".
I guess that's as enlightened as things are going to get :\
Cash bribes are how laws are define now. Is america avaluable audiemce?
(I'm asking about the lived experience outside of the political questions around who should decide what we see / access online.)
EDIT: Thank you for the replies! Interesting. I'm still wondering if most people use TikTok just for passive entertainment? I don't love Youtube, but it's been a huge learning and music discovery resource for me.
The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes but I don't have an account.
Other's have said it; but TikTok was such a nice format for media. It emphasized what the creator can provide its users; what content was legit; entertaining, informative, etc.
Whereas Instagram and FB are more about personal "branding". You post the best version of yourself and it's rewarded with engagement. Where on TikTok the emphasis is on the content; even creators I follow and have seen dozens of videos on I couldn't tell you what their account name was.
On TikTok you put up or you were shut up.
The experience, in the end, was always on point for shortform content. Nothing else like it exists; and I don't think American tech can make it because they benefit too much from being ad networks. Maybe YouTube shorts.
I'm kinda OK with my kids using Youtube, but I don't want them getting sucked into the infinite pool of shit that is Shorts. But I can't block it even with parental controls.
another reason i hate internet becoming predominantly app-mediated.
All of them are so bad it's not worth it.
Because YT is longform content and the UI isn't a scrolling feed it's OK. I appreciate the different-ness than TikTok (which is why YouTube shorts is kind of annoying actually)
TikTok's algorithm gives you more of what you like, too. But it also feeds you just... random stuff. Content adjacent to your hobbies. Or content that seems to be somewhat popular with people who frequent the niches you frequent. Feeding you a lot of uninteresting videos is low risk; user's still appreciate the variety even when the algo isn't on point.
"My algo has gone off the deep end" is a common trope amongst TikTok users. Bc every now and then TikTok would pull in a lot of new/unrelated stuff for you to check out. And you just scroll by the stuff that isn't of interest. This is how its algo gets good; it's a UX heuristic as much as an algo one.
It's an important distinction because it exposes users to new content, which is fun. YT doesn't do that as much, so YT's content recs can be dull as paint some times.
How does TikTok make money?
Have you used Instagram Reels? It's nearly the exact same thing.
There is very little original creator content in there, it's all semi-professional "influencers" doing heavily scripted skits or just plain stolen stuff (vertical versions of TV shows, movies, stand-up sets etc)
Probably because you clearly don’t spend any time on it. It’s just as effective once it learns.
>You can’t pause videos
Yes you can. You tap and hold.
>can’t download them
Yes you can. Send (airplane) icon > download
>can’t use copyrighted music
The restrictions are the exact same as TikTok. Reels also has a massive library of licensed music.
>the comments are awful and full of bullying and hate and anger
It’s literally the exact same as TikTok - lots of low IQ people saying low IQ things.
Sooo…yeah, you’re pulling everything you just said out of your ass. Rationalization is a hallmark of addiction.
I guess a duopoly is better than a monopoly...
At what point will there be a reaction from industry? From government? I guess there's no reaction point for users. Would China or RedNote try to enforce any of this?
scrolls past 10 temu adds for clearly pirated retro game consoles, same comment 9 times "oh if you bought X last week I feel sorry its not 50% off!!!"
I'll probably continue trying to use the app if possible since I mostly connect with Japanese content, but I will say there's also a fun world of Japanese creators who straddle the English and Japanese speaking words who are about to lose an outlet to the English speaking world, and I feel really bad for that too.
The "algorithm" is also just so much better than Reels and others. I spent an afternoon of PTO training my algorithm a couple years ago and it's been great ever since. My partner and I share TikToks with each other all the time and. we shape each other's algorithm and interests. Reels fixates too much on your follows and Youtube Shorts is honestly a garbage experience. Both platforms really reward creators building "brands" around their content rather than just being authentic or silly. I treat Reels as the place for polished creators or local businesses who are trying to sell me something and TikTok as the place for content. I find that I get a lot less ragebait surfaced to me than I do on other platforms, though I admit my partner gets more than I do. We both skip those videos quickly and that has helped keep this stuff off our FYP.
An important thing to remember is TikTok was one of the first platforms that was opt-in for short-form content. Both Reels and Shorts was foisted upon users who had different expectations of the network and as such had to deal with the impedance mismatch of the existing network and users who didn't want short-form content. TikTok's entire value proposition is short-form content.
It's by contrast to say, Youtube and X, where The Algorithm (tm) sustains a central Nile river of dominant creators and you're either in it or you're not.
That said, I think the political questions are rightly the dominant ones in this convo and those color my lived experience of it.
That said, the algorithm got noticeably worse after 2021. Maybe because of the TikTok shop. I’ve categorized around 3,000 clips into different collections (with 600+ being in “educational”) but that fell off over the last few years. I would be a lot more upset about the ban if they had maintained quality, but now I’m like well, whatever.
This is an extremely dramatic way of saying "they had a banner in the app which informed users of a policy that affected them and directed them to contact their representatives", something which plenty of other social media platforms, such as Reddit have done without controversy.
In the context of banning TikTok for this particular reason, then X.com, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are all equally guilty in how they both boost and suppress different types of content based on interference from local government.
The "sticky"-ness is real, but many will flock to the TikTok copies in other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, anyway.
Regardless, I enjoy the platform. It's fun to reference the viral sounds/trends on the platform with other friends that use it.
A sense of relief may be a coping mechanism. I've heard laid-off colleagues inform me they felt relief in the immediate aftermath; granted, the lay-offs were pre-announced before they communicated who would be "impacted", and it was at a high-pressure environment; but the human mind sometimes reacts in unexpected ways to loss outside of one's control. Rationalization is a mechanism for ego defense.
It did occur to me, which is why I couched my statement with "may". Though your framing is still compatible with "rationalization"
I found the tone of your comment needlessly - and weirdly combative.
I trust TikTok's "algorithm" to give me quick and entertaining short-bits about what's going on, what's interesting, etc. It learns what I'm into effortlessly, and I appreciate how every now and then it would throw in a completely new (to me) genera or type of content to check out. Whenever I open it, there is a feed that's been curated to me about things I'm interested in checking out, few new things that are hit or miss (and I like that), and very few infuriating/stupid (to me) things.
Its recommendation engine is the best I have used. It's baffling how shitty YouTube's algorithm is. I discover YouTube channels I'm into form TikTok. Sometimes I'd discover new (or old) interesting videos from YouTube channels I already follow from TikTok first. For example, I follow Veritasium and 3Blue1Brown on YouTube but I certainly haven't watched their full back catalog. YouTube NEVER recommends to me anything from their back catalog. When I'm in the mood, I have to go to their channel, scroll for a while, then try to find a video I'd be interested in from the thumbnail/title. And once I do, YouTube will re-recommend to me all the videos I have already watched from them (which are already their best performing videos). Rarely would it recommend something new from them.
On TikTok, it frequently would pull clips from old Veritasium or 3Blue1Brown videos for me which I'd get hooked after watching 10 seconds, then hob on YouTube to watch the full video. It's insane how bad YouTube recommendation algorithm is. Literally the entire "recommended" section of youtube is stuff I have watched before, or stuff with exactly the same content as things I have watched before.
Here is how I find their recommendation algorithm to work:
YouTube: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? Here is that video again, and 10 other "brisket smoking videos". These are just gonna be stuck on your home page for the next couple of weeks now. You need to click on them one by one and mark "not interested" in which case you're clearly not interested in BBQ or cooking. Here are the last 10 videos you watched, and some MrBeast videos and some random YouTube drama videos.
TikTok: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? How about another BBQ video, a video about smokers and their models, some videos about cookouts and BBQ side dishes, a video about a DIY smoker, another about a DIY backyard project for hosting BBQ cookouts, a video about how smoke flavors food, a video about the history of BBQ in the south, a video about a BBQ joint in your city (or where ever my VPN is connected from), etc. And if you're not interested in any of those particular types, it learns from how long you spend watching the video and would branch more or less in that direction in the future.
Another example is search. Search for "sci fi books recommendations":
YouTube: Here are 3 videos about Sci-Fi books. Here are 4 brisket smoking videos. Here are some lost hikers videos (because you watched a video about a lost hiker 3 weeks ago). Here are 3 videos about a breaking story in the news. Here are 2 videos about sci-fi books, and another 8 about brisket.
TikTok: Here is a feed of videos about Sci-Fi books. And I'll make sure to throw in sci-fi book videos into your curated feed every now and then to see if you're interested.
Its algorithm may be wonderful and useful but I don’t want short content in a watch-it-all feed.
I'm not just upset because I have a general dislike of being told I'm an idiotic, addicted, communist stooge who is easily brainwashed. I am used to folks telling me that- it started when I was writing anti-war editorials in the early oughts, so there is nothing new in that.
What I regret is that I have been following a number of quite-good political discussions on the platform, with a nicely diverse group of interlocutors.
While the discussion generally leans far left, there are many flavors of that left:
not a lot of tankies, mostly just people between "dirt bag left" and "black panther party", lots of women, BIPOC, trans folks, academics, working people, indigenous folks, queer folks of all stripes, activists, and folks who just don't like authority.
Those conversations had been very hard to come by on Yt, Ig, or Fb.
I think it's the response format for videos. I don't think it's worth bothering to speculate about other reasons, though I did note that several legitimate left news sources were shuttered in 2020 when Meta and Tw started their political purge.
Anyhow, I know that folks in the US have very little regard for political autonomy, so I am not surprised that this happens, and compared to the carceral state and the happy ecocide of the planet this is a very little thing. But I will still miss it.
It's unfortunate that more people can't see that it: 1. actually has some social value 2. banning it is a restriction on our freedom
Obviously, it's 3. mostly junk and brain rot 4. a potential tool for Chinese influence and manipulation
But I think we need to accept that 1 & 2 override 3 & 4. Honestly for 4, it's more important to have a widely used source that isn't necessarily subject to the same restrictions (legal or cultural) as US-based apps.
I think all the pro-Palestine content was what pushed it over the top, but I’m not 100% sure on the timeline given Trump started the conversation in 2020 and is now poised to win political points by saving the day.
All around a total mess, and a big loss for free speech.
I like living in a country where the government does not get to decide what I'm allowed to read/watch/see. The TikTok ban chips away at that in a meaningful way.
I value this above most other concerns, including vague worries about "Chinese spying".
technology is just like a tool. how people use it matters not the technology itself can be evil. tiktok's algorithm helps speed up information delivery to the people who likes it. eventually it helps to form a community of people online who like similar thing or have similar options. people needs to be aware of the content on any platform has "survivorship bias". seeing couple of examples is not representing the whole.
I had been exposed to DouYin before, but my first experience of TikTok in real life was someone at a party, holding their phone, exclaiming something along the lines of "I can't look away, it's so addictive." It was uncomfortable, and I'm aware of how fake this sounds, but it happened.
But I think this is very bad.
With Section 230 in crosshairs, EARN IT being reintroduced every year or two, and access to books and sites being fragmented across the US, things are very already bad, and have the potential to get much worse. TikTok being banned is censorship, and presents a significant delta towards more censorship.
Congress didn't just "ban TikTok", Congress banned its first social media. This is case law, this is precedent, this is a path for banning other social media apps.
I think this is bad because I think this is the start of something new and something bad for the internet.
I don't see it that way. I'm not American and I've never used TikTok.
I don't see any censorship here.
This is more of an ongoing power struggle between the US and China, tit for tat after they banned American apps.
Censorship would mean that they're banning actual content. That's not what's happening here. Any of the short form videos from TikTok can be hosted on several other video platforms, if the creators care to upload it.
Banning a platform is not censorship. It's like banning a book publishing house but allowing any other publisher to continue publishing their books.
It does appear that there is actual censorship, in the form of book banning, happening in several US states recently. But this ain't that.
Sure, you can repost TikTok content anywhere, but what people really notice when they recognize that tiktok's algorithm is unique—without realizing it—is that it's apolitical by default, and not-western when politics come into play. It actually shows you what you're interested in, instead of force-feeding western progressive/consumerist messaging and banning half its users for wrongthink.
So yeah, post the same content on Reels/Shorts if you want, but if it doesn't align with the western narrative, good luck with the shadowbans and downranking.
The west is committed to their own propaganda narrative, which explains the tiktok ban and the "inability" (unwillingness, really) to replicate the algorithm.
I'm not saying china is perfect. They do their own propaganda and narrative control. The west trying quite successfully to replicate THAT algorithm—authoritarianism and narrative control, corporations acting as arms of the state propaganda agencies, etc.
TikTok even put their algorithm workings out there in the internet, as part of public presentations, yet Google and Facebook being unable to replicate something that's anywhere close to performant compared to TikTok is evidence of the moat ByteDance has.
For years people would wax about Spotify's algorithm never being dethroned, but the anecdotes I'm seeing lately are that YouTube Music's algorithm is now far ahead of the pack.
If the algorithm is all TikTok had, they'd lose long term. See also Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
Tiktok's algorithm can't be copied in the West. What makes it "so good" isn't some technical secret—it's that it starts apolitical and remains politically non-committal. If you're not into politics, it won't push political content at you. If you are, it won't suppress conservative views or force-feed you western progressive narratives. If you change your political interests it won't continue to nudge you towards western progressivism or Conservatism™ or some mainstream "safe" brand of political discourse.
Western corporations won't replicate this because they're committed to embedding specific messaging in everything at all times to astroturf and force national culture shifts.
This understanding is sufficient to explain the motive behind the Tiktok ban as well as why no extremely well funded and highly motivated, intelligent corporations in the west can repeat tiktok's algorithm success.
Sounds a lot like censorship lite before the full fledged version ships.
The specific rationale upheld by SCOTUS and unenumerated in the law itself (it's only like two sentences, I would recommend just reading it) was based on national security concerns and level of scrutiny.
TikTok failed the criteria. US companies do not, and laws to ban them would have to use entirely separate methods which would face a far tougher SCOTUS test. (It's not like the Justices are falling over themselves to always agree on things, especially the current court.)
Banning US companies is just politically infeasible. But the Chinese issue is pretty bipartisan (right now).
Sure, but removing the platform still removes speech. This relies on all of the people saving and re-uploading their videos.
Imagine a scenario where you needed government and regulatory approval to create a new website. HackerNews, personal websites, etc. were all banned. Would it be okay, since you could repost all your comments and threads onto Facebook?
> Banning US companies is just politically infeasible. But the Chinese issue is pretty bipartisan (right now).
FOSTA and SESTA impacted US companies. It leakd to increased censorship on practically every social media platform.
The EARN IT Act is still a threat (unless Salt Typhoon, ironically, provided the proof necessary to show how vital e2ee is). It has also enjoyed bipartisan support, and backdooring encryption is harmful and does constitute censorship.
While I agree the legal specifics of the TikTok ban are meant to target TikTok, the political apparatus has been proven. Congress banning apps has been normalized.
No matter how you cut it, this is another big loss for the free and open internet, at a time when wins are far and few between.
After many years and dozens of tests and questionnaires and appointments with speech pathologists, occupational therapists and psychiatrists, she was formally diagnosed last year with Level 2 Autism (there are 3 levels here in Australia).
After years of being misdiagnosed with various forms of anxiety or depression (and none of those drugs or treatments being helpful for her), this has been life changing. So much of her early childhood and past life now suddenly makes sense.
We used to be very bad at diagnosing autism in girls
Last couple years I spent my media time watching trackmania and noita for the most part. These are just-games, but with rich interesting worlds behind them. I can’t imagine spending all this time watching a pig or people cutting bangs or someone lipsyncing or talking nonsense. Not judging, but it’s such mind disgracing activity in my view.
That aside I looked up trackmania and lmao
Thank you for this, I have always wondered what it was like to get yelled at by a stylite
The internet was supposed to be a global thing, where it didn't matter who you were and everyone could connect to everyone. That is the internet I grew up with.
The list really goes on and on, but these are some of the quick highlights that come to mind. Thanks for asking!
It’s a guilty pleasure in the dopamine sense, but also surfaces a lot of informative content if you bias towards that! I suppose it depends how you use it.
> Can you tell me why it will sting for you?
Imagine Hacker News without the comments.
> The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes
That's like saying Hacker News is just old links about useless stuff from other parts of the internet.
TikTok is more stochastic and is more likely to give wider circulation to niche and esoteric subjects. Booktok could never happen on YouTube shorts or Instagram.
Using those other platforms is like shouting into the wind. You could have videos up for years and not get 50 views. With TikTok, a random video could be seen by 250k people.
A corollary to other systems being so auto-regressive is that they are much more dangerous for vulnerable people. If Instagram decides to start showing you extremist or otherwise political content, that is all you will see. This is the "rabbit hole" effect that people have commented upon. This doesn't happen to the same degree with TikTok; while this content can be recommended, it's not all that will be recommended.
It shows an understanding and adoption of risk that most western social networks don't have, while they're too invested in supporting and reinforcing the status quo, TikTok has always felt a little more willing to find the edges of/expand your interests.
On IG and YouTube the algos are shoving "creators" in my face, which is fine sometimes. But TikTok surfaces randos whose only followers are their own family members, and they happen to be talking about something unique or funny in one video out of dozens that got only 2 views.
On IG and YouTube, the algos give me brightly lit faces, brightly lit homes, professional editing. On TikTok, I get people speaking quietly from their bed, or their recliner in what is obviously a trailer, or in the passenger seat of their car at Safeway, double-chinned and sleepy-eyed, saying something hilarious or just talking about their day or maybe sharing something they just realized.
On IG and YT, I get a video of someone falling on their face plastered with poorly worded captions and one or more logos for some social media company. On TikTok, I see the original video of that person falling on their face from the original account, and if you go to their account it's obviously just a real person who made a funny video by accident one time.
All the things that IG and YT force on me certainly exist on TikTok too, and you can surround yourself with that content if you like. But if you don't want that kind of content, TikTok lets you choose.
IG and YT don't give you that choice.
There is an additional separate issue that influencer is a coveted 'career' for many children (~30%), so not only would it wipe out many jobs it'll kill their dreams. I guess like cancelling the space program at a time when kids really wanted to be astronauts.
I think there is a lot wrong with society and TikTok is part of it - but that's a much longer discussion for some other time.
They can dream new dreams. I didn't become an astronaut—and realized I didn't actually want to become one, either.
I think we have to understand the reality that the economy today is not what it once was, not even close. I think a lot of people are looking to the influence trade since they see the corporate / political / economic future as failing them and they want to carve out something on their own while the getting is good and while they still can. Sure some just want to be famous but others appear to have a very realistic view of their prospects both as an influencer and elsewhere.
When I say "made" I mean "Earning six or even seven figures."
Crafts and art services were also doing well. And certain influencers, obviously.
It pretty much took over from Insta, which Meta somehow managed to shoot in the head with some of their algo changes.
So - politics aside - that community is pretty unhappy about this.
Dealing with this is going to be interesting insight into Trump's leanings.
The truth is that the recommendation engine is power and people drawn to power in the US were too quick to abuse it driving out the old hands - and once institutional knowledge is lost it's hard to get back.
The podcaster felt that with AI capabilities getting better day by day (maybe - that's another discussion) that this multi factor classification could be automated. It seems not to have been done yet AFAIK.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t hyper-optimized for monetization, though
Can't really disagree, but it's my favorite place to pirate fonts. Typing out site:vk.com <thing I want> feels like a real life cheat code.
Unclear. Biden and Trump both have stated that they will decline to enforce this law.
But then again Telegram survived and they had to resort to kidnapping the CEO so if it does survive the US pretty much gifted that space to a geopolitical adversary
But I'm pretty sure Langley/MD folk thought about this and are betting on it not surviving
This is a weird fantasy, but it brings up an interesting point. The complete lack of Chinese influence on global pop culture. Especially when compared to Japan or Korea, countries with a fraction of the population but many, many times the influence.
I wish the CCP didn't wall off their citizens from the rest of the world in the name of protecting their own power. Think of the creativity we are all losing out on.
That's soft power right there.
I've had to resort to watching anime on Netflix with Chinese dubs - anime is good because people actually talk slower and usually use simple language. When I watched Three Body (Chinese version) the dialogue was impenetrable lol
I think the simplicity of the humor is the reason.
I've never considered there to be one, although I'm open to the idea.
It's easy for me to recognize an Ameican pop culture or an Anglo pop culture, and the favor each show for certain imports over others, but those don't seem nearly so universal as your usage of "global pop culture" suggests.
Latin, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, French, Indian/South Asian, etc each represent huge "pop culture" markets of their own but also each have their own import biases.
Encountering a Chinese song playing a cafe in Latin America. A popular movie with global appeal. Or even people being aware of cultural trends. I feel like culturally, China is a bit of a black box.
Of course they have modernized, but most actual influence obtained thus fair (e.g. international olympic committees covering up investigations, stopping the NBA from venturing criticisms) has come from projection of soft power rather than being on the cultural cutting edge.
The CCP has tried to get their culture out there, it just has not been successful at the visually obvious scale of Japan or Korea. But their culture is definitely getting out there, and I think we often don't spot the Chinese influence on something unless some journalist finds out and writes an article about it.
Some of their influence is leveraged in business deals, with several movies being altered by the demand of the CCP, and these changes persisting in worldwide releases, not just the Chinese-released version of the movies.
Some of their influence is leveraged in video games- Genshin Impact is a famously successful Chinese game. There are some competitive Chinese teams in various pockets of e-sports too. Tencent also owns several video game developers, and occasionally uses their influence to change parts of a game to please the CCP.
There is a Chinese animation industry (print and video), and occasionally they get a worldwide success. I remember being surprised when I found out that "The Daily Life of the Immortal King" was Chinese- you can tell it isn't Japanese but lots of people guess that it is Korean.
It basically asks "Why can't China make a movie like this?" Kung Fu Panda was a love letter to Chinese culture, and it connected with people worldwide.
I think it comes down to government censorship. Art is expression and unapproved expression is seen as a threat to a dictatorship.
It makes me sad to think of all the Chinese art we have missed out on because of the insecurity of a government.
Most of the art, music, literature before the twentieth century were created under censorships of authoritarian regimes, and they don't lack vitality. Creativity often thrives under constraints.
The main difference is the classics were often created by a single person, while modern entertainment are created by large groups through industrial processes. The latter are capital-intensive, and investors are risk-averse. The bigger the market, the bigger the investments, the bigger the risks, and censorship is not insignificant a risk.
I think as the cost of production shrinks with technology, there will be an explosion of "high-production-value" works created by smaller groups or individuals, many from the "soft-authoritarian" countries. Traditional entertainment industries may gradually fade away, or pivot to some new medium.
> To protect the South Korean culture industry, the South Korean Ministry of Culture received a substantial budget increase, allowing for the creation of hundreds of culture industry departments in universities nationwide.[21] It has justified its financial support for Hallyu, estimated to be worth US$83.2 billion in 2012, by linking it to South Korea's export-driven economy.[22]
By contrast, there's now a very good k-drama with Lee Min-ho happening in space or the Gyeongseong Creature horror drama with Park Seo-joon.
I did see some good Chinese movies, mostly out of Hong Kong. Wong Kar-wai directed a bunch of good ones but they all predate Xi's regime and the takeover of HK.
One of my favourite contemporary artists is Ai Weiwei, who has gone missing in 2011 only to finally reappear four years later. I understand he now lives in Portugal. Got his book on my night stand, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.
And TikTok is banned in China.
There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about people travelling the most beautiful parts of China. Free for everyone to consume.
Chinese movies/shows just kind of suck, especially compared to the quality of Kdramas and anime.
To be honest, most of the movies/shows China creates sucks. They're Marvel-esque CGI fests with awful storylines.
Meanwhile, Japan and Korea are creating awesome media.
The whole narrative about the US gov trying to "hide" China isn't really true. There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about how great China is. And we welcome Chinese immigrants every year.
The real problem is that China itself doesn't execute when it comes to soft power.
since we're here, what are some of the least bad modern Sci-fi/Horror movies/TV shows from China?
Think of any industry and there is probably a Chinese competitor that is trying.
Tesla -> BYD
Google -> Baidu
Starbucks -> Luckin Coffee
IMAX -> China Film Giant Screen or maybe POLYMAX
Finally Disney -> Possibly Beijing Enlight Pictures
They released an animated film Ne Zha in 2019 that according to wikipedia was "the highest-grossing animated film in China,[16] the worldwide highest-grossing non-U.S. animated film,[17] and the second worldwide highest-grossing non-English-language film of all time at the time of its release. With a gross of over $725 million,[18] it was that year's fourth-highest-grossing animated film, and China's all time fourth-highest-grossing film.[19]"
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_Zha_(2019_film)
Some great info here [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU
Ok I'll admit part of the reason people don't hear about these companies is that they are still too half baked. But look at BYD, they started off producing junk but this Chinese mindset of grinding and rapid iteration has put them to be super successful today. Why couldn't that kind of happen with their Disney competitor?
Another thing that might be happening is the literal closing off of the world into two spheres. Western US led and Eastern Chinese led. As we are seeing with BYD, they are taking over all the non western markets(and some western as well) but the US has essentially slammed the door shut on them (they haven't actually but made it impossible to enter with their tariffs). Maybe the Disney competitor will take hold in the non western aligned world?
Honestly its a shame they are not open or democratic. The idea of watching or even being part of a rising country that is building their empire is fascinating to watch. Will they collapse due to demographics or these fundamental issues like communism or will they make it? Unfortunately for many people, the only option is to stick with the US and work to keep the ship afloat as there is no place for them in China.
But at the same time they have eclipsed the west in certain industries such as commercial nuclear. That mentality is there in their industries that havent met the par yet and that was a major point I was making in my previous comment.
As far as I understand, they originally licensed the AP1000 but expanded upon the design enough that they have ownership over the new design and they use that now.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#Reactor...
We also see it in BYD. The Seagull is a symphony of cost efficiency and vertical integration that western companies are now studying.
Censorship is the enemy of art.
Chinese cultural (and censor) sensibilities are why big budget US movies are almost universally boring and terrible these days. Authoritarian societies aren’t exactly known for creating good art.
One should not throw around ignorant blanket statements. There's a wealth of amazing Chinese language movie made outside of Hong-Kong, and yes, good artists can exist under authoritarian regimes, a prominent example of which would be Soviet cinema and literature.
Hah, but in 3D fantasy animation - called Donghua - China has every other nation beat handily - even Japan. There are 3D Chinese animations shows like "Soul Land" and "Battle Through The Hewavens", "Swallowed Star", etc that a significant number of people watch all over the world.
In any case: that manhua is one of the least bad stories, but the singular focus on "advancing to the next level" (incredibly popular in Chinese stories, for some reason) gets quite dull after a while. It's just that "Soul Land" manages to somewhat mask it; reading much of anything else Chinese is like going up an endless staircase (get trashed; level-up; reclaim face by trashing the baddies; loop).
You can find them both on youtube under tencent animation. And a dozen free sites. Here is a Google Drive Link to 4k episodes of Soul Land 2
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lfIz6Sie2-0D58d6DPCH...
Tiktok america is over 50% of tiktok revenue I think that more than anything else would choke out growth world wide.
TikTok does not exist in China, they have their own version -- Douyin -- that complies with their more stringent privacy laws.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/biden-administration-quiet...
As of January 2025, the countries with the most TikTok users are:
Indonesia: Has the most active users with 157.6 million
United States: 120.5 million
Brazil: 105.2 million
Mexico: 77.5 million
Vietnam: 65.6 million
Pakistan: 62.0 million
Philippines: 56.1 million
Russian Federation: 56.0 million
Thailand: 50.8 million
Bangladesh: 41.1 million
American social media culture revolves around money and sex in a way that isn't as popular in Korea/Japan/S. Asia—roughly speaking, the original scope of TikTok's userbase, since Douyin has always kept Chinese users separate.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of garbage social media content in Asia, but it's more boomers and gen-z era that consume hentai/money flexing/politics/etc., so that nonsense was almost completely absent in the early days of TikTok, when the users were mostly Asian teenagers and young adults trading choreography, in-jokes, and showing off their video editing skills.
American dominance in english speaking media is really tiresome.
Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries.
Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content.
Will it keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?