[HN Gopher] TikTok Remix Culture
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TikTok Remix Culture
Author : demail
Score : 301 points
Date : 2021-05-15 00:06 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| gdubs wrote:
| I'm pretty blown away by how ... vibrant TikTok is. There's so
| many interesting niches. Photography, film making, philosophy,
| humor. I love seeing random accounts with 300 likes and then
| they're million-plus a few weeks later. Like the guy who asks
| people with fancy cars what they do for a living.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Every niche except moderate or conservative politics. They are
| incredibly aggressive with censorship, along the same lines
| (progressive views) as the other platforms, but with even less
| transparency. It's hard for me to feel comfortable with their
| success in garnering massive network effects when they suppress
| some ideologies and are okay with others.
| paulv wrote:
| I know a significant number of progressive users that
| frequently get their videos taken down or have some videos
| "shadowbanned" where the engagement metrics are dramatically
| different than even their non-popular videos.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| One basic complaint I have about TikTok is their lack of
| transparency with bans. TikTok recently banned Amala
| Ekpunobi (https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/26/tiktok-
| blacklists-gen-z...) and no reason was given. The same
| thing happened to PragerU's account not long ago. I know
| PragerU has a bad reputation and is hated by the political
| left, but the majority of their videos are reasonable and
| fully sourced - I just don't think they deserve that kind
| of ban.
|
| Ultimately I don't like massive tech platforms controlling
| what information can and can't reach the rest of society.
| At their scale, they have the power to propagandize by
| suppressing and amplifying select information, and they
| can't be trusted with it.
| user982 wrote:
| Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| no offense but have you considered the simpler explanation,
| that conservative politics on a platform of short-form video
| for 20-30 year olds isn't going to be very popular
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Doesn't it get tiring constructing some imaginary
| victimization conspiracy? If they're getting banned for
| "conservative politics," they're probably not talking about
| small government or lower taxes. We all know what they're
| talking about.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > Doesn't it get tiring constructing some imaginary
| victimization conspiracy?
|
| Why are you dismissing what I have observed as a
| "victimization conspiracy"?
|
| > We all know what they're talking about.
|
| What am I talking about?
|
| --
|
| This is Hacker News, so please don't bring this type of
| confrontational dialog to the conversation. If you have
| something substantial to add, go ahead. But opening your
| comment with an ad hominem attack against me is not
| helpful.
| zerowangtwo wrote:
| It's crazy how he (Daniel Mac) has gotten all these connections
| with rich people just by asking some questions for a tiktok
| akkawwakka wrote:
| It's definitely a fount of creativity! Maybe it's all the Gen
| Zers but it's also the least toxic social network around.
| There's so much joyful content there.
| rapsey wrote:
| It is probably the most heavily moderated social network. It
| is I think also something that must have been created by
| someone not from the US. Americans belief in free speech also
| means you get a lot of bad with the good. TikTok surgically
| removes the bad.
| akkawwakka wrote:
| The moderation is a definite net positive. Though those
| with political viewpoints opposite a given user and anti-
| vaxxers have abused the stringent moderation to wantonly
| get videos taken down or users' live stream disabled.
| Growing pains.
| gundmc wrote:
| > The moderation is a definite net positive.
|
| Their moderation was effective at growing the platform,
| but pretty horrific in its own right.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21181496/tiktok-ugly-
| poor...
| rapsey wrote:
| You definitely have your own definition of horrific.
| [deleted]
| biztos wrote:
| The car guy (Daniel Mac) is awesome but the answers make me
| feel like I don't understand how money works.
|
| So many people doing things I would not have thought pay as
| well as software work, and they're all driving McLarens with
| doors that open like this!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oV4IVy8tvE
| moron4hire wrote:
| I gotta say, to all the people complaining about TikTok being
| nothing but underaged girls twerking to hiphop music: if that's
| all you're seeing, it's cuz you went looking for it. My TikTok
| stream is pretty much nothing but D&D, blacksmithing (that's a
| new one, not really sure where that came from, but I like it) and
| some ginger in a bulldozer in Massachussets yelling at his phone.
| contriban wrote:
| I keep skipping and rejecting male model videos and I keep
| seeing them. Are you saying TikTok is reading my mind deeper
| than I can access it?
| joeberon wrote:
| Agreed, mine is all electric guitar and music production stuff
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Tiktok has replaced tv for me. I can watch some fun content for
| 20 minutes before bed and go back to my life. No more 45 minute
| commitments to watch a series.
| contriban wrote:
| I hate that. I noticed I developed this pattern over years of
| consuming short content online. Why start a big task (or even
| watch a movie) when there's this 5 minute video (repeated over
| 20 videos). TikTok takes this to the extreme with 5-second
| videos that keep your mind busy without ever having to make a
| choice. This is addiction and I had to delete TikTok like I
| deleted YouTube and Facebook. Now Instagram got reels too and
| I'm stuck in it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah, why read books when you can read online articles? Why
| even read longreads when you can read summaries? Why read a
| summary when there's a Tweet thread? Why read when you can
| listen to the audio of a YouTube video you're not even
| looking at? And so on and on and on. There's an insidiousness
| to online media that seems even worse than how TV used to be.
| At least TV, radio, and print were all clearly separate
| mediums. Now it's all hypertext, equally evanescent.
| pm90 wrote:
| I love Tiktok but I do also enjoy watching well produced long
| form TV.
|
| I've noticed that having a diversity in my information diet is
| somewhat nice. Lots of [podcasts, twitter], less of [TikTok,
| news] and more rarely (unfortunately) books.
| herpderperator wrote:
| I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a
| public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from
| seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't
| usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action,
| and that may eventually drive them to sign up.
|
| It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly
| and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in
| some way. Instagram, Reddit, Twitter etc all bother you from the
| very second you load the page with modals and banners bullying
| you into signing up or getting their mobile app, if they let you
| see anything at all.
|
| [0] https://www.tiktok.com/foryou
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I clicked and immediately got a modal saying that TikTok is
| better in the app and I had to click X to go to the page.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| The point is that you could click the X and still get the
| page. Others don't let you do that anymore.
| sjg007 wrote:
| You probably can identify someone without an account these
| days. So for some applications you really only need one of you
| want to post and even then I bet you can get away without one.
| otoburb wrote:
| >> _It means people who wouldn 't usually have the mobile app
| can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually
| drive them to sign up.
|
| It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly
| and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage
| in some way._
|
| This is the typical freemium cost structure amped up because
| endless video streams for the free (anonymous) tier resulting
| in higher peak-load operating costs (bandwidth & compute). In
| exchange, TikTok enjoys higher virality which they hope will
| translate into higher aggregate (but lower relative percentage)
| sign-up conversion rates.
| contriban wrote:
| It's great to occasionally see success stories from companies
| that break the mold and can be used as examples a-la-
| Craigslist. Without them we're forever stuck with "I know that
| a signup lightbox on first visit is ugly, but it converts!"
| tyingq wrote:
| Though, sadly, things like Facebook Marketplace are eating
| nice sites like craigslist: https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/Sim...
| xmprt wrote:
| I don't know if I'd call craigslist a nice site. I know it
| checks all the boxes that HN loves but when I'm trying to
| buy something simple from the site, I'd rather not have to
| give the seller my email and/or phone number. Last I
| checked, there was no way to message on the website itself.
| atatatat wrote:
| No, give them what's statistically your real name and a
| full profile with many of your personal connections
| detailed on it.
|
| Huh?
| tylorr wrote:
| In my experience craigslist has always used a dummy email
| address between you and the seller. Neither person would
| see the real email address of the other. Of course, I'd
| eventually hand over my phone number to make
| communication easier.
| benbristow wrote:
| Facebook Marketplace doesn't have a UI that came out of the
| 90s. No wonder.
|
| Also isn't restricted to cities, plays nicely in smaller
| towns.
|
| In the UK we also have Gumtree, which is like Craiglist but
| with a nicer UI - https://www.gumtree.com/
| russellendicott wrote:
| I prefer 90s UIs
| zerocrates wrote:
| Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more
| aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account.
|
| For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars
| will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media
| accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content.
| I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get
| a wall requiring login immediately.
|
| It's possibly/probably worse because I'm often doing this in
| incognito mode, which tends to make everything more
| aggressively naggy. Twitter seems to be fairly random as to
| when they'll let you, say, view replies or media or something
| without requiring login, while Reddit is basically fine on
| desktop (even better in the "old" mode) and a dystopian
| nightmare on mobile.
|
| Pretty much everything "big" is much much worse on the mobile
| web, I guess because they figure they stand a pretty good shot
| at getting you to get _The App_ instead. It sucks.
| Cream-Corn-11 wrote:
| This is why I use bibliogram mirrors to view Instagram posts.
| strogonoff wrote:
| > Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more
| aggressive in not letting you view anything without an
| account. <...> Pretty much everything "big" is much much
| worse on the mobile web, I guess because they figure they
| stand a pretty good shot at getting you to get The App
| instead. It sucks.
|
| Those are two separate issues. Almost all features of
| Instagram, except for interactive widgets in stories, are
| available from the web (doesn't matter mobile or desktop).
| Like with Facebook, I chose to not install the actual app on
| my new phone, but I do fire up their web versions sometimes.
| Considering the extent of functionality, Instagram actually
| works really smoothly, and I hear the same about FB's non-
| basic web version. Though yes, they do require an account.
|
| Speaking of Twitter, it also works well from the web (albeit
| with no support for their equivalent of stories), but
| curiously they block VPNs (or perhaps just EC2 IP ranges) in
| a way that completely breaks _some_ of the site (such as user
| profiles).
| reader_1000 wrote:
| > Almost all features of Instagram, except for interactive
| widgets in stories, are available from the web (doesn't
| matter mobile or desktop).
|
| Not exactly. When viewed in desktop browser, photo upload
| is not avaiable and you need to use developer tools to
| simulate mobile web browser view which is a workaround.
| Also, even in mobile web, you cannot upload more than one
| photo, even though this functionality exists in the app.
| These are very fundamental features of instagram, I think
| these are not so complex to implement in web versions.
| strogonoff wrote:
| I stand corrected. I forgot I don't upload anything there
| lately and am just using it to catch up with people.
| vbsteven wrote:
| Having to have an account is the problem. When someone
| sends me an Instagram link I used to be able to just watch
| the video and browse the profile. A bit later profile
| access was blocked. And now I can only watch a video once
| before it blocks for login. Only a matter of time before
| the window is completely closed.
|
| On Twitter/TikTok I can watch any link without having to
| login. Twitter even allows anonymous search.
| strogonoff wrote:
| The post I'm replying to made two separate problems out
| of 1) Instagram requiring to log in, and 2) "everything
| big" being poorly usable on the Web. I'm not arguing with
| the silly login requirement (considering Instagram
| supports private profiles for people who don't want to
| share), but providing a counterpoint to the (2).
| cycomanic wrote:
| I've been using teddit.net because reddit on mobile gas
| become unusable. Someone here pointed me to it.
| justaj wrote:
| > Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with
| ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190
| requests with ~24 MB)
|
| Yeah, teddit.net does seem to be pretty light on mobile
| gas.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| There are a couple of nag banners but reddit.com/.compact
| still functions as long as you don't want to open hosted
| multimedia.
| justaj wrote:
| Alt link: https://i.reddit.com/
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| old.reddit.com is still there.
| andrepd wrote:
| On mobile I still use i.reddit.com
| Causality1 wrote:
| Mobile is especially bad lately since Firefox Mobile has gone
| walled-garden and you can no longer install a user agent
| switcher to get a true desktop page. The fact the "view
| desktop version" option on mobile browsers still tells the
| server you're on a mobile device is utterly perverse.
| ehsankia wrote:
| That definitely plays a role, but I think the much bigger
| factor is how it lets anyone download & share the video file
| (at least by default, which most don't change). These days,
| half of reddit, twitter and discord is just filled with TikTok
| videos. Even Reels and Shorts are full of TikTok videos, you
| can tell by the watermark. So much so that Reels had to
| forcefully derank videos with the TikTok watermark on them.
|
| This has helped Tiktok spread and grow very quickly. Hell the
| very link on this post is from Twitter and has almost 100k
| retweets...
| schmorptron wrote:
| Interesting, I recently downloaded the android app to see if
| there was anything interesting for me, but there they wouldn't
| let you past without signing up
| Kiro wrote:
| That's not true. I use the app without an account.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Huh? When I open it it asks me to sign up or sign in and I
| didn't see a skip option, am I just blind?
| Kiro wrote:
| It must be a really recent change in that case. For me
| the prompt to sign-up only comes up when I click on
| follow, a live stream or when trying to post a comment.
| alex_duf wrote:
| Oh it will happen once organic growth slows down and the
| various teams have KPIs and OKRs to follow. Every company bgoes
| through these phases.
|
| They're still benefiting from their "underdog" status, that
| won't last
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Yep, reddit used to allow lurking too.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That's the problem with something people build a community
| around being controlled by a company. That's why open
| standards are better than a company. Also small things are
| often better than big. For example there are some great
| forums running in PHPBB or similar and lovingly maintained by
| owners. No bullshit like you get on modern apps making it
| hard to do what you want because like you say KPIs etc lead
| to dark patterns.
| [deleted]
| saagarjha wrote:
| I "used" Twitter for several years without an account; it's
| actually not all that pushy about it. Old Reddit isn't either,
| although new Reddit will make you hate it with a passion.
| draw_down wrote:
| I disagree, it's fairly restrictive outside of showing you one
| video if you're in the browser. You can see the video you were
| linked to but not comments, other videos that use the same
| sound, other videos by the same creator etc.
|
| It's a pretty common pattern these days; you can also see IG
| progressively locking down web features tighter and tighter for
| example.
| atatatat wrote:
| You're on iOS, right?
| oefrha wrote:
| Are we even talking about the same site? I opened tiktok.com
| in a private browser window and was greeted by an infinite
| scrolling list of videos. I scrolled past maybe a hundred and
| was never prompted to sign up. Clicking on a creator's name
| takes me to their profile with all their videos. Clicking on
| the music link immediately above each video takes me to a
| www.tiktok.com/music/<name-of-the-song> page with tons of
| videos using the same music. Only comments are behind a login
| wall.
|
| These might change in the future, but your claims just aren't
| true at the moment. I'm not sure if there are regional
| variations. (douyin.com certainly behaves differently, but
| that's an entirely different product.)
| tayo42 wrote:
| Reddit used to be like that. Tiktok is young, it can change.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Very likely after a certain market share.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Due to EU terreg this will change most likely. Platforms that
| manually vet users may be exempt from having to have censor
| office in the EU and 1hr SLA to delete content.
| victor9000 wrote:
| The difference seems to be if your company is in growth mode vs
| squeeze mode. Not to say that you're doing poorly if you're
| squeezing, you're just trying to extract every ounce of value
| from users regardless of the long term effects.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Growth mode vs. death mode?
| classified wrote:
| Chinese-style capitalism has always been more refined (at least
| on the surface) than the blatantly stupid US-style capitalism.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamebait or call names in HN comments.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: we've had to ask you more than once before not to post
| flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you mind
| reviewing the site guidelines and sticking to the rules when
| posting here? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for
| something a bit different here.
| Kiro wrote:
| OT but why is there a comment at the top here with a direct link
| to the video that I can't reply to? I wanted to reply that you
| should check the thread and not just that video since there are
| many different videos in it.
| walterbell wrote:
| HN bug? The only comments I've seen without a reply button have
| been freshly posted (seconds/minutes), but this one is hours
| old and has no reply button.
| Kiro wrote:
| Exactly. I've seen it on comments just posted but never like
| this. Would love to hear an explanation from @dang.
| goodmattg wrote:
| in the vision group at ByteDance (TikTok)... and these kinds of
| mashups even blow me away. It's amazing to see what flexible
| tools, tight feedback loops, and global scale produce. reminds me
| of middle school where we would work together on stick fights in
| pivot animator, but so much more elaborate
| dimmke wrote:
| TikTok really is incredible. I don't do much in the way of social
| media, but it's better than any other big app I've ever used.
|
| The other really cool use I've seen of this style of stitching is
| emergent songs. Here's an example:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@patwhoisnice/video/69158104300531089...
| dimmke wrote:
| Also, it's the first social platform I've seen that has solved
| the new user growth problem - every user's first few videos are
| guaranteed hundreds of views no matter what. So good content
| naturally rises without having to be spammy/promote itself.
| Compare that to something like Twitch where growing a stream to
| even getting 30 regular viewers can take years of grinding and
| a ton of hustle.
|
| The average follower count for even just a regular user who has
| maybe 1-2 good videos can be in the low thousands.
| slightwinder wrote:
| TikTok and twitch are not same content-wise. It's to feed
| your content to people if it's just a few seconds. The
| platform depends on feeding a huge number of very fast
| changing content to the viewers. That makes it also very
| simple to analyze the reception of your content.
|
| That's something impossible on a slow paced medium like live-
| streaming. But the other side us that it's very hard to make
| real money with TikTok, because all the juicy sellouts that
| work on long videos and live-streaming, don't transist very
| well to short clips and a platform with low attention.
|
| Because of that follower-count on tiktok has not the same
| worth as on other platforms. 1000 Tiktok-follower is like 1
| twitch or youtube-follower. People are just getting elluded
| by the high numbers.
| oars wrote:
| As someone who doesn't use Tiktok, how can Tiktok guarantee
| at least hundreds of views for all videos on their platform?
|
| How do they entice users to click on these videos hundreds of
| times?
| stevewodil wrote:
| You don't click on videos. The main screen of TikTok is an
| algorithmic feed that shows you one fullscreen video, you
| can choose to watch it or scroll to the next video. Thus,
| they can derive all sorts of useful info from every
| interaction on every video and feed it back into the algo
| karlshea wrote:
| You don't pick videos to play (unless you're in their
| search interface or browsing a user's profile), you just
| swipe for the next video. It's an infinitely scrolling
| list.
| markus92 wrote:
| You don't click. When you open the app, the first thing you
| see is a "random" video (selected by their creepily good
| algorithm). Watched it or don't like it? Swipe through and
| the next video instantly starts. The app is good at
| figuring out which videos get engaged with and promotes
| these.
|
| Though there is the functionality to go to user profiles
| and click videos, like on Instagram and such, it's not the
| main functionality of the app.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The other thing TikTok does well is that it removes
| choice. On YouTube you look at a dozen videos and think
| "Do I want to watch any of these, or look at another
| dozen recommendations?" It's kind of similar to picking
| something on Netflix. With TikTok you can just mindlessly
| "Next, next, next".
|
| I am not one to get hooked on social media, but I found
| myself wasting time so easily on TikTok I had to delete
| it from my phone.
| pm90 wrote:
| > The other thing TikTok does well is that it removes
| choice.
|
| So its like a millennial TV? :)
| tolbish wrote:
| You know, that's not too different from how HN works.
| est wrote:
| > I've seen that has solved the new user growth problem
|
| There's always a cost, established celebs have trouble
| keeping up their fame. There's always some big players quit
| Douyin (Chinese version of Tiktok) after burn out. No one
| rules Tiktok forever (which is a good thing for consumers)
| draw_down wrote:
| That's not a cost for Tiktok though, rather the opposite.
| They just need content to keep going, they don't need to
| make individual creators rich necessarily. From their
| perspective the more control they have over who is popular,
| the better.
|
| It could become a problem for them if another app offered
| creators a better deal, but such an app still has network
| effects to contend with (you can offer creators a better
| deal but if the viewers don't follow them it won't work).
| 3nt3 wrote:
| Yeah, so what's the problem lol
| nomay wrote:
| Chinese livestreaming platforms have an addiction to
| inflating numbers, so I'm not sure if those are all real, or
| just growth hacking and user retention tricks.
|
| Since it's just senconds long and users will switch if they
| don't like the first few seconds, the sunk cost is relatively
| low.
| knrz wrote:
| I heard their algorithm is quantized -- first your video is
| "piloted" with a small set of people that are guaranteed to
| see it.
|
| Then, if it passes a metric, it graduates to a bigger pool
| of people.
|
| And then one more level.
| nomay wrote:
| There are plenty of experiments on this, testers opened
| new accounts and almost immediately they had hundreds of
| viewers, but when asked to repond in exchange for cash,
| no one did.
|
| I mean, what's stopping them from doing this, everyone
| seems to be happy about it.
|
| Initially they called these numbers "viewer count", but
| apparently it got too embarrassing even for themselves,
| one streamer reached 5.9 billion. Then they call it
| "popularity index" since everybody knew it's fake.
| watwut wrote:
| > when asked to repond in exchange for cash, no one did
|
| Sounds like scam, honestly. How do you get that cash to
| me? Cause I just don't feel like giving my account number
| to someone on tiktok.
| nomay wrote:
| Like join WeChat fan groups? It's called private traffic,
| taking back control of your fame, and better milk your
| fans.
|
| One big selling point of these predominantly female
| streamers is the previledge to add their personal WeChat,
| what for? Well, it's all about money and exchange.
|
| The red-packet/micro-transaction thing is pretty big in
| China.
| watwut wrote:
| This offer was made to random users. Not to performers
| that live from it, whether porn work or not.
| op03 wrote:
| It is so "incredible" its on the front page of every newspaper
| in the world today, for how quickly it can spread the "Kill the
| Jew" meme.
|
| When the tools have become simple enough that second graders
| can play with nuclear bombs we are all fucked.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Tiktok is a better version of Twitter. Much more high bandwith of
| information with, sound, video, and text. And much higher
| interaction data to optimize feed.
| buryat wrote:
| I have never seen so many to say "average" people on tiktok like
| on any other social platform, in a sense that I can relate to
| those people and don't feel like a celebrity is trying to feed me
| some content down my throat. There's so much of normalization of
| everything that I'm blown away by how normal Tiktok is, you can
| see teenagers struggling in a school, you can see people hating
| their 9-5 jobs, you can see crafts and arts, you can see people
| with disabilities living life at its fullest, cooking videos,
| etc.
|
| The whole vibe is so wholesome that it's truly the first social
| network that feels social in a wide sense.
| akkawwakka wrote:
| It's definitely a pro-social, social platform. It shows that
| you don't have to rely on polarizing or adversarial content to
| drive engagement (_ _cough_ , like Facebook & Twitter _cough_ )
| ehsankia wrote:
| Eh, it still exists. I have gotten in a few cohorts that were
| quite toxic, especially near the election. There's still
| quite a lot of vaccine/mask vs anti-vaccine/mask content, and
| you general political crap. It's easy to get off of those,
| the dislike button is definitely your friend, but if you
| don't have the willpower and self-control I do think you can
| fall into the same rabbit holes as Youtube or any other
| platform.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Yet.
|
| Remember that the platforms we complain about also started
| off totally fine, but eventually greed caught up with all of
| them.
| mseepgood wrote:
| > I have never seen so many to say "average" people on tiktok
| like on any other social platform, in a sense that I can relate
| to those people and don't feel like a celebrity is trying to
| feed me some content down my throat.
|
| Youtube was like that before ads and monetization were
| introduced.
| pm90 wrote:
| TikTok already does have ads/monetization.
| deanCommie wrote:
| The ads/monetization threshold isn't the major difference,
| but the remembrance of YouTube in the pre-celbrity/late night
| era is completely astute.
|
| We're in a Golden Age of Tik Tok, and it won't last. We get
| to enjoy the chaos and caucophony of lots of people getting
| 15 mins of fame.
|
| It's not gonna last :(
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe then it'll be Vine 2's turn.
| greggman3 wrote:
| For me, youtube is better now than at any other time I've
| used it. My feed is almost entirely very well made talks, and
| lessons, and tutorials. That they have a 2-3 minute "this
| video brought to you by ABC" doesn't bother me at all as the
| content is amazing. Anything I want to know there are 25+
| plus different people willing to explain it to me.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I've started to get annoyed by the ads for Raid Shadow
| Legends and Squarespace, and the product placement is
| getting nuts.
|
| I had someone the other day say they didn't think the tool
| was "sponsored" because the company lent it to them to try,
| in order to see if they'd use it enough to justify keeping
| it. Uh, yeah, that's totally sponsored, even if it's only
| lent.
|
| Some of my usual Youtube channels now have 1 or 2 big stop-
| the-show ads that are unrelated to their content, and then
| multiple product placement moments that are incredibly
| obvious.
|
| It's really taking away from the content of the shows.
|
| I know they have to eat, and producing a lot of content is
| expensive, but I already pay for YouTube Premium _to get
| rid of ads_. And now the ads are infesting the shows
| anyhow.
|
| Edit: I also support my favorite content producers on
| Patreon as well.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Some of my usual Youtube channels now have 1 or 2 big
| stop-the-show ads that are unrelated to their content"_
|
| Using youtube-dl you can get the videos without ads.
| freebuju wrote:
| Sucks that you cannot do away with ads even on premium.
| Might want to check if this sponsored-ads skip tool this
| can be of help in your circumstance
| https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
| biztos wrote:
| I also really like today's YouTube and I even pay for it.
| For me the trick is that I now use it almost exclusively to
| watch _original content made for YouTube._ And there 's a
| ton of that stuff, from DIY garage geekouts to language
| instruction to cooking shows. And eating shows! One of the
| biggest YouTubers I follow basically just goes around
| eating stuff.[0]
|
| I think YouTube is slowly becoming a major platform for
| original content, which of course was the original promise
| before it rose to fame as a copyright violator's safe
| haven. I love seeing people like Mark Rober[1] combine
| great ideas with a sense of fun and decent production
| quality to make this new and insanely democratic form of
| TV. It's also fascinating to see the production quality
| increase as people go from hobbyist to professional.
|
| Of the five streaming services I pay for, YouTube feels
| like the best deal. And I could also just not pay for it,
| and deal with ads.
|
| Oh yeah and I really like TikTok too but I only watch it
| about once a week because _time sink._
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/migrationology
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/onemeeeliondollars
| Touche wrote:
| How do you find this stuff? YouTube is so full of
| absolute garbage that's it's a struggle to find something
| worth watching. I watch painting videos on YouTube but
| spend way too much time digging.
| atatatat wrote:
| Cooperate with the suggestions tools.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The algorithm mostly suggests stuff I enjoy watching. I
| suspect the key is to avoid like the plague to click on
| anything that's clearly "engagement bait", and to
| subscribe to stuff I enjoy.
|
| Some random examples that I really enjoy that I've
| stumbled over to thanks to the algorithm:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/Abom79/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasFlight/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/reppesis/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/corridorcrew/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/Driver61/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/TheHouseofKushTV/
| biztos wrote:
| Some things I find by searching for very specific things,
| like say YouTubers in Thailand or (lately) modular
| synthesis which led me to Andrew Huang[0]. Other stuff I
| get pointed to by friends, eg Mark Rober for his anti
| theft videos which are hilarious. And some things are
| YouTube suggestions, the algorithm seems pretty
| conservative but it has turned up a few good things.
|
| There is great stuff out there, I find the amount of
| garbage I actually see and have to skip over is pretty
| small these days.
|
| [0]: https://youtube.com/c/andrewhuang
| ehsankia wrote:
| Absolutely, I keep saying this, but TikTok reminds me of
| early Youtube, pre-monetization. The random homemade videos
| going viral, people not trying too hard, or trying to
| hyperoptimize every second of the video.
|
| I know it won't last, but I am enjoying it while it lasts.
| Graffur wrote:
| Tiktok is full of girls dancing with very little or very tight
| clothes on for likes and attention. It's really seedy. There's
| subreddits dedicated to posting about these accounts.
|
| On top of that it is designed to be addicting for the sake of
| addiction. It doesnt matter what the video is about once it
| will keep the user on the app. The algorithm will work out the
| perfect way for each person to be sucked in. We all know that
| these addicting videos won't be educational or even worthwhile.
| This type of stuff trends towards really useless content.
|
| Of all the social media out there I would not let my kids use
| tiktok.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Tiktok is full of girls dancing with very little or very
| tight clothes on for likes and attention.
|
| Even if that was true, so what? While the _venue_ changes,
| that's what bitter elders _always_ complain about about youth
| culture, to the point where it being a recognized cliche is
| ancient.
|
| > On top of that it is designed to be addicting for the sake
| of addiction.
|
| All of social media (and most of the web, and much offline
| entertainment) is optimized around engagement, to the same
| extent. There's nothing special about TikTok here.
| Graffur wrote:
| So your argument is that is no worse than other bad things?
| I won;t even respond to your first question. We're too far
| apart to make a worthwhile conversation.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Tiktok is full of girls dancing with very little or very
| tight clothes on for likes and attention.
|
| I started using TikTok recently specifically to improve my
| smartphone camera technique. I just swiped the dancing girl
| videos away and now it has stopped showing them to me.
|
| I was impressed by the competence of many of the smartphone
| photography instructional tutorials. Getting points across in
| 15 seconds demonstrates how 'flabby' many YouTube tutorials
| are.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > Tiktok is full of girls dancing with very little or very
| tight clothes on for likes and attention
|
| Said every single person who has never tried TikTok and forms
| their entire opinion based on things they read on online and
| a few subreddits dedicated to posting very specific kind of
| content.
| Graffur wrote:
| Nope I have researched tik tok thoroughly
| defaultname wrote:
| To the "girls dancing" claim, I get approximately zero
| dancing girl videos. If you demonstrated to the app that such
| is the content you want, that's what you'll get. I get tonnes
| of birds, comedy, pets, weird animals, etc.
|
| "On top of that it is designed to be addicting for the sake
| of addiction."
|
| TikTok doesn't create content. People do. It happens to have
| content creation tools [the real genius of TikTok that many
| overlook] that allow a lot of funny, creative people to
| generate content that they previously couldn't.
|
| Is that "designed to be addictive"? I guess, in the
| meaningless "it's designed to offer a rewarding experience"
| way.
|
| EDIT: Some of the complaints in this discussion remind me of
| this classic Onion story - https://bit.ly/2Qm2w87
| mysterEFrank wrote:
| TikTok pings you every few hours of swiping with a video
| that tells you to put the phone down and get some fresh
| air. It's the only social media app I've ever used that
| does that.
| defaultname wrote:
| I'm a cynic. I don't rack that up to TikTok's wonderful
| benevolence, but rather that their revenue curve is
| optimized for a particular usage pattern.
| Graffur wrote:
| Instagram does this too fwiw
| Graffur wrote:
| > To the "girls dancing" claim, I get approximately zero
| dancing girl videos. If you demonstrated to the app that
| such is the content you want, that's what you'll get. I get
| tonnes of birds, comedy, pets, weird animals, etc.
|
| I am not complaining that I get the wrong recommendations.
| In fact, I don't have the app. My point is the app is full
| is seedy content.
|
| It's literally designed to be addictive. If you don't
| understand that this conversation is over.
| defaultname wrote:
| You don't use it, yet you are also an authority on what
| it is "full of". So much so that you're an observer of
| subreddits dedicated to lascivious TikTok content.
|
| I use Reddit and am blissfully unaware of such subs.
|
| As to "designed to be addictive", you are literally using
| that as a lazy, pejorative surrogate for "designed to be
| rewarding/enjoyable".
|
| Understand that almost every part of your life is
| "designed to be addictive" by that sloppy trope. HN is
| "designed to be addictive" by putting the most
| interesting stories on the front page. Netflix, Facebook,
| Starbucks, McDonalds, Movie Theaters, Parks, Conservation
| Areas -- Designed to Be Addictive. It is meaningless
| prattle, though it's usually leveraged to dismiss things
| Other People enjoy.
| Graffur wrote:
| I have researched it thoroughly and understand how it
| works. That goes for other major sites too including
| facebook, instagram, whatsapp, reddit.
|
| I don't care that you use reddit and are unaware of what
| content is on it. I could not care less.
|
| The tik tok algorithm is designed to be addictive. It
| sounds like you agree but are trying to obscure that fact
| by throwing examples of other popular products.
| angio wrote:
| TikTok is very good at recommending new content based on what
| you engage with (watch, like, comment, etc), if your feed is
| full of girls dancing, it's because you spend time actually
| watching it instead of just moving to the next video. My feed
| is full of people (for some reason mostly eastern european or
| from central asia) working at their construction jobs.
| freshhawk wrote:
| My Tiktok has a lot of videos of people complaining about
| exactly this and being responded to by pointing out they
| are telling on themselves in a hilarious way.
|
| Gotta hand it to the algorithm, it is always funny to me.
| Graffur wrote:
| > they are telling on themselves in a hilarious way.
|
| It's no secret how the algorithm tailors itself to what
| you watch. The hilarious thing is people thinking they're
| getting a 'win' when someone complains about any content.
| The app presents things to you and tries to grab your
| interest in any way. A lot of teenagers will, naturally,
| linger on that content for longer and then it becomes a
| cycle. That doesn't mean that is what they are aiming to
| get out of the app.
| Graffur wrote:
| I _knew_ this would be the reply. For your info, I don't
| have a TikTok account so try another argument.
| user-the-name wrote:
| TikTok will still learn your preferences and adjust what
| content it shows you even if you don't register.
| Graffur wrote:
| That is not relevant. I am not complaining about content
| shown to me personally.
| efdee wrote:
| So exactly how do you know what TikTok is full of, then?
| Graffur wrote:
| I have had multiple accounts. I have researched how
| others use the platform. I have observed the content
| migrating from one platform to another.
|
| Are you arguing that tik tok is not full of girls in
| little clothing? Your argument is easily defeated.
| dash2 wrote:
| I don't think this invalidates GP's point. Sure, if you
| don't want the seedy content, you won't see it, but it's
| still there and that's still a large part of how they make
| money.
| defaultname wrote:
| If a site has user contributed content there will usually
| be the "seedy" content. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
| Reddit...if it gets big enough, a certain segment will
| monetize it. Usually as an advertising vehicle for their
| more overt content on adult sites. It's actually an
| interesting complaint because TikTok takes a lot of heat
| for taking down a lot of benign content.
|
| "that's still a large part of how they make money"
|
| You base this claim upon what? Gut feeling?
|
| The viral videos that everyone knows from TikTok contain
| approximately zero instances of "seedy" content. They are
| people doing everyday things. AFV style funny videos.
| Some guy drinking cranberry juice and riding a
| skateboard. Etc.
| gabaix wrote:
| I have the opposite impression. I only like niche content
| about tools and life hacks, but every time seedy content
| is pushed back into my feed.
|
| It has gotten worse in the past year.
|
| I am actually surprised people see positives about Tik
| Tok. IMO it has a much worse societal impact than
| competition.
| Graffur wrote:
| It will always happen because as the old saying goes:
| "sex sells". For some reason, there is a large population
| on HN that will argue against the fact that tik tok has
| this content.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't have TikTok, but when I am sent a link to it, and
| watch the linked video in Safari with Wipr content
| blocker, after the linked video is finished, it
| immediately auto plays a video of a very young blonde
| girl/woman who claims she recently found pictures of her
| pre breast reduction pre meeting her husband and is going
| to show them to her husband or something. This happens
| after any linked video I am sent, all non sexual.
|
| Only reason I remember is because I thought that was a
| pretty transparent attempt at the type of audience they
| were aiming to attract.
| defaultname wrote:
| TikTok doesn't autoplay anything -- it repeats the video
| you watched. Do you mean you scrolled down?
|
| Further, obviously the seed video that you used is going
| to have an enormous influence on subsequent videos (as
| presumably would the _sender_ -- shared links can contain
| details about the sender, and if they had a logical
| algorithm that can play a part as well). And of course
| surely we all know that sites don 't just track by being
| logged in. Even if you clear all cookies.
|
| I just opened the TikTok homepage through a proxy in a
| clean instance of Firefox. First video was a woman who
| paints patterns on her face. Second was someone show a
| technique to clean stainless steel sinks. Third was a guy
| in Turkey showing his rugs. Then a dog bringing a leash
| back to its owner, someone using one of those pop-it
| distraction things, a guy with his cat in a box in front
| of a roller coaster video pretending the cat is on the
| roller coaster.
|
| Eh. I don't see how your anecdote is such strong evidence
| of the "type of audience they were aiming to attract"
| (especially when the site seems to overwhelmingly cater
| to adult women...)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >TikTok doesn't autoplay anything -- it repeats the video
| you watched. Do you mean you scrolled down?
|
| I click a link in WhatsApp, it opens up Safari in iOS on
| my phone, it plays the video, then at the end it starts
| playing another video.
|
| I'm using a content blocker, so I presume TikTok does not
| know anything about my personal characteristics, so I
| assumed the videos that autoplay are the ones they
| autoplay by default.
|
| PS I will forever harbor resentment to people around the
| world for putting up with video players that lack the
| ability to skip around the video or even see the length
| of the video.
| defaultname wrote:
| Just tried that specific scenario and after the video it
| showed (silently and muted, in a 1/4 size window) a
| preview of the "next" video. Unlike imgur, or YouTube, or
| many other services it doesn't just silently continue. It
| never goes further.
|
| If someone sent you a link, it will include an identifier
| of the sender. It usually will say at the top of the
| screen "[Sender account] is using TikTok! Join now".
| Logically this informs the suggestions of the app.
|
| The lack of scrubbing is annoying (although apparently
| the Android version recently added the ability). The app
| is also inconsistent in that sometimes it shows a
| progress indicator at the bottom, sometimes it doesn't.
| Graffur wrote:
| > everyone knows
|
| That everyone using tik tok knows. That doesn't
| invalidate any of the criticism. It just tells you like
| the content that appeals to everybody.
| matsemann wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily mean it's directly based on one's
| own engagement. I don't use tiktok, but on Instagram i
| mostly follow sports stuff related to what I enjoy (skiing,
| cycling, running). What content will instagram show me? The
| most viral content in those categories. What's the most
| viral content in those categories? A girl skiing in her
| bikini, a female cyclist with unzipped top, a runner in
| mini shorts stretching.
|
| But maybe tiktok is better in this regard, heard much
| praise about their algorithm.
| syoc wrote:
| I don't use TikTok myself but I guess you see what you want to
| see. Kinda hard to make general statements about content on a
| platform that is built around curating to individual tastes. I
| would be surprised if people more interested in celebrities and
| rich people would not be able to get an endless stream of
| "professional influencer" content on TikTok as well.
| ehsankia wrote:
| This is true for every platform. I always find it strange
| when people complain their Twitter feed is toxic, when they
| have quite a lot of control over who's on there or not.
| Admittedly I use Tweetdeck which is less algorithmic, but
| still. I think even default twitter lets you block retweets
| from certain people you follow?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i like this too and think it has a lot to do with how the app
| is based on the for you page more than followers. when you
| don't need followers for people to see your content it really
| opens up the playing field to different types of content
| whymauri wrote:
| TikTok reminds me of mid-2000s Internet vibes. But also, that
| could be because the algorithm is really good at showing me
| what I want... and I don't even have an account.
| emptyfile wrote:
| Fascinating.
|
| A year ago you people we're *screaming* that this app is nothing
| more then the cold red hand of the Chinese Communist Party, a
| mole designed to steal information of innocent american children
| and leak it to the dirty chinese bastards so they can rule the
| world (in some unspecified way).
|
| What changed? Trump left so the insanity of your country is
| magically exorcised? Is the New Cold war over, done while I was
| looking at vaccination news? Did Hong Kong became free? Or do you
| not care about that anymore? No more walkouts for Hong Kong?
|
| I really don't understand this world at all.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| i was in the first cohort of FB users in 2004. i remember
| myspace, friendster, digg, etc. i still use reddit and have fb
| and ig accounts but i haven't posted on either in over a decade.
| TikTok is the first truly enjoyable social media app I've
| experienced. yes it's terribly addictive (hours scrolling
| sometimes) but it's actually social (as on display here) and
| therefore successfully connects people. it's probably gonna go to
| shit soon (lately i see a ton of derivative or spammy content)
| but at least it reaffirmed (like back in the day when i watched
| everything on ebaums) that the internet can be delightfully fun.
| mrtksn wrote:
| TikTok is the greatest creativity tools I've seen in years and I
| am fascinated how people are trying to downplay or outright
| dismiss it because of their nationalistic or political feelings.
|
| It's like watching fundamentalist trying to preserve their purity
| when their kosher brands are racing to imitate the features of
| the forbidden brand.
|
| Hearing the "underage girls dancing and lip syncing, no thanks"
| line repeated fills me with a similar rage that I get when I hear
| some racist stereotype.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar--nationalistic,
| political, religious, or otherwise (you hit all three here). If
| you want to say what you think is great about TikTok or
| creative things people are doing, that's wonderful; please
| don't pack it with flamebait. That only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > I got my HN account locked when I was begging people to
|
| I don't know what "locked" means but that is not at all an
| accurate description of how HN accounts get moderated.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It was rate limited as I was trying to explain why I thought
| that it was wrong to blok websites and apps.
|
| Okay, I am removing the part about the recent political
| events. I think it is important and relevant but I get that
| it is off limits so I won't talk about it.
| dang wrote:
| It's not so much "off limits", it's about comment quality.
| Low-information, high-indignation comments are not what we
| want here.
|
| As topics become more divisive, comments trend sharply in
| that direction, so it's important to be mindful of what
| sort of thread your comment is likely to lead to.
|
| That's why we have this guideline: " _Comments should get
| more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets
| more divisive._ "
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
|
| See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefi
| x=true&sor...
| mrtksn wrote:
| Thank you for the follow up. I am not trying to push it
| but I'm failing to understand how I can express my
| opinions and experience about governments blocking apps
| and websites. What would make a comment describing what
| happened in Turkey and asking people to reconsider their
| support for app and website blocking in the name of
| claimed greater good a high quality comment?
|
| This is my second time I fail at this. If this is not
| banned speech or undesired opinion, do you have any tips
| to improve my comment quality on the issue?
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I hear you and believe that you're asking in good
| faith. Let's break it down:
|
| > _TikTok is the greatest creativity tools I 've seen in
| years and I am fascinated _
|
| Good, interesting, curious. A great start!
|
| > _how people are trying to downplay or outright dismiss
| it_
|
| Veers from curious to indignant. This is the point where
| things start to go wrong.
|
| > _because of their nationalistic or political feelings_
|
| Flamebait
|
| > _It 's like watching fundamentalist trying to preserve
| their purity _
|
| Flamebait escalation
|
| > _when their kosher brands are racing to imitate_
|
| Double flamebait escalation
|
| > _Hearing the "underage girls dancing and lip syncing,
| no thanks" line_
|
| Yet more flamebait
|
| > _fills me with a similar rage_
|
| Indignation and flamebait
|
| > _that I get when I hear some racist stereotype_
|
| Flamebait. By the time we reach the end of a comment like
| this, anyone who was flammable is on fire.
| dang wrote:
| I was thinking about this this evening, and thought of
| another way to explain the "expected value of a thread"
| concept (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pre
| fix=true&sor...), which is really the prime directive of
| HN comments.
|
| The thing to understand is that HN threads are supposed
| to be conversations. A conversation isn't a one-way
| message like, say, a billboard or a PA announcement. It's
| a two-way or multi-way co-creation. In a community like
| HN it's a multi-way co-creation with a large fanout.
|
| In conversation, to make high-quality comments you _have_
| to take the others who are present into account. If you
| treat your comment only as a vehicle for your own
| opinions and feelings--if you leave out the relational
| dimension--then you 're not in conversation. (I don't
| mean you personally, of course; I mean all of us.)
|
| Conversation means being conscious, while speaking or
| writing, of whom you're talking to and how what you're
| saying may affect them. In a forum like HN it means being
| conscious of the _range_ of people you may be affecting.
| In conversation, your utterances are not your
| disconnected private domain for you to optimize as you
| see fit. You 're responsible for the effects you have on
| the conversation.
|
| I know that some people will read this and think: you're
| censoring me! you're telling me I can't say what I think
| or feel! you just don't like my opinions! No no no--
| that's not it at all. In conversation, you do say what
| you think and feel, modulated by the relational sense.
| That is, you're guided not only by what _you_ think and
| feel but also by the effect you are having, or are likely
| to have, on others. The goal is to have the best
| conversation we can have. If we get that right as a
| community, there 's room for what everyone thinks and
| feels.
|
| Look at it this way. When you're in a relationship with
| someone, do you bluntly blast them with whatever you're
| thinking and feeling on any sensitive topic between you?
| Of course you don't--not if you don't want to stay up all
| night fighting. What do you do instead? You find a way to
| say what _you_ think and feel while taking into account
| what _they_ think and feel. You do it genuinely, not
| faking it, and you find a way to show that you 're doing
| it.
|
| A lot of HN commenters are going to say: "don't tell me
| I'm in any fucking relationship with these assholes".
| Actually you are--that's exactly what you are, whether
| you want to be or not. You showed up at the same time
| they did. It may be a weakly cohesive relationship--not
| like protons and neutrons, more like bosons [1]--but
| relational dynamics still apply.
|
| If that's too strong a metaphor, try this one:
| conversation is a dance. When you're dancing with
| someone, do you only take into account how _you_ want to
| move and where _you_ want to go? Of course not; that
| would end the dance. And you certainly don 't move in a
| way that is likely to rub them the wrong way--why would
| you? It wouldn't serve your purpose, which is to have the
| best dance.
|
| Other commenters will object: how am I supposed to know
| in advance how my comment is going to land with others?
| That's impossible! Well, you can't know and you don't
| have to know. All you have to do is _take it into
| account_. If you take that into account and get it wrong,
| you 'll naturally adapt. All we need to do, in order to
| have good conversation and a good community, is learn.
|
| There's one other layer to this challenge. We have to
| take into account not just the others who are present and
| how our comments may land with them, but also the medium
| that we're all using to communicate. On HN, the medium is
| the large, public, optionally anonymous internet forum,
| and this comes with strengths and weaknesses that greatly
| shape the conversation. Don't underestimate this! McLuhan
| got it right [2]. What we're communicating to each other
| --the information that actually gets received by other
| people--has less to do with the content of what we're
| saying than we think it does. It has more to do with the
| medium. Internet forum comments are a mile wide, in the
| sense that you can say whatever you want, no matter how
| intense or outrageous--and an inch deep, in the sense
| that they come with almost no context or background that
| would help others understand where we're coming from.
|
| We don't seem to have figured much out yet about how this
| medium works or how best to use it, but I think one thing
| is clear: because internet comments are so low-bandwidth
| and so stateless, each comment needs to include some
| signal that communicates its intent. There are plenty of
| subtle ways to do this--simply choosing one word instead
| of another may suffice--but the burden is on the
| commenter to disambiguate [3]. Otherwise, given the lack
| of context and large fanout that define this medium, if a
| message _can_ be misunderstood, it will be--and that 's a
| recipe for bad conversation, which is in none of our
| interests.
|
| That is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Can
| we actually develop this capacity collectively? Hard to
| say, but I don't think millions of people have to get it.
| We just need a large enough minority to deeply take this
| in--enough to affect the culture. Then the culture will
| replicate.
|
| [1] I don't actually know a thing about bosons
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=t
| rue&que...
|
| [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f
| alse&so...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Damn Dang, you seriously went all out to explain, even
| after all those years.
|
| Hats off
| ladon86 wrote:
| Dang, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the work
| you do here.
|
| I've seen you engage with posters in this way so many
| times (though this reply is _particularly_ loquacious!).
|
| I'm always struck by how unusual that level of effort is.
| A typical moderator would probably just hit the 'ban'
| button and move on.
|
| I do agree that mrtksn seems well-intentioned here, but
| even in cases where good faith seems unlikely, I've seen
| you take the time to explain the rules kindly and
| substantively.
|
| At first glance, trying to educate bad faith posters
| might seem like an example of PG's "do things that don't
| scale" maxim. But surprisingly, I think your approach
| scales pretty well. You may not always succeed in
| changing the behavior of the poster you're replying to,
| but your replies have a positive and scalable impact on
| this community because they role model good behavior to
| the thousands of _other_ people reading. And that 's
| leadership.
|
| Thanks again.
| ziml77 wrote:
| What would we do without you dang? I love that you do
| your best to guide HN into civil, substantive
| discussions.
|
| The quality of the comments section here is what keeps me
| coming back. Without guidance, any site that allows
| comments becomes lower quality the larger it grows. My
| theory as to why has a few factors, but one of them has
| to do with a sense of community. The more people feel
| they are in a community, the more likely they are to make
| good faith interpretations of others comments and the
| more likely they are to consider the effect of what
| they're saying on others.
|
| Thank you for doing your best to ensure that this feels
| as much like a community as possible!
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm very appreciative for the elaborative answer. The
| lack of it on some platforms that rely on AI or scripted
| moderation a bit too much is one of my grievances, so a
| human who reads reasons and provides answers is nothing
| short of admirable. Thank you so much for the human touch
| and care in moderation.
|
| I think I get your point but my writing style often
| includes some degree of provocation to elevate feelings
| for more lively and less stylised conversation. When I
| write a statement, I don't mean it as a way to promote an
| agenda but a way to initialise a debate, I would even
| write things that I don't believe but are conversation
| starters.
|
| It's hard to disagree that flamewars are toxic but I also
| believe that we should not abstain from conversation on
| topics with direct impact, no matter how divisive they
| are.
|
| IMHO what makes the conversation low quality are the
| personal attacks, not general statements describing
| observation of a behaviour in a community. These
| statements are actually good starting points to tear down
| the status quo. They are flimsy in substance as a
| whole(which is the reason they are not personally
| offensive) but have great depth when disassembled.
|
| For example "people are trying to downplay or outright
| dismiss it because of their nationalistic or political
| feelings" is a device to provoke re-evaluation on what
| happened recently. There's no reason any individual to be
| offended and forces the answers to be about the reasons
| beyond the nationalism and politics because I define
| these as a bad thing in the statement. It is supposed to
| bring up the non nationalist, non political reasons for
| the events by making people cautious of using
| nationalistic and political arguments. If the non-
| political and non-nationalistic reasons lack the depth it
| can change the minds of people who previously did not
| consider that shallowness.
|
| It's like saying "tell me the reasons you bought a house
| that are beyond the financial ones". This is more
| interesting when phrased as "People these days only care
| about the financial gains when doing a property
| purchase".
| dang wrote:
| I feel like I understand this answer from within, so to
| speak, because it's similar to how I looked at commenting
| in years past. I've written about that before: https://hn
| .algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| (the earliest of those posts was one month after I became
| public as HN mod).
|
| The problem is that you're only referring to what's going
| on inside yourself--that is, _your_ ideas about
| conversation, debate, provocation, liveliness, and so on
| --but if you want to be a valuable contributor instead of
| damaging the container, you need also to take into
| account what 's going on in _others_ --not just one or
| two others but many, in the case of a large forum like
| HN. More than that, you need to take into account the
| medium: what a large, weakly cohesive internet forum is
| capable of and what it is not. If you don't do that,
| you'll end up hurting the commons--which is fragile--even
| while being sure of the rightness and interestingness of
| your own intentions.
|
| Imagine someone who's into boxing showing up at a dance,
| say, or a concert or a lecture, who, while milling around
| talking, is in the habit of punching other people now and
| then. Nothing serious--just a light jab to the torso or
| the side of head every once in a while. When asked not to
| do that, imagine that they reply: "Actually, I disagree
| with your approach. I think sparring is very valuable for
| developing alertness and reflexes. It focuses the mind
| and is a good starting point for interacting directly and
| truthfully. The fault lies with your rules, which care
| only about politeness and propriety and assume that
| people are soft and can't take a punch. These aren't even
| real punches, just taps, and they are a good device for
| getting people to reveal what they are really like,
| behind their facade. I believe that we should not abstain
| from getting to know others as they really are, and that
| is why my interacting style includes some degree of
| pugilism, to elevate feelings for more lively and less
| stylised interaction."
|
| The thing is, they're not wrong. That is, nothing they've
| said there is wrong--it is only wrong for this _context_
| , but that is enough to make it disastrously wrong, not
| only for them and the people they're provoking but for
| the entire community. In a context with a different
| implicit contract--like a sparring ring, or a group of
| roughhousing friends--it would work fine.
|
| When we ask people not to post flamebait a.k.a. provoke
| others on HN, we're not necessarily telling them that
| what they said was wrong, or what they did was wrong.
| We're just saying it's wrong _here_. That 's why I say
| "here" so much in moderation comments (https://hn.algolia
| .com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., https://hn
| .algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
|
| That word _here_ macroexpands in two dimensions. Along
| one axis it means: "given the nature of a large,
| anonymous internet forum"--i.e. the medium we're all
| communicating through. Along a second axis it means:
| "given the specific type of site we're trying to have".
| We're trying to optimize this place for one thing, namely
| curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&p
| refix=true&sor...). The HN guidelines are a distillation
| of everything we've learned, and continue to learn, about
| how we can all perform this optimization together. Since
| it's in all our interests to have a site that gratifies
| curiosity, it's in all our interests to follow them. It
| doesn't need to be for ethical reasons, or intellectual
| agreement, or anything of the sort. Raw self-interest is
| fine, if that's what gets you there.
|
| The problem with provocation and flamebait is easy to
| derive from this: you can't provoke or flame others into
| curiosity. All you will achieve is to activate and
| agitate them, and then they will defend themselves from
| attack with posts that are both more hostile and more
| predictable. This is the opposite of curiosity, which is
| an open and relaxed state. It is how we get flamewars,
| and to repeat what I just said, the problem with those is
| not that they are intrinsically wrong somehow, it's that
| they are not _interesting_ , and thus are wrong _here_ ,
| given how we're trying to optimize HN.
|
| Some of you will say "But wait! I _can_ be provoked into
| curiosity. As a matter of fact, I like it when people do
| that. I don 't take it personally, and it makes me think.
| Actually, that's just the sort of conversation I think we
| should have on HN." Yes, some people, by virtue of being
| neuroatypical or having done a lot of self-work or who
| knows why, sometimes respond to provocation and flamebait
| by getting more curious. But you know what? It doesn't
| matter, because statistically the overwhelming majority
| of participants on a large, open internet forum are not
| functioning that way--not at all--and it is their
| responses which will dominate the threads.
|
| This is where you need to understand the medium in order
| to understand what sort of messages to send. If your
| messages are firebombs, you are going to set this place
| on fire, even if one or two people do happen to
| understand the game you're playing and are up for playing
| it too--just as when you throw punches at a party you're
| going to start a brawl, even if one or two people enjoy
| the sparring and respond playfully. Not everything in
| your house is flammable, but you wouldn't scatter lit
| matches in it.
|
| In other words, the argument "that's the sort of
| conversation I think we should have on HN" is wrong, not
| because you're wrong to think that or because such
| conversation is wrong per se, but because there soon
| won't _be_ any HN if people do it here (https://hn.algoli
| a.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
|
| Instead, you should follow the site guidelines, even if
| the game we're playing here isn't your favorite and you'd
| rather be playing, say, rugby (https://hn.algolia.com/?da
| teRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), because this is
| the only game we can play here--note that word "here"--
| given the medium and mandate of the site. Switching to
| some other game you like better isn't an alternative; the
| alternative is the self-destruction of the community
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411333), which
| isn't in any of our interests.
|
| There are other places to play more rough-and-tumble
| games. It can't work here because the medium doesn't
| allow for it. You'd need a smaller, more cohesive forum (
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...). Rugby teams who beat each other up on the pitch
| and then go out drinking together can do that because
| they have a shared identity and pre-existing
| relationships. Random groups of the same size can't do
| that.
|
| Quite a few HN users, including some of the most
| prominent ones (and some of the best writers too),
| started off with a pugnacious commenting style and
| learned over the years to modulate that in the interest
| of curiosity, both in themselves and others. That's the
| learning curve we all have to go through here, and are
| still going through.
| [deleted]
| Craighead wrote:
| How dismissive of legitimate issues.
|
| A great video remix tool to you is worth:
|
| supporting an authoritarian regime implementing African
| colonialism in 2021 genociding an ethnic and religious minority
|
| the app itself supporting the culling of ideas and people
| artificially to further refine Chinas monolithic homogeneous
| culture and apply those concepts to all users of the app
|
| no thanks, let me know when I can get those features without
| all those strings.
| guram11 wrote:
| meme went wrong and escalated quickly sums up TikTok
| demail wrote:
| That's not what this is
| freebuju wrote:
| Now only if tiktok would stop treating me like a bot and allow me
| to follow accounts on a new account I created recently
| greatgoat420 wrote:
| That was pretty interesting. Combine that with the neural
| rendering that was posted earlier for GTA-V and you could
| actually create high quality new novel content from remixes.
| hoseja wrote:
| Should I give the backdoor to Xi? Is it really that great?
| nahbrah123 wrote:
| I thought tictok was very unsafe to use. Is that narrative old
| news and just fear mongering now?
| 3nt3 wrote:
| They can't really gather that much data other than what you're
| interested in. It pretty much just stores data on what videos
| you watched and comments etc.
|
| imo it doesn't really matter if you use american companies
| stuff who have to give your data to various three letter
| agencies or some chinese app that will give it to the chinese
| government (which can't really do anything with it anyways)
| hansor wrote:
| I must say that I dislike TikTok with passion - but this one was
| actually very creative and funny.
| graphtrader wrote:
| Any time I have tried to watch videos on it I feel like I am
| getting a headache and having a few IQ points shaved off.
|
| Mostly it makes me sympathize with people back in the day when
| cocaine was consider a tonic and medicine.
|
| "This stuff is so entertaining and I can't believe I just want
| more and more. You just have to try this cocaine stuff, you will
| love it".
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Agreed, this thread looks astroturfed. I can't believe the
| readers of usual HN articles would be so all over Tiktok.
|
| All I see on Tiktok is brain damage. Pretty people doing
| "slipping in banana peels" level humor, weird childish stuff
| like how to use scissors, "mindblow" recipes that make no
| sense. Various junk "lifehacks" etc. Its all garbage after
| scrolling for like 30 minutes.
|
| But I'm also not the target demographic, as a programmer in my
| 30s with still a bit of attention span left. I really don't
| envy the kids who grow up with this garbage.
| DanBC wrote:
| You can control your tiktok feed. If you make no attempt to
| control it you get an eclectic mix. If you use the tools that
| tiktok gives you you'll end up with a curated feed.
|
| TikTok is _very good_ at giving you the content you 're
| interested in, if you take a small amount of time to train
| it.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| How much time does it need? How do I even tell the
| algorithm what to show if nothing comes up that I'd want?
| All I see is lame pranks, ass, tits, dancing with nipples
| showing through the clothes, a banana being sucked into a
| vacuum cleaner, fishing with weird bait, a guy jumping on
| the conveyor belt to do push-ups at the supermarket
| checkout, it's all lowest common denominator garbage.
|
| Maybe I could train it better though, because I realize
| YouTube is also cancer in incognito mode. But honestly I
| can't imagine 5-10 second snippet videos being worth
| watching however "good" they may be.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I think tiktok sucks and all, but the users talking about how
| great it is are not a bunch of green name nobody's - it's
| established users. I doubt that they were all made using fake
| comments just for this moment for tiktok to AstroTurf.
|
| But maybe you're right - I'd claim it's just unlikely
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Really reminds me of this great TED talk from Lawrence Lessig. I
| bet he'd be happy to see this!
|
| https://youtu.be/7Q25-S7jzgs
| Firebrand wrote:
| What's really interesting about TikTok is that they've seem to
| have successfully taken making a fool of yourself on the internet
| (and out in public if you dance outside) mainstream. I have no
| idea what compels otherwise everyday people to post embarrassing
| and sometimes way too personal videos for potentially millions of
| people to laugh at but they do it.
|
| Of course, there are a lot of issues with the app itself, but
| it's nice to see the world be a little less serious sometimes.
| meristohm wrote:
| Maybe I share to gain a sense of belonging? And/Or out of a
| sense that by sharing personal details I might help someone?
| That sounds and feels like self-importance. I took a multi-year
| break from contributing online, and HN is a venture back into
| it, in part thanks to the moderation here and the emphasis on
| curiosity, which is at odds with my impulse to chime in with my
| lived experience and perspective-thus-far. What are some other
| reasons people share so publicly?
| rapsey wrote:
| I think they make the community more welcoming with heavy
| moderation that removes downer videos. Something an american
| run social network would never do.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > making a fool of yourself on the internet
|
| That's exactly what early Youtube was. Remember Charlie bit my
| finger, David after Dentist? This kind of light hearted home
| videos, it used to be filled with that content, but now it's
| basically completely gone. TikTok is basically Youtube pre-
| monetization. Probably won't last but enjoying it while it
| lasts.
| buryat wrote:
| I noticed that as well, people are just not afraid of posting
| embarrassing content that you actually relate to. It's awesome
| to see just normal people doing normal stuff and millions of
| people cheering and commenting in an encouraging way.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Direct link:
|
| https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1391207264543858689/pu/...
| mujina93 wrote:
| Basically every comment here says positive things about tiktok.
| Is this a bot invasion on HN or is it really that good?
|
| The few times I tried it it gave me loads of crappy content. No
| thank you, I'm not in for another doom scrolling addiction. The
| world has already enough addictive dopamine-f**ing time-sucker
| almost contentless social medias. I don't have the energies to
| fight against or maniacally curate my feed for yet another one.
|
| I'd evaluate the usefulness of a social media or any other app by
| looking at a couple of metrics: 1) how much time do you spend
| there daily? 2) after you have used it, do you feel a
| better/improved person? I'd be curious to see numbers for these
| metrics. If anybody has links to papers/surveys that study how
| good or bad is a certain social media, please feel free to share.
| dang wrote:
| > Is this a bot invasion on HN or is it really that good?
|
| Probably neither, but please don't break the site guidelines
| like you did there.
|
| " _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about
| abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data._"
|
| In a case like this thread it's pretty trivial to answer the
| question yourself, actually, by looking at the posting
| histories of the commenters.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
| darkstar999 wrote:
| > The few times I tried it it gave me loads of crappy content
|
| Feed the algorithm. Like/comment/follow content you like and it
| shows you a lot of good stuff. It really works.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Even more so than like, your best tool is long press > not
| interested. Use that indiscriminately for a bit and you'll be
| in a much better place.
|
| Yes, it's rough at first, but it's pretty amazing how it
| works after some time. I get really niche content like VSCode
| tips, Math proofs, tips on the later games I'm playing or
| even Hamilton+programming jokes.
| hellbanTHIS wrote:
| No I think these people are either being paid or are smoking
| crack, I haven't used it much but when I have all (edit: "much
| of", not all obviously) I've seen is soft-core porn and white
| nationalist or men's rights propaganda. It's actually really
| awful.
|
| Even the soft core porn made me disgusted with humanity because
| of the terrible music. Someone will probably pop in and say "oh
| you have to let it learn what you like!" No I don't.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I just see child level brain development content. Meaning,
| extreme cliches, gooey/sticky materials, household objects in
| weird context or used strangely, weird recipes, animals
| making strange noises, pretty people dancing, one dimensional
| emotional stories like I helped an old lady cross the street,
| wedding clothes, weird iPhone "hacks" and tricks etc. Surely
| depends on location, this is Germany.
|
| Actually quite similar to the so-called "chumbox" content
| types.
|
| I agree there is unnatural behavior in this comment section.
| No way the enthusiasm is organic.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| That's exactly what it's like. The strategy is to keep
| users engaged and entertained, while keeping them dumb.
| Talk about Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the Indian border
| conflict or a ton of other topics and you might find your
| content shadow-banned or your account gets suspended. Since
| they try this as much as they can get away with, you can be
| sure the recommendations and trends are manufactured based
| on what ByteDance/the CCP wants you to see.
|
| It's telling the type of content is almost exactly the same
| as on Douyin, the Mainland Chinese version.
| ehsankia wrote:
| You haven't used it much yet you somehow in your very short
| experience know everyone's experience with it and anyone who
| has had a different experience must be paid or on drugs? I
| hope you realize how bad that sounds...
| adjkant wrote:
| Some notes as what I would say is near target user who
| generally enjoys the time I spend on Tiktok:
|
| 1. Tiktok the company is absolute crap, mainly for censorship
| of content and diverse creators (they even recently they A/B
| tested censoring _private messages_ between mutuals). This is
| absolutely tied to China, though the political CCP part is a
| lot of unfounded griping probably. But to be clear, Tiktok the
| user culture and the company are very different.
|
| 2. Tiktok has essentially become the new Tumblr. The
| algorithmic approach means that once you give some signals, the
| content specifies a lot and it can be a great experience for
| people interested in more niche things. The "default" Tiktok is
| incredibly bad, but spaces for queer creators, the
| neurodivergent, political discussion, and niche interests such
| as urban planning, book clubs, fandoms, movies, tv shows, art,
| and more are thriving. That's something that many don't see
| unless they are in those groups because of the algorithm, so no
| "cursory" look at Tiktok will find that.
|
| 3. To answer your questions, I have had my doom scroll days but
| generally I keep to an hour or so now and generally feel pretty
| good after using it. Again it depends on what "side" of Tiktok
| you are on, but it avoids a lot of pitfalls. I haven't seen
| studies, but here's one data point for you. I'm 25 for
| reference on age.
|
| If you don't feel the need or desire, you don't need to be on
| it. But I really think the best way to conceptualize it is a
| visual Tumblr with an automatic algorithm approach rather than
| a focus on manual curation.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Can't imagine having political discussions in 15 second
| increments. Twitter is bad enough already.
| 3nt3 wrote:
| You can have up to 60 seconds and just upload multiple
| parts. Sure, this isn't the most nuanced approach but it
| kind of works.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Can you? I haven't used the site in quite a while, have
| they changed things?
| rnotaro wrote:
| The even started to roll-out 3 minutes TikToks to some
| creators. But the fact that you can't go seek into the
| video make them quite annoying to watch. (Or when you
| accidentally scroll up and need to re-watch the whole
| thing..)
| Graffur wrote:
| HN is a place that now hates cryptocurrency and loves tiktok..
| very curious!
| wdroz wrote:
| I bet most of us doesn't use tiktok, therefore we are
| unlikely to write any comment to talk about it.
|
| If the positive comments are made in good faith, I see no
| reason to downvote/flag them.
| Graffur wrote:
| I agree, I am not downvoting or flagging any comments
| unless they are clearly spam.
| k12sosse wrote:
| At least tiktok is real
| valtism wrote:
| I don't know. I've been hearing from people who actually use
| the app that it is really good, and the video editor is
| amazing.
|
| I disregarded the platform at first because the content it
| surfaced didn't appeal to me, but I can see how with good
| algorithms it can become a real platform for the future.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Tiktok is "addictive dopamine-f*ing time-sucker almost
| contentless social medias" perfected more than anything else,
| by a pretty good margin.
|
| It's a good thing to avoid honestly, you miss out a few rare
| genuinely funny jokes and avoid the brain damage. Seems like a
| good trade. Wish I'd made that choice.
|
| If you are in the business of inflicting this kind of addiction
| on other people then I can understand the positive attitude,
| Tiktok is a work of art on that front.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| There sure has been a change in attitude towards tiktok here on
| hn. Just go back a year or so when Trump tried to ban it (or
| force a cheap sale to oracle) and tiktok was accused of being
| an extension of ccp - read the comments from back then.
| yorwba wrote:
| I doubt there's been a change in attitude, just different
| threads attracting a different mixture of interests. The only
| user I could identify who participated in both kinds of
| threads doesn't appear to have changed their mind.
| matsemann wrote:
| Facebook, google etc are also an extension of American 3
| letter agencies, so I get why people don't really care.
| Almost better to ship my data to ccp that cannot really use
| it for anything, than give big US even more on me.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Yeah. That should be the issue.
|
| Though TikTok is kind enough to run their international
| version on AWS.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Ps: it is really that good - imho next generation social
| media.
| okwubodu wrote:
| That TikTok algorithm is something else. I thought classmates
| were exaggerating about how much it sucked them in until I
| checked my Screen Time after a week of using the app.
| abawany wrote:
| I feel weird because I tried to like TikTok but I ended up
| hating it with a passion. No matter how many times I
| skipped/disliked a given video type, they still kept showing
| up. TikTok is clearly not targeted to me because just writing
| about my experience here is once again upsetting me.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| I had the opposite experience. Within an hour of using the
| app it had already profiled that I'm interested in
| woodworking, military, comedy, and anything with a solid
| story. I very rarely dislike a video unless I don't want to
| see that specific creator anymore. It profiles me based on
| likes (not something I do a lot), subscribes (once a creator
| has shown up 2-3 times with solid content I usually
| subscribe), and view duration. I am very quick to swipe to
| the next video if it's some dancing or other thing I'm not
| interested in.
|
| Reels on the other hand, all it shows me is twerking and
| people getting hurt. Complete turn off compared to how well
| TikTok tuned in to my preferences.
| vmception wrote:
| I also have trouble getting a non-cringy feed
|
| Reminds me to give it another shot right now
| JoshTko wrote:
| For the videos you really don't like you can indicate you
| dislike the category
| johns wrote:
| I would recommend doing the opposite: interact more with the
| things you do like. "Like" generously, watch videos all the
| way through a few times, hit share, comment etc. I think
| those are the biggest signals that inform the algorithm.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| All pr for the communist info sucker? Or real users here to
| praise but not one bad word? Wonder.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Perhaps our reality is just the product of this process generated
| by hyperintelligent beings.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Is TikTok just for funniness, or does it have content that
| conveys information?
| pm90 wrote:
| The thing is ... nobody knows, since what every user sees is a
| somewhat random and unique collection of videos.
|
| My profile is like 50% silly/funny/hot-takes, 30% related to
| ethnicity-tok for my ethnicity and 20% niche stuff like a Texas
| Beekeeper who likes to remove bees safely, a pool cleaner who
| shows videos of his "worst jobs" etc.
| input_sh wrote:
| It does have content with actual information, it's just
| difficult to cram it into the format. First the limit was 6
| seconds, then upped to 15, and I believe the current limit is a
| minute.
|
| So when it does contain some information, people usually talk
| far too quickly. Like you're scrolling through fun shit that
| doesn't require you to think at all and then you're suddenly
| looking at an equivalent of a YouTube video at 2x the speed.
| carstenhag wrote:
| I'm seeing about everything. From barely naked girls, to a golf
| course ball pickup employee, to handymen, to excavator
| operators, to 2nd hand fashion stuff, disabnled people talking
| about their diseases, and then just jokes.
| drloser wrote:
| Protip:
|
| If you don't like what you see on TikTok, you need to press your
| screen a couple of seconds, then select "I'm not interested". It
| takes a couple of hours before the algorithm filters all the
| content you dislike.
|
| And when you see a lot of similar videos (a "trend"), use the
| "hide the videos with this song". Most of the time, all the
| videos from a trend use the same music.
|
| (I only have videos of dogs and DIY...)
| ehsankia wrote:
| My feed is programming jokes, math/science videos, Hamilton,
| lots of cats and sometimes very strange combinations of the
| above.
|
| One impressive moment was, around when the new Animal Crossing
| came out, I immediately started getting a ton of AC content,
| almost half of my feed, and when I stopped playing, less than a
| week later I was basically not getting any at all.
| joewrong wrote:
| Been doing this in addition to blocking any users sharing cable
| news clips. Really enjoying my silly feed.
| kickscondor wrote:
| A fantastic essay by Eugene Wei on how TikTok's tool set makes
| this possible: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2021/2/15/american-
| idle
| user982 wrote:
| I was surprised to learn that this is all done in-app:
| https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1372719985496182786
| dang wrote:
| Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26225781
| codeulike wrote:
| My favourite tiktok remix culture thing is the Candy Shop/Broom
| sequence from a few years ago
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUKHDY-ZK3o
|
| There's a subtle aesthetic in this one of joining in but not
| trying too hard and that really makes it accessible.
| eumoria wrote:
| The endless praise for TikTok here is very confusing. I don't
| think it's in bad faith the account age of the commenters all
| seem normal and the like.
|
| I don't have any strong hatred of TikTok myself but usually HN
| are a privacy concerned skeptical bunch and this is very weird.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| yea bytedance has seen slowdown in user growth so they're
| growth hacking by targeting potential users on... hn.
|
| how about it's a fun app and there are so many shitty apps that
| that makes it remarkable (worthy of remark)? i know that's why
| i posted what i posted.
| defaultname wrote:
| It's Vine 2.0 with great content creation tools and a
| surprisingly advanced set of filters. What's there to hate?
|
| There is another comment somewhere down that claims that any
| positive opinion is "paid or smoking crack" and that is too
| common when people feel threatened by something.
|
| Many of the things we do in life are simply a Waste Of Time (if
| we discount being entertained as a worthwhile pursuit).
| Commenting on HN is a waste of time. Reddit, Facebook, Chess,
| Gaming, Crosswords, Reading -- total waste of time. It's a bit
| strange when something comes along that people choose to
| entertain themselves with occasionally and invariably the "iT's
| AdDiCtInG!" arguments appear. Bizarre.
| eumoria wrote:
| Thank you new account praising TikTok and saying HN is a
| waste of time and proving my point.
|
| I didn't ask "what's there to hate" but rather almost NO
| posts on HN get critical praise for an invasive social media
| app.
|
| Wow.
| defaultname wrote:
| While trite and below HN, the best reply is ROFL. You first
| announce that you've done your extensive audit of accounts
| and can't yet find the fishiness -- though you're sure it's
| there given that people have opinions different from you --
| and now my account is too young for your suspicion filter
| and therefore "proves your point"? I literally laughed out
| loud.
|
| This whole discussion reminds me when everyone was
| fearmongering that Snapchat was for kids to send nudes to
| each other and arrange rainbow parties. When people aren't
| in on something, it can only possibly have negative value.
|
| My "What's there to hate" query was in response to you
| claiming that you don't have a strong hatred for it. That's
| like saying you don't have a strong hatred for deer, or
| Asians, or trees. It's a weird thing to announce that you
| don't have a strong hatred for.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're
| trying for the opposite here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're
| trying for the opposite here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| What's there to hate? The company behind it, said company's
| past conduct, and the links it's got to CCP.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| so basically every major social media platform in existence
| (and quite a few of the more general tech ones too), except
| replace the CCP with the American government
|
| Honestly it's kinda fun watching Americans tangle with the
| "oh no this ubiquitous platform is controlled by a company
| beholden to a foreign power I disagree with but have no say
| in or control over!" conundrum for once.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're
| trying for the opposite here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| draw_down wrote:
| What are the privacy concerns exactly? It's a firehose of video
| that shoves content down my gullet.
|
| What is there to spy on -- which videos I like or watch again?
| Doesn't seem like particularly secretive data. Plus, who am I?
|
| Besides which, something can be a good experience or nice to
| use even if it has other concerns. That does happen.
|
| Nobody who is posting things like this is coming out and saying
| what they believe the actual problem to be. It's all innuendo
| and implications, shady intimations about bots and privacy.
| Feel free to spit out what the actual problem is, guys!!
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I don't have an account with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
| I dislike lots of social media. Here's what I like about
| TikTok:
|
| 1) Quality content
|
| 2) Excellent content curation (better than YouTube recommended
| videos)
|
| 3) Not needing to have an account makes me happy
|
| 4) I can watch tiktoks shared with me from others without an
| account and without even visiting the site (videos can be
| downloaded or ripped using CLI programs).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| More follow-ups:
|
| https://twitter.com/GAdam56/status/1391596927058382849
|
| https://twitter.com/Its_AleAndra/status/1391786673470676999
|
| https://twitter.com/Its_AleAndra/status/1392115707610083328
|
| https://twitter.com/_Veskko/status/1391757982522875905
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