[HN Gopher] TikTok's co-founder to step down as chief executive
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok's co-founder to step down as chief executive
Author : throwawaysea
Score : 200 points
Date : 2021-05-20 06:20 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| ffggvv wrote:
| funny reading the naive comments here that think his statements
| reflect the real reason he stepped down and not that the CCP
| forced him to amid a broader crackdown in china on tech companies
|
| guess that's what happens when you're in a tech bubble and
| totally oblivious to world affairs or news
| ericls wrote:
| And that's exactly why China will take over the US.
| noofen wrote:
| I welcome our new Chinese overlords [1]. China is buying the
| white-man token on the dip, ignoring Western "diversity"
| premiums.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-jobs-
| breakingvi...
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with ByteDance, they're actually much bigger
| than you might think, and have become serious competitors to
| China's leading tech companies (BATX + H) [1]:
|
| - Baidu
|
| - Alibaba
|
| - Tencent
|
| - Xiaomi
|
| - Huawei
|
| You can see how their offering compare in this Big Tech
| Spreadsheet [2].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BATX
|
| [2] https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/big-tech
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I'm guessing there's some internal pressure. He's probably
| going to get a year off and then a cushy role in the party.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| It bothers me that the acronym is two non-words.
|
| I propose X-BATH
| abledon wrote:
| I'm reading as a Corona reference
|
| BatxH where H = Human, x = multiplier sign
| yftsui wrote:
| Nobody use BAT anymore, Baidu has been a 2nd tier company for
| at least 5 years and nobody refer it in the acronyms. The top 5
| are Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, ByteDance, Meituan or PDD
| xvector wrote:
| How would you say ByteDance compares to the other four?
| swyx wrote:
| seen any good analyses of what happened at Baidu? how do you
| screw up being "The Google of China"?
|
| (I know "X of China" is never actually true but work with me)
| izgzhen wrote:
| Google is still relevant because it controls Android and
| Chrome. Baidu never gets lucky in building that and be a
| dominant player. This makes it very passive in the mobile
| internet market competition.
| rfoo wrote:
| Web search is not very profitable ever since the so-called
| "mobile age". A large percentage of mobile-only users have
| stopped relying on search, they reach to WeChat or just 100
| different specific apps instead. Baidu was in desperate for
| growing or even keeping its ads revenue then, and they did
| something really bad which triggered a PR storm [1], making
| things worse.
|
| Also, around 2016-2017 most of my engineer friends who are
| great at their job left Baidu for, surprise, ByteDance.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| 1. Ant Group is an affiliate of Alibaba.
|
| 2. Is Meituan that big?
|
| 3. I have never heard of PDD.
|
| 4. What about Xiaomi and Huawei?
| eunos wrote:
| PDD is exclusively caters to mainland group buying. It's
| valuation is quite big though 160B USD
| deadcoder0904 wrote:
| Where did you get this data from?
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| I filled it myself using Google to find projects I wasn't
| aware of.
| specialist wrote:
| I highly recommend http://acquired.fm podcast. They cover these
| companies and many others.
|
| Being a grey beard, their episode on Tencent and the freemium
| business model kinda blew my mind.
| blueblisters wrote:
| TikTok will surpass Facebook as the most engaging social media
| app in the US with fewer DAUs than Facebook. It's already at
| par [1] according to some data.
|
| ByteDance might become the most valuable company in the world,
| not just in China.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1394704798591590401?s...
| adventured wrote:
| That's never going to happen. TikTok is already losing
| engagement in the US. The TikTok problem is that there are
| only so many cloned dances to do and very short form video is
| overwhelmingly low value garbage.
|
| Ever look at the TikTok channels for prominent celebrities?
| The content is horrible. It's embarrassing to look at their
| channels. It's inherent to the format. The sole thing
| propping up TikTok in the US - which is already beginning to
| fade - is the popularity of young people cloning mediocre
| dance routines. There is only so far for that one trick pony
| to go, it becomes increasingly boring with time.
|
| Facebook persists as the telephone that every house has,
| along with its protective moat in Instagram. TikTok has no
| persistence reason to exist long-term. It's far easier to
| build the next fad social network than it is to replace
| something perma entrenched like Facebook. The over 30 crowd
| is the majority of social media users in the US, they aren't
| going to abandon Facebook, it's set (exactly the same way
| Google is in search); young people however will abandon
| TikTok for the next cool trinket social media app as they get
| increasingly bored with TikTok and desperate for something
| new and cool to play with.
| _fzslm wrote:
| > The sole thing propping up TikTok in the US - which is
| already beginning to fade - is the popularity of young
| people cloning mediocre dance routines. There is only so
| far for that one trick pony to go, it becomes increasingly
| boring with time.
|
| for the first 15 minutes, sure.
|
| once TikTok starts to understand what kind of content
| you're interested in (and it does this quite quickly), this
| problem disappears. i can't remember the last time i saw
| content like that.
|
| it's almost like the difference between YouTube signed out
| vs signed in.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's a prediction and a half. It would only become the most
| valuable company if the stock market goes crazy about it, as
| it stands, one does not become that with just a mobile app /
| social network.
| ulfw wrote:
| I am sorry what else is Facebook???
| xvector wrote:
| Still, it will be an incredibly valuable company,
| especially as the Chinese middle class comes into wealth.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| China seems to be aging faster than the middle class can
| get wealthy.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/chinas-aging-population-
| is-b...
| eunos wrote:
| The older folks were not educated (less than 10% with
| college degree). The young people are much more (close to
| 30%). Besides, close to 40% pop lives in rural.
| nomay wrote:
| I've come to realize that the inherent advantage to the
| China system is that it can dispose of people at will, it
| doesn't need to care about your feel and whether you want
| to be in the loser pack, all in the grand name of the
| greater good.
|
| That makes it nimble, and powerful, that means the system
| itself almost always wins, as for the people, well, good
| luck.
| elefanten wrote:
| The CCP runs an arbitrage. It is willing to destroy any
| citizen's life -- to deprive, to immiserate, to extract -
| in exchange for marginally better systemic performance
| for the party state. Most other modern governments just
| aren't willing and able to use and abuse their citizens
| to quite the same degree that the CCP is. And with a lot
| of expendable people + total control, you can drive some
| fast results. But this is also why the world needs to
| firmly reject such unethical governance plays, by banding
| together to shun and decouple from any ruling elite that
| tries to run them.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > Most other modern governments just aren't willing and
| able to use and abuse their citizens to quite the same
| degree that the CCP is.
|
| Oh, really? Let's look at one metric: https://en.m.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_....
|
| overall incarceration rate in the US is 639 per 100,000
|
| The incarceration rate of the People's Republic of China
| varies depending on sources and measures. According to
| the World Prison Brief, the rate for only sentenced
| prisoners is 118 per 100,000 (as of 2015)
|
| WTH is going on here?
| pgwhalen wrote:
| In what sense does a high rate of incarceration help the
| United States "system" though? This feels like a tenuous
| connection.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I am not an expert, I dont know how a government benefits
| from abusing their people. I dont see CCP doing that
| systematically. But apparently many think CCP just like
| to abuse Chinese people, even if there is no data to
| support it. Maybe US government is with hidden agendas
| that requires abusing people inside prisons?
| pgwhalen wrote:
| Isn't it generally agreed that China is actively
| committing genocide against its own people? If that's not
| systematic abuse, I'm not sure what is.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
| justicezyx wrote:
| You can search Youtube and see youtubers' visiting to
| Xinjiang, and even the sites of the so-called genocide
| events. Draw your own conclusion. I haven't been in
| Xinjiang in my lifetime, I have no idea what really
| happened. I watched CNN, ABC, and many western news
| reports, and CGTN's reports, and a lot of Youtuber, like
| and dislike China all alike. I had my own opinions. But I
| see no reason to present them without myself setting foot
| on the region.
| random314 wrote:
| Yes, of course. No sense in presenting opinions without
| setting foot in Xinjiang with the blessings of a
| carefully monitoring government. Sure many celebrities
| and professors have disappeared for the last 2-3 years
| and China is trying to compel expat Uighurs to return to
| China. But I don't want to present opinions without
| setting foot in china. There are too many reports of
| Chinese soldiers entering homes whisking husbands away
| into educational camps and sleeping with the wives.
|
| But irrespective of all these stories, I am firmly in
| your camp about my opinion. I see no reason to present my
| opinion without myself setting foot on the region.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Well, let's not be cynical.
|
| Speaking truly and frankly. You are expressing a lot of
| opinions.
|
| I indeed reserve my judgement on CCP, as I know that I
| know very little about the entity.
|
| You may or may not interpret that as complicit to them,
| or whatever. But please do calm your mind, and see into
| the facts, and the reasoning behind the emotions.
|
| I am not asking anyone to be correct. I am asking
| rationale.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > it doesn't need to care about your feel and whether you
| want to be in the loser pack > as for the people, well,
| good luck.
|
| I am more and more direct nowadays to point out the
| ridiculousness of comments like this:
|
| This type of comments do not square with the facts in
| even the slightest sense.
|
| China runs the world's largest and most successful
| poverty elimination program. How can a government doing
| this not care about you in the loser pack? https://www.go
| ogle.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/11/27/asia...
|
| In essence, a lot of such comments treat CCP as some kind
| of bizarre imaginary entity that automatically possess
| any negative traits for the topic being discussed.
|
| Of course, the distribution of positive & negative
| comments are certainly always mixed.
|
| But boy, oh boy, I never seen a single comment actually
| showing a decent understanding of CCP's functioning
| nowadays, in my 10+ years on hackernews.
|
| Not a single comment.
|
| Wow
| hienyimba wrote:
| > "The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal
| manager. I'm more interested in analysing organizational and
| market principles, and leveraging these theories to further
| reduce management work, rather than actually managing people," Mr
| Zhang wrote in a message on the company's website. "Similarly,
| I'm not very social, preferring solitary activities like being
| online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may
| be possible," he added.
|
| This fits the description of a Fierce Nerd as defined by Paul
| Graham. Little wonder he navigated the company to such great
| success.
|
| [0]http://paulgraham.com/fn.html
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Little wonder he navigated the company to such great success.
|
| After Twitter destroyed Vine it was clear something was needed
| to replace it and TikTok filled that void.
| stevewodil wrote:
| Not really. Snapchat and Instagram both introduced video
| features around the time Vine started declining. Instagram's
| video support is what killed the Vine userbase as the big
| creators moved off of Vine.
|
| TikTok didn't fill a void, it's a fantastic video app that
| did a lot of things right. There was a lot of new video apps
| after Vine died, none of them were successful.
| darkwater wrote:
| I might be too naive but being a new platform, evolved from
| Musical.ly, closer to the Gen-Z by just being something
| that their parents/teachers/"older" people won't use was
| the most determining factor in its explosion. So, Vine
| being bought and deeply connected by Twitter was definitely
| an issue for Vine.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| We don't have hard numbers obviously but a lot of people
| did miss Vine. Snapchat and Instagram didn't come close to
| replacing it's coolness and connected factor. Not to
| mention Vine was amazing for black culture. If you think
| the others replaced Vine then you probably aren't a heavy
| social media user. Everyone knows Snapchat is for "rogue"
| content. Like your random sketchy night out in college that
| you only send temporarily (the close friend feature on
| Instagram and DMs never replaced this fully).
|
| Instagram is much more for funny content that is longer
| form or static (this goes serious static content and
| memes), some short form content (since it has grown with
| reels), and for clout. The gram has always been for clout
| first and foremost. I'm not posting my pictures of my new
| whip on Snapchat or Facebook.
|
| Vine was the platform for the great short form
| collaboration that is equally silly, informative and cool.
| TikTok is having the exact same effect, but has a feed,
| comment section, and related video functionality that makes
| it even better.
| Merem wrote:
| Is it? I took a look at it after someone mentioned some
| days ago that it's available on the web, no account
| required. Searching for videos is pretty terrible, so I did
| want to create an account for more possibilities but that
| wasn't possible on the desktop. Then I installed
| Bluestacks, installed Tiktok, created a dummy account and
| took a proper look that time. The "For You" stuff was
| rather useless, so I searched for some good music (from a
| specific genre) and liked some videos which resulted in me
| being recommended more music of that genre. OK. Now,
| obviously, I wanted to see something more than just footage
| from groups performing, so I looked for some easy-to-find
| things and liked those. Made no difference for the "For
| You" recommendations though. Eventually, 2-3 other topics
| trickled in and completely replaced the music footage
| (despite me often watching to the end). Then I found out
| that you can mark videos as "not interested" by holding
| down the mouse button...which basically completely killed
| two topics because I'm not intersted in stupid captions or
| annoying effects. And apparently you can't block
| effects....or captions...or hashtags. Heck, I selected that
| video language filter option from the very beginning but it
| doesn't apply to the "Discover" part of the app at all and
| doesn't even work with the "For You" stuff properly. Why
| can't I directly filter out certain things? I can do so
| with creators and music apparently, but not with hashtags,
| videos from specific countries, videos in a specific
| language etc. Then there is also the issue with "not
| interested" not working most of the time. Only after doing
| that to Vietnamese military parade videos four times has it
| appeared to work. When it comes to meme videos, Corona and
| politics, it doesn't work at all, no matter how often I
| select it. I'm also stuck watching the same kind of videos
| over and over and over again. One would think the app would
| recommend something else entirely after someone sweeps at
| least 90% of the time immediately. Ah, also, the
| categories-that-you-like selection is utterly pointless too
| apparently. The only one I selected from the very beginning
| was "gaming" and out of hundreds of videos, there was only
| one which was gaming-related. Since the search function is
| terrible, I can't search for multiple hashtags or very
| specific things like "bla-bla". And single-hashtag is
| pointless since at least 95% of the videos I'm not
| interested in + there is the overlap of words of course. If
| I'm looking for the MSX computer, then I'm getting
| different results of course because "MSX" is a more popular
| thing for X and Y. Something else that I've noticed is
| that, possibly because of demographics, most of the videos
| feature girls/women, even something typically male-
| dominated like farming/agriculture is like 50/50 while
| everything else seems to be 90+%.
|
| Anyway, just some ranting because I don't think I can
| understand why this is so popular, despite being so
| unusable. Granted, at best I would use it as an appetizer
| for proper content (like after listening to a good tune,
| looking for the full song or hearing/seeing some
| interesting tidbit and looking for more information). If
| people that talk aren't involved, it also rather reminds me
| of flash loops from days (more or less) gone by, just with
| terrible captions as an addition.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| I like it because it just has stupid memes and jokes, and
| some cool recipes and stuff - it's easy to browse for 10
| minutes on a break and it feels organic.
|
| Instagram and YouTube etc. have all become incredibly
| corporate with professional production studios etc.
| dominating the platforms - I imagine the same might
| happen to TikTok eventually, but at the moment you can
| just see a funny video someone made of their cat, and the
| cat isn't sponsored by SquareSpace.
| mrkramer wrote:
| TikTok is popular for the same reason why Facebook was
| super popular back in the day; constantly checking for
| new short videos is akin to constantly checking for new
| status updates, new photo uploads and new DMs but now all
| that Facebook activity dissolved into various platforms
| such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. On top of that it
| is easier for content creators to create short videos
| than for example 20 min long YouTube videos meaning
| barrier to entry is much lower.
|
| Also teens and young people in general say that their
| parents and grandparents moved to Facebook because of
| which they do not feel comfortable doing all the
| shenanigans on the Facebook anymore.
|
| Zuckerberg was genius and cursed at the same time because
| he created social network for everything or in another
| words for general content(text, photos, videos etc.) but
| he didn't specialize in any until recently when he and
| his team started paying attention to each and every of
| this content category.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| I would recommend using it a bit more. The algorithm is
| generally pretty good, it just takes some time to learn
| your interests.
|
| The reason they don't have all those filtering options is
| probably because most people don't want to use them and
| it's fun to see video content from all around the world
| and even in different languages. Serendipity on TikTok is
| part of the appeal.
|
| Although it wasn't the case for you, I'd say TikTok
| probably has the best cold-start experience of any
| consumer content app. For comparison, try creating a new
| account on YouTube or IG.
|
| Still get that TikTok may not be for everyone, but imo it
| feels like the end game design of short video content
| consumption. The content can be really fun, silly,
| pointless, mundane, or educational. You don't need to
| follow people. Celebs are not as relevant. Don't like
| something? Just swipe up. It's a pretty refreshing take.
| Merem wrote:
| It can't learn my interests if I don't see any new videos
| though. As I wrote, it's just the same over and over and
| over again. Usually one would mix in something completely
| different...which it doesn't do. That applies to the
| content and the music. And it's not like I'm not
| interested in things. On the contrary, my interests touch
| a large variety of topics but I never get a book
| recommendation, classical music played on different
| instruments, sports etc etc.
|
| Actually, it starts you off with your native language
| only at first IIRC. I increased it to seven different
| ones which didn't matter at all and then decreased it to
| three. And again, no difference.
|
| I don't use any social media and all the "celebrity"
| stuff is generally not for me at all. So I can't really
| compare the experience to anything.
|
| Though, I guess I can attribute the success to what the
| others said, despite its demerits:
|
| - really low barrier of entry (mrkramer)
|
| - organic feeling, as opposed to corporate-
| controlled/generated (alexgmcm)
|
| The addictive nature of seeing what comes next likely
| also plays a role.
| ryandrake wrote:
| As a typical "old guy" I just went over there to browse,
| as an experiment, and while I did find a neat (but too
| short) woodworking video that was kind of interesting, I
| generally agree: I don't know what I would get out of
| TikTok--it's mostly young people doing things that they
| understand and interest them. It's clearly not targeted
| at my demographic, and that's OK.
| taurath wrote:
| My only mild annoyance has been that sometimes my FYP
| gets stuck on a topic like golf that I really don't like
| and it can take a while to get off of it. Otherwise the
| alg tends to send me a lot of small videos of stuff
| that's extremely specific to very specific interests
| which is so much nicer. Searching for things and liking
| videos in those things tends to make those things show up
| on my FYP.
| okprod wrote:
| Tiktok has a different user base; they don't use email,
| phone, or SMS anymore, instead relying on Snapchat and
| WhatsApp, etc.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| >Instagram's video support is what killed the Vine userbase
| as the big creators moved off of Vine.
|
| I don't really think that's the case. I'd still argue lack
| of investment from Twitter is what killed Vine.
|
| >TikTok didn't fill a void, it's a fantastic video app that
| did a lot of things right.
|
| Agree it's fair to say TikTok carved their own path to
| where they are today, but a lot of the same Vine-energy
| lives on in TikTok.
| stevewodil wrote:
| >I don't really think that's the case. I'd still argue
| lack of investment from Twitter is what killed Vine.
|
| Conclude whatever you like, my understanding is that
| Instagram video directly killed Vine after the big
| creators had meetings with Vine executives about getting
| paid to stay on Vine. I guess that could be considered a
| lack of investment, but it can't be ignored that
| Instagram captured the creator base.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-
| died-t...
|
| "Former executives say that a major competitive
| challenged emerged in the form of Instagram, which
| introduced 15-second video clips in June 2013. "Instagram
| video was the beginning of the end," one former executive
| told me. "[Vine] didn't move fast enough to
| differentiate." Instagram courted celebrities with longer
| videos, eventually bumping the limit to a more flexible
| 60 seconds. (Vines didn't break the 6-second barrier
| until earlier this year, and its extended videos never
| caught on.) Instagram also began promoting celebrity
| accounts in its popular "explore" tab, bringing them
| attention that Vine found difficult to match. Marketers
| began shifting their money away from Vine, and stars
| followed."
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Vine had the talent and the creative editing down. Many
| of the biggest YouTube stars started with Vine. World
| Star Hip Hop vine compilations were incredibly culturally
| relevant. They fumbled the bag, so of course those in
| charge would look to blame it on IG. Did IG have an
| impact? Sure, but this type of content never took off
| there. If IG really killed Vine for those reasons you
| listed TikTok would have never happened.
| mrkramer wrote:
| TikTok is the evolution of Vine just like Facebook was
| the evolution of MySpace.
| jwist wrote:
| TikTok most definitely filled the void left by Vine. Vine
| was short video, usually chopped up, lots of one person
| skits. That type of content was not popping up on Instagram
| or Snapchat. Snapchat video would disappear, Instagram
| video felt more like a typical Instagram post but with
| video, or just throw away stories.
|
| TikTok came in with short videos, collaboration tools,
| audio sharing, and has a realness that Instagram does not.
|
| Also funny enough many Viners lived together in the same
| building so they could collaborate. We saw the same thing
| happen with TikTok.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Vine had almost as many active users as Twitter, yet
| there are users actually claiming no one used it. smh
|
| The service failed because it was in high competition and
| they lost momentum. While Tiktok succeeded simply because
| it was fresh, appeared at a time when demand for personal
| and videos was growing, and offered the right combination
| of UX that satisfied its target audience.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > Also funny enough many Viners lived together in the
| same building so they could collaborate.
|
| Yep, 1600 Vine St. It's a nice apartment building with
| lots of YouTube (and now TikTok) stars.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| vine was used by almost no one. tiktok didn't fill a
| void, it created a new space. all the reasons tik tok is
| successful didn't exist on vine. the only thing they
| share is video
| dyeje wrote:
| Yea nobody liked Vine. That's why Vine compilations still
| garner 20M+ views on YouTube 5 years after it was shut
| down. /s
| [deleted]
| williesleg wrote:
| Great, another loser sent to make cheap appliances in re-
| education camp.
| eunos wrote:
| Quite a possibility he wants to Pivot to biotech industry.
| https://twitter.com/ruima/status/1395213832411254793
|
| Interestingly, PDD's founder Colin Huang also recently resign
| from PDD and want to research life science.
| izgzhen wrote:
| https://www.bytedance.com/en/news/60a526af053cc102d640c061 the
| letter itself
| intricatedetail wrote:
| In my opinion, TikTok is a network of wilful informants and a
| dataset that can be used to train AI at recognising foreigners so
| they can be more easily spied on when in China. It can also be
| used as a basis for race segregation programs and help run
| concentration camps in China (e.g. spotting "western" behaviour
| in the population and automatically issuing a ticket to
| reeducation camp). I think that service should be banned
| altogether.
| golergka wrote:
| Would gathering an AI dataset for nationality and race really
| be such a hard problem without it?
| hellomyguys wrote:
| What do you think the CIA does with all the data they get/hack
| from American companies?
| bigtones wrote:
| Wow, his comments were super honest as to his reasons for
| stepping down. It's refreshing in such a transition that it's not
| smothered in corporate speak written by lawyers or HR, or the
| common go-to of 'spending more time with family'.
| thathndude wrote:
| Whether or not they were scripted/forced, the comments show a
| refreshing amount of humility, honest, and lack of narcissism.
| Thumbs up!
| ericls wrote:
| Nothing is honest here.. it's just becoming a state owned
| company...
| Craighead wrote:
| You're lying to yourself if you think HR didnt make or approve
| this statement.
| eunos wrote:
| Fiduciary duty to shareholders perhaps. Non generic and too-
| honest messages might rattle share prices.
| samspenc wrote:
| > "The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal
| manager. I'm more interested in analysing organizational and
| market principles, and leveraging these theories to further
| reduce management work, rather than actually managing people,"
| Mr Zhang wrote in a message on the company's website.
| "Similarly, I'm not very social, preferring solitary activities
| like being online, reading, listening to music, and
| contemplating what may be possible," he added.
|
| After reading and re-reading his comments, I'm still not 100%
| sure whether these were his honest feelings or just a different
| form of "corporate speak." Also interesting he is stepping down
| during a wave of crackdown on Internet giants in China by the
| CCP. It could be genuine, but I find it hard to judge.
| supergirl wrote:
| I think it might be Chinese corporate talk. the politicians
| also talk like this sometimes. might be related to communism
| -- attempting to not be condescending to regular people. or
| maybe it's just Chinese culture that doesn't value empty talk
| and so he is forced to write something concrete but it
| doesn't mean this is the truth.
| rfoo wrote:
| Chinese politician talk is as empty as you may see
| elsewhere, just in a different way (wording being more
| "communism" and harder to decipher)
| joebob42 wrote:
| And perhaps just harder to decipher for us because it's a
| different flavor of bull then we are used to, and has
| been passed through a translation layer
| emptyfile wrote:
| I'm guessing in America the word "Chinese" will become a
| swear word soon.
| supergirl wrote:
| what I said is not exactly critical. so I think you
| already associated Chinese with bad, that's your problem
| beaunative wrote:
| Corporate talk means to use pretentious and socially
| acceptable excuses to conceal the uncomfortable truth.
| There is no such thing as concrete corporate talk.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is impossible to tell if someone is being sincere, or just
| very good at appearing to be sincere.
|
| I doubt the CCP was involved either way. A CEO stepping down
| with a humble excuse wouldn't do them much good.
| adventured wrote:
| > A CEO stepping down with a humble excuse wouldn't do them
| much good.
|
| Of course it would, it makes it look like everything is
| calm, orderly, and that their economic system isn't under
| siege by the state. The CCP - as with all authoritarian
| systems and to the degree of the authoritarianism - is at
| all times obsessed with faking appearances. (insert
| inevitable diversionary replies: "but America")
|
| Colin Huang desperately fled control of Pinduoduo,
| terrified of Xi's targeting of the next Jack Ma types. He
| started giving away his shares specifically to avoid
| getting that bullseye painted on him, to avoid potentially
| becoming the richest person in China.
|
| It makes perfect sense that Zhang Yiming would be in the
| same boat as every other prominent figure that is scared
| they're next. ByteDance is even more influential and
| important than Pinduoduo though, which makes it clear there
| was no other scenario to be had with ByteDance other than
| to 'step down.' This process will not just continue, it's
| going to have to accelerate; authoritarian systems - a
| dictatorship in this case - either must liberalize,
| collapse or persistently tighten the screws on any
| perceived risks and opposition to maintain control. It's
| obvious which scenario is occurring.
| koolhaas wrote:
| Whether or not it's all true is separate from the fact that
| this is very much not "corporate speak." The tone, language,
| self reflection, and self criticality is so foreign to what
| you normally see in press releases. There are a few passages
| in there that feel less sincere, but some of them feel
| totally new to tech PR at a company of that scale.
|
| Sure, you can pose the hypothetical: but what if he's lying?
| That's a less interesting observation IMO.
| Mehdi2277 wrote:
| I used to work at Tiktok. His speech feels consistent to
| me. Unlike some ceo's like Mark (fb)/Evan (snap) he rarely
| spoke to general employees. There was no weekly/biweekly
| q&a to hear from the ceo. You could easily go months with
| him not doing any company wide talks/emails which did make
| top level transparency feel bad. Maybe china had more ceo
| communication, but lacking on US side. The rare times he
| did speak/email his wording tended to be much more direct
| and honest than I'd expect from an executive.
| powerapple wrote:
| I guess if he does not want to be honest, he does not need to
| write it this way, it is easier just to have someone draft
| some words for you.
|
| Of course, one of the factor could be what has happened:
| forced to sell TikTok by US; couldn't sell TikTok because
| rejected by China; although the massive traffic amounted by
| apps from his company, they are seen the same way as Facebook
| as not healthy for society (once you are on tiktok, time
| really flies by :)); Maybe all of these, we don't know. This
| is not his first startup, and I hope this is not his last. He
| definitely don't have a single vision as Zerkerburg does.
| Let's just take his words for it since he has put efforts
| into it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The court rejected Trump's executive orders so they didn't
| have to sell TikTok. I don't think any of Trump's executive
| orders concerning commerce in China were not rejected by
| the court.
| hobofan wrote:
| > Also interesting he is stepping down during a wave of
| crackdown on Internet giants in China by the CCP.
|
| Yes, "the best lies are the ones shrouded in truth". The
| reasons he listed might indeed be reasons why someone else
| would be a better fit for his positions, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if the actual trigger for stepping down now is the
| CCP.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > leveraging these theories to further reduce management
| work, rather than actually managing people
|
| somehow I think this is what a CEO should be doing, and then
| letting managers do the people management.
|
| CEO should be strategy, not keeping Karen in accounting dept.
| happy.
|
| Too many companies just continue doing whatever they have
| been doing for a long time, without any ability at
| reconsidering if this still fits the market.
| rchaud wrote:
| Strategy involves keeping the team happy. Modern CEOs may
| have technical backgrounds, but once they become CEO, they
| are generalists, whether they like it or not. The problems
| that they personally have to solve are people-related, be
| it employees, customers, shareholders or regulators.
| [deleted]
| DickingAround wrote:
| Every job in management is managing people, IMHO. That CEO
| is watching after VPs who are themselves people with
| typical people issues. It's people all the way up. :)
| throwaway4good wrote:
| You gotta hand it to him. He navigated TikTok successfully
| through an absolutely crazy period.
| ankalaibe wrote:
| Pay respect where due
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