[HN Gopher] The secret sauce of TikTok's recommendations
___________________________________________________________________
The secret sauce of TikTok's recommendations
Author : DashAnimal
Score : 103 points
Date : 2023-02-17 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.shaped.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.shaped.ai)
| dakial1 wrote:
| To be fair tiktok helped me find a lot content (series, movies,
| etc) and artists (specially standup comedians) that it would take
| a much longer time to cross-paths with. So I would see a short of
| that, and then looked around to watch the whole thing.
|
| But in the 1 year I've interacted with the app I've already seen
| the effects of the content creators learning how to game the
| algorithm and get presented with some contents that were made in
| a format only to get engagement, similar to a clickbait article.
|
| The result? It has spoiled the whole experience for me and I
| uninstalled the app.
|
| And this is how those platforms slowly crumble to their own
| weight as the crowdsourcing becomes a business for creators and,
| little by little, content becomes more and more superficial,
| fake, commercial and uninteresting for the audience, who migrates
| to another app and everything starts again...
| mochomocha wrote:
| Pretty click-baity title. This article is a good "ELI5" summary
| for non-ML people of some of the techniques & infra described in
| the arxiv paper, but it has nothing to do with TikTok "secret
| sauce".
| t3estabc wrote:
| [dead]
| londons_explore wrote:
| The main reason TikTok has awesome recommendations is that all
| the other big players (Facebook, Youtube, etc) realised back in
| 2017 that training machine learning models to persuade people to
| spend more time on their platform was _unreasonably effective_.
|
| Ie. tell ML to trick someone to spend 14 hours watching youtube
| every day, and for some small percentage of users, it will
| actually succeed!
|
| For those people, it's as addictive as drugs. They spent all day
| on youtube rather than going to work, going to school, caring for
| their kids, eating or even sleeping! Can you imagine the size of
| lawsuits that would be heading youtubes way when those people
| realise they've effectively been enslaved by an algorithm??
|
| Leadership of the big companies put an end to that, instead
| trying to focus on other metrics, and trying to get more users to
| each spend some time on the platform.
|
| Well it seems TikTok didn't get the memo...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Well Facebook failed because almost no one i knew using it in
| 2017 still is. It's like the normal reaction to an addictive
| thing is to get captured by it for a while, realize the
| downsides, and drop it after a time. Some people are bad at
| this and stay addicted but most people escape and go on with
| their lives. Optimizing for short term addiction sabotages your
| product.
|
| My facebook feed is a ghost town. Almost zero people i know
| posting, a couple of straggling groups that remained relevant,
| and just bs ad driven nonsense.
| WhatsName wrote:
| Is there a source to that claim? Seems to me that much rather
| they started dilluting their feeds with ads to the point where
| they lost all appeal.
|
| Facebook and Youtube on mobile are so packed with unappealing
| scams that I stop scrolling after 5min
| londons_explore wrote:
| I know someone, mid 30's, jobless, who spends 12+ hours a day
| on TikTok. They don't even post to it - just watch hours and
| hours of mindless videos about mental health issues.
| fragmede wrote:
| Which is sad, but sans TikTok, would they just be on Reddit
| or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or Netflix or Hulu or
| Disney+ or Paramount+ or HN for 12+ hours instead?
| justinator wrote:
| Maybe not 12+ hours a day, but a good chunk of time and this
| is my house mate. They watch more Tik Toks about ADHD than
| they do actually trying to live with ADHD.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I briefly had TikTok.. so much crappy videos about ADHD
| delecti wrote:
| You probably engaged positively with some of those
| videos. The feed tends to give you more of what you
| engage with.
|
| Mine is full of cats, food, attractive women, and also
| ADHD content. None of those are remotely surprising to
| me, except that there's not _more_ ADHD content (though I
| suppose the feed implicitly is).
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I hate this narrative of blaming the user for being
| served bad content.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Why expend effort for the dopamine of long-term, delayed
| gratification when you can just tickle your brain all day for
| free?
| vuln wrote:
| What do they do for income?
| londons_explore wrote:
| They have a partner who pays for everything...
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| The secret sauce:
|
| Let grass roots content creators actually distribute their
| content. Let the best content go to the top. Give everyone a
| chance.
|
| Facebooks algorithm:
|
| Support influencers, corporations, and whatever pumps the ad
| machine.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| It's way easier to find "smaller" content creators on TikTok
| than Meta's apps. Youtube has been improving a bit in that
| regard but my recommendations still have too many videos I've
| already watched. More than half of the accounts I follow on
| TikTok have <25000 followers, many with average views per video
| under 10000, with a diverse topic range including: woodworking,
| software dev, comedy sketches, book reviews, history trivia,
| exercise tips, urban design, etc. Those who complain about
| seeing only unintelligent garbage are unwittingly revealing
| themselves to be the target audience for such content.
| fragmede wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but if you think TikTok has "grass
| roots content creators" vs Facebook having influencers, I have
| a bridge, as well as a TikTok content house to sell you.
|
| https://www.kapwing.com/resources/tiktok-houses-list/
| cainxinth wrote:
| I'm with you, and I'm of the opinion that the current TikTok
| craze has more to do with its brand than its algo. Facebook
| is old and lame to kids. Even Insta and Snap don't have as
| much brand cache as TikTok right now because TikTok is the
| newest major player with the most buzz. However, it's the
| nature of all hype cycles for high-flying, shiny new things
| to eventually fall back to Earth:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle
| nerdponx wrote:
| But they _do_ seem to be optimizing more explicitly for
| "user enjoyment" than other platforms, perhaps realizing that
| this is what keeps and attracts users and their precipitation
| eyeball-minutes in the long term. Youtube also (not always)
| does a pretty good job at this, while Instagram can be rough.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Another possibility is that TikTok's short-form content
| feed allows for a greater _volume_ of feed to fit into the
| same timeframe. Twitter was popular because it condensed
| blogging into microblogging; TikTok 's success is pretty
| easy to delineate from that logic. Even if you don't have
| an algorithm promoting enjoyable/affirming content, you're
| just more likely to encounter that content when you watch
| more videos.
|
| Whether that behavior is healthy or not... I'll leave that
| up to people more educated than I. My guess is that trading
| the user's attention span for short-term engagement isn't
| worth it, though.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Which means the next tiktok killer will find a way to
| push 100 video in 10 seconds directly into the back of
| our minds
| ajot wrote:
| So, a Vine revival?
| paulpauper wrote:
| Not the same thing. Facebook algos are recommendations from
| your own friends, not random people.
| boredemployee wrote:
| Another analysis I'd really like to see is how Amazon does their
| forecasting. A friend that works there told me it's crazy.
| danrocks wrote:
| Second half of this video [0] is a relatively deep view of some
| of the key phases of order fulfillment.
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nceTzlnZ_gk
| foxhill wrote:
| this is a wall of text citing a single paper which itself is
| entirely unverifiable.
|
| regardless, if this described how drug dealers engineer the
| distribution of their product to optimise addiction, we would not
| be celebrating it as an engineering marvel.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Curious: every terms of service says you are committed to not
| reverse engineering their tech. Does this count, and if so, what
| does that mean?
| steele wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2022/02/14/108057719...
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Clearing out old and stale IDs from the model is interesting. It
| makes sense for a platform serving a high volume of viral / short
| lived content. I can't imagine the same trick working at a
| streaming service.
| ludoro wrote:
| I also think that paper is super interesting, I talked about it
| here: https://www.machinelearningatscale.com/how-tiktok-
| recommenda...
| datruth29 wrote:
| As a person who occasionally consumes TikTok videos, I feel like
| it taps into the same thing that the original StumbleUpon did;
| show the user fairly quickly a number of related things and give
| them the option to either consume more of that same thing or find
| something else that's related but also new. Same goes for
| Pinterest. They all share that core element of quick consumption
| of related things in common.
| Jamesmoorez wrote:
| [dead]
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| In these articles I never see reference to the 'objective
| algorithm' aka what the business processes at TikTok are
| optimizing for. I think that's the real secret sauce.
|
| TikTok is optimizing for user generated content that connects
| deeply with their users. Thats what they reward money which is
| largely derived from TikTok's "gift economy", and recommendations
| and therefore views are largely based on the gifts. This is in
| stark contrast with something like YouTube, which is optimizing
| for 'time spent on YouTube' which drives their creators to make
| longer clickbait type videos, regardless of how dissatisfying
| they are.
|
| The recommendation algorithm described here could be tuned to
| serve any 'objective algorithm', like time spent, profit to
| Bytedance, or whatever- but because of TikTok's choices it is
| making a really fun an enjoyable experience for users.
| thomasahle wrote:
| There might not be a simple topline objective everything is
| optimized for. More likely it's a linear combination of all
| kinds of dynamic business needs.
| [deleted]
| hgsgm wrote:
| > regardless of how dissatisfying they are.
|
| Why would people spend time watching dissatisfying videos?
|
| > content that connects deeply
|
| I'd say "parasocially".
|
| But how does the app measure that? It makes decisions based on
| a few seconds of watch time. It could optimize for "show videos
| that trigger donations", but that's kind of trivial.
| O__________O wrote:
| Relate HN comments:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33494796
|
| Related paper:
|
| - https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663
|
| Related GitHub:
|
| - https://github.com/bytedance/monolith
| paradoxyl wrote:
| I was behind a woman today on an escalator. I wasn't shoulder-
| surfing, she held her phone up so high I couldn't help but see
| it. She was on Tik-Tok. She watched like twenty videos in one
| minute. One second, click. One second, click. What good this does
| anybody at all, anywhere, is beyond me. It was all trash.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| She is likely addicted. That's how it is designed
| andirk wrote:
| Agreed. She didn't necessarily decide to click through 20
| small clips of lazy cheerleading. She was probably hoping to
| find a good hit but is satisfied with useless crap because
| it's better than being present.
| erlich wrote:
| Everyone is so addicted to their phones. It's just like a poker
| machine now.
| xnx wrote:
| Trash compared to what? Watching reality tv? Playing
| videogames? Going to a casino?
| karaterobot wrote:
| Raises an interesting question: is something only trash if
| there are better options available? I'd say no, personally.
| Something can just be bad in isolation, it doesn't have to be
| worse than something else to qualify.
|
| But at the very least, maybe it was just trash compared to
| the experience of not watching a short video on your phone
| while riding on an escalator. Trash compared to just looking
| around. Would staring at your shoes, or the head of person in
| front of you, or the environment surrounding you have been a
| better experience than those short videos.
| xnx wrote:
| Yes. I don't know either, but I try and consider what I'm
| comparing it to even if that is sitting quietly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| More than one thing can be trash simultaneously.
| reidjs wrote:
| Someone might say the same thing about you if they were looking
| over your shoulder and you were reading HN comments.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| How is that any different from other social media feeds? Users
| familiar with a content platform will skim through content
| faster. That has been the case since the TV era.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's not just the viewers either. I guess they need to be there
| for someone to bother creating content, but on one short stroll
| through London I saw multiple "content creators" filming
| themselves. That wasn't something that one often saw when I was
| younger, now the whole city is crawling in people who are
| making videos.
|
| I also noticed the quality of the filters. They really make
| ordinary people look quite a lot better than they do in real
| life.
| vmoore wrote:
| > What good this does anybody at all, anywhere, is beyond me.
| It was all trash.
|
| It's TV 2.0, but caters to ADHD types or people with borderline
| ADHD. If you use The Internet in any extreme way, you already
| have an ADHD brain. It's the only logical way to handle
| information overload and deal with the vastness of the web
| IMHO. ADHD as a term is normalized because of The Internet.
| It's not a scary thing to have anymore. It's the new normal.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > she held her phone up so high I couldn't help but see it.
|
| Atleast she is using good posture for phone use. Give her that.
| zamfi wrote:
| What good does a cigarette do?
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I smoke one a day, and the good it does for me is carve out 5
| minutes of reflection on the day.
| morjom wrote:
| you could take a nicotine gum or a patch instead of getting
| carcinogens in your body, unless you do it cigar style.
| andrepd wrote:
| Not inhaling means less carcinogens than doing so, but
| far more than not smoking.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Anx you can drink non-alchojolic vodka... but what for?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > unless you do it cigar style.
|
| Mouth cancer is no joke, I knew a dude without a lower
| jaw because of that
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Throat cancer, too. Friend of mine smoked cigars
| regularly for much of his life. Once they diagnosed the
| cancer in his upper throat, he lived about 10 months.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| i'll pile on: my dad had jaw cancer. cut a few chunks of
| his jaw out, basically lost all of the molars on the
| bottom left. probably going to have to take more out
| before too long.
|
| also turned into a few skin cancer issues in there.
|
| don't smoke and wear sunscreen, people
| [deleted]
| psychphysic wrote:
| The kind of anecdote my grand dad would bring up.
|
| But very relatable and I too am baffled by the appeal of these
| shorts.
| comfypotato wrote:
| They do sound like a grumpy old man.
|
| As a recovered TikTok addict, I can supply that it was the
| jokes for me. There was a lot of content that got delivered
| to me that hit my sense of humor just right. I'm sure you
| could track increased oxytocin in active users just like with
| narcotics.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Maybe the fact that I can't grasp why you'd watch your
| tiktok feed explains why I'd really enjoy my own.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I believe their secret sauce is mainly that they don't manipulate
| the feed for other factors than if it fits.
|
| The Facebook feed used to work like that before 2013 something.
| You could clearly see the difference when they started optimizing
| for ads or what ever metrics they used. Posts could not go
| "viral" anymore in the way it used to. Zuckerberg capped the
| vitality so that companies had to pay I guess.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Generally true, but not entirely accurate...
|
| "TikTok's Secret 'Heating' Button Can Make Anyone Go Viral"
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik...
|
| They also don't just optimize for consumption, but also for new
| users. Don't have concrete proof, but it seems they help new
| users get more views to give them that taste of "15 minutes of
| fame" as early as possible.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye I mean there is a limit on how much you can manipulate
| before the feed gets crappy. A small amount you won't notice
| at all.
|
| Surely the temptation to do some for profit is too big.
|
| It would not surprise me if TikTok goes the same way as
| Facebook on this when they get comfy, to milk som short term
| dollars.
| waboremo wrote:
| You don't have to look that far for proof, there are plenty
| of people who made videos complaining about how they don't
| get good views anymore, they aren't pushed out anymore.
| Search "why isn't my tiktok account being pushed anymore" and
| you'll find similar outcry on various forums. You see it by
| scrolling through their profile enough, they go from 300k
| views and 50k likes to 1k views and 100 likes. Massive drops,
| where they haven't reached "self-sustaining" status yet like
| a Selena Gomez account.
|
| Also as another potential source of proof, tiktok is really
| effective at pushing alt pages to people's FYP. Which is
| interesting because their old account will stagnate, but
| their alts will get pushed quite aggressively despite the
| content being very similar. So obviously it's not a content
| issue, tiktok is evaluating them equally and thinking you'll
| like it, but their old account(s) don't show up as much
| anymore.
|
| Tiktok isn't as overtly aggressive with this method though,
| it seems like there's a cooldown period of sorts where it
| might start pushing you out again if you remain committed to
| the platform. Still, it's severe enough for people to make
| note of it and feel seriously demoralized by it.
| andirk wrote:
| Similarly, the various dating apps I have used clearly front-
| loaded the matches with the objectively attractive women in
| the area. This has been especially hilarious to me as a
| female friend will often start the process for me (search
| store, download, sign up, start searching) and more than once
| they have gotten this skewed version of what's out there,
| thinking that every nearby woman looks like a movie star.
| vuln wrote:
| Yeah I tend to agree regarding the 15 minutes of fame for new
| users. It's doesn't even need to go insanely viral.
|
| How many people have created and published videos on YouTube
| and got maybe a few tens or a couple hundred views over
| years.
|
| TikTok new users gets a couple THOUSAND views and the user is
| like "people like my content I MUST make more!!" And now
| they're hooked trying to get the same high view count as
| before.
|
| I would assume (as I have never used the platform) it's also
| a way for TikTok to grab you financial information "you
| earned x$ from you first video, please supply you financial
| information and a scan of your ID for payment.
|
| It's an addiction.
| kurthr wrote:
| The first taste of gamified on-line adulation and serotonin
| is free!
| delecti wrote:
| You assumption is likely incorrect. It takes a fair bit of
| success to get into the partner program, and you get no
| money until then.
|
| I agree that it's likely intended to give new users that
| hit though.
| vuln wrote:
| I don't know much about the partner program but if I
| change the wording to this:
|
| "You _could have_ earned x$ from your first video. Good
| job! You're on your way to the Partner Program please
| supply your financial information and a scan of your ID
| for future payment."
| pavitheran wrote:
| Tiktok does not ask for financial information after your
| first video.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I think a key part of their new user optimization is putting
| very little weight on your previous performance. So if you
| make a great video as a user with 0 followers, you still have
| similar odds to a 10M follower user to making it big on the
| FYP.
|
| There might, of course, still be additional new-user weight.
| But I think this is at least a part of it.
| lrvick wrote:
| Casinos use similar tactics.
|
| Why do we let kids use this again?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Why do we let kids use this again?
|
| I don't, no matter how much they ask. The most I've
| acquiesced to is a small amount of YouTube time per day. It
| gets harder the older they get. My daughter can now just
| use her school laptop (while at school, at least) to watch
| as much YouTube as she can find time for. I'm not real
| happy about it, but part of raising kids is learning to
| accept the steady transfer of their autonomy over to them.
| I just keep gently harping on how low quality this kind of
| content is, what the motivations behind it are, etc.
| andrepd wrote:
| There's dogshit content on YouTube (Mr Beast, moronic
| reaction and gaming videos, alt-right propaganda), but
| there's also more interesting content than you can watch
| in several lifetimes (documentaries, speeches and
| lectures, recorded courses from top universities on
| everything from physics to music, etc).
|
| It's about curating this yourself for your child (as
| opposed to giving them unrestricted access), and then
| slowly giving them control and hope they have good taste
| :)
| rd wrote:
| It's funny you lump in MrBeast with the other two. I'll
| admit his content is 0 value, but in terms of
| entertainment, it's far higher than anything else on the
| platform. I'd be far more upset at my kids for watching a
| reaction YouTuber or any influencer, than I would
| mrbeast.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Why are parents slacking in their role as parents.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > Why do we let kids use this again?
|
| Same reason we eat junk food. Its easy!
| nikolay wrote:
| Can't agree more! Facebook is useless to me today and replaces
| meaningful to me stuff with ads and other things I don't care
| about and never engage with, i.e. there's for sure other
| weights and the feed is not organic!
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I've tested in the past and counted streaks of 30+
| consecutive posts in my Facebook feed without any posts from
| friends, groups I'm in, or pages I've followed. Just
| "recommendations" and ads for miles.
| andirk wrote:
| It seems ad prevalence is directly inversely related to the
| market in that in a down market, we get flooded with ads to
| temporarily increase the co's cash flow with more ads, but
| people this time around are claiming it has completely shot
| the various recommendation engines.
| matesz wrote:
| The most impressive Facebook's feature was hands down Graph
| Search [1] which was released around this time - 2013.
| Basically it was an interface to the entire social graph!
|
| Eventually they had to pull those features out. Privacy
| concerns which lead to people sharing less data? Not sure.
|
| Even now a lot of people get surprised when I put their full
| name into search box and show them what photos are available
| via simple search - they completely forget or don't know even
| that when they are tagged their photos are searchable by their
| name. I mean now most people I know don't share much anymore,
| facebook is not that cool anymore.
|
| [1] great demo of graph search
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySRn7c736c
| pfisherman wrote:
| Probably because open access to an entire community's /
| nation's social graph is a huge security risk. I mean if the
| NSA having access to all your phone call metadata isn't
| already bad enough, why would you want any and all malicious
| state actors, criminal organizations, terrorists, or run of
| the mill scammers to have access to that type of information
| too?
| thaeli wrote:
| Yeah, it was the Cambridge Analytica scandal that killed
| this off iirc.
| andirk wrote:
| Pro-tip: On Instagram, interact with ads that you don't mind.
| That way the algo picks those or similar ads which makes a more
| pleasant experience. For example, now I mostly get ads of nice
| pictures of watches.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I like those charts showing they get an AUC of 0.8 or so, my own
| content-based recommender gets 0.72 or so on a typical day with a
| very simple model, I think it could get 0.75 with mainly data-
| oriented tweaks. I was thinking a better model could get me into
| the high 70's but the fuzzy nature of the recommender problem
| means I am never going to get into the 90's.
|
| I would like to see more about how they are formulating the
| problem, I know there is work lately in "sequential
| recommendation" that is focused on generating a sequence rather
| than scoring content items, I'd like to learn more about that.
| O__________O wrote:
| AUC being "area under curve" or something else?
| acomms wrote:
| Correct, it is a performance measure for ML algos (https://ww
| w.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00313...)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yep. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_cha
| racteris...
|
| If you had to pick one number for judging classifiers that is
| the one.
|
| "Accuracy" is a really bad one because it is not meaningful
| w/o careful thought about the problem. For instance if you
| have a diagnostic system for a disease that has a .01
| prevalence, you get 99% accuracy if you say nobody has a
| disease.
|
| Practically a person might want to operate a classifier with
| different thresholds depending on how bothered they are by
| false positives vs false negatives, the ROC shows what
| choices are have available with a particular and the AUC of
| the ROC gives you one number that characterizes the quality
| of the classifier overall. A system with an AUC under say
| 0.55 hasn't really learned anything at all, at 0.6 it is
| showing signs of life, looking at those curves I'd say Tik
| Tok is beating me solidly. In this case it is limited by the
| problem being fuzzy (something I thumbs up today might get a
| thumbs down tomorrow), something up in the 0.95 level could
| be attained for something like "is this article about the
| outcome of a sports game?"
| mochomocha wrote:
| > the fuzzy nature of the recommender problem means I am never
| going to get into the 90's
|
| Right. If your AUC is in the 90's you usually either have a
| bug, or a predictive task that isn't very challenging.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Some tasks are hard, others are easy. I get in the low 60's
| trying to predict if a headline will get a lot of votes on
| HN. Of course this is going to be bad because the same
| article can get submitted several times, hit it big once and
| not hit it big the other times. The content of the article
| matters too but the model can only make a wild-assed guess. I
| get in the high 70's trying to predict if a post with a lot
| of hits gets a lot of comments, it is a cleaner problem. I
| get about 90% trying to predict if a post winds up 'dead', I
| found up HN is cleaning up a lot of spam posts when they go
| in but I know it is terrible overfit because it says an arXiv
| paper which has no chance of being flagged has a 30% chance
| of flagging.
|
| For some other like "is this an astrophysics or materials
| science paper?", getting 0.95 or better was straightforward
| in 2005.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Why is TikTok 's feed so addicting?_
|
| What's addicting about it? Admittedly it kept me entertained the
| first day or two that I used it, but from that point forward it
| never wavered from the content that entertained me that first day
| and soon it became _really_ boring to see the same type of thing
| over and over, leaving no remaining appeal.
|
| Because everyone talks about how great the recommendation engine
| is, and me wanting to find great content, I went back to it after
| a while to see if they fixed the problem. But no, still the same
| content that bored me away from the app the first time.
| willio58 wrote:
| I believe you but you should know you are in the minority here.
| Part of why TikTok has taken over the social media space is
| because of how addicting it is compared to the older players.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| TikTok is massively popular but it's not yet the case that
| not using it puts you in the minority, like Facebook does.
| fragmede wrote:
| Who's your cohort? If you're in high school, yes it does.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Do you have the stats for that? I recall reading
| something earlier this year than Insta is still king for
| teens/young people. I can't find the source though.
| JohnFen wrote:
| According to Pew Research, amongst the 13-17 year old
| set, YouTube is king, followed by Tiktok
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-
| social...
| randomdata wrote:
| I can completely understand how it keeps your attention
| longer than looking at photos of your neighbour's cat like
| Facebook gives you. It's just the lack of variety that makes
| addiction hard to fathom. Do others not get bored of seeing
| the same thing over and over and over?
| v64 wrote:
| To avoid seeing the same thing over and over, the most
| direct form of feedback that works for me is when that
| content comes up, quickly swipe past it. If you keep
| swiping, it'll start throwing more random stuff at you to
| see what sticks. I'm also always tweaking the list of
| people I follow so that if FYP gets stale, I can just look
| at their content for a bit.
| randomdata wrote:
| I have heard that before, and tried it briefly, but it
| didn't accomplish much in the short time I tried. I can
| believe if I put a lot more time and effort into it that
| might change, but the last thing I need is another job.
| The whole value proposition of trying TikTok was the
| promise that it would do that work for me.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| They're testing features to let you "reset" your algorithm
| to improve content diversity. But even without that kids
| spend over 80 minutes a day on TikTok.
| criddell wrote:
| I had the same experience. I've given TikTok three different
| tries over the same number of years and it didn't connect with
| me at all.
|
| I've spent several hours using it and there seems to be very
| little of interest to me (a 53 year old Canadian living in
| Texas). It did show me a video of a guy doing some great
| welding (stack of dimes!) and I watched the whole thing. The
| algorithm decided that I must want to see every welding video
| ever uploaded and I really don't. One or two is enough.
|
| I concluded that TikTok isn't for my demographic, maybe by
| design.
| jquery wrote:
| Same experience here.
|
| Maybe TikTok appeals more to teenagers who have an
| underdeveloped sense of self. I remember at that age
| conflating popularity with accuracy and authority. Now when I
| watch TikTok it's just an exercise in frustration that
| nothing is cited and it's all about presentation over
| substance. And that's when the algorithm isn't showing me
| strange videos in a desperate attempt to keep my attention, a
| la spiderman/elsa YouTube mashups of yore.
| valarauko wrote:
| I found it took some curating to get the algorithm to what
| you're interested in - like videos you enjoy, and
| aggressively mark videos you don't (hold and select "not
| interested"). In my experience, by the end of day, the
| recommendations were more on target.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Same here. It's too short. Nothing there. like watching a bunch
| of gifs but with audio.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| For me, the moment I see two videos in a row of the same format
| and with the same music under it I get a sense of existential
| dread and close the app. Something stops feeling human and
| that's why I deleted my tiktok and might delete my Instagram
| next
| fatcat500 wrote:
| All that brilliance and knowledge, used to get vulnerable,
| suggestible teenagers addicted to mind-numbing, anxiety-inducing
| media. The shame of software engineers is that we have been used
| to create 1000s of these inhuman products.
| gruffin wrote:
| "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make
| people click ads"
|
| - Jeff Hammerbacher
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is reductionist. Why does anyone want you to click ads?
| Because they want you to see what they shared with the world.
| The best minds are trying to get people to pay attention to
| those who wish to pay for that.
|
| A video game programmer might sat.. "all of the best minds
| are working on silly games" Why are so many bright minds
| wasting trying to get us into space when we have problems
| that need to be solved here.
|
| The best minds solving problems is only part of any solution
| anyways. You need the best salesmen, best leader and right
| moment to bring in change that mat make lives better.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Why does anyone want you to click ads? Because they want
| you to see what they shared with the world. The best minds
| are trying to get people to pay attention to those who wish
| to pay for that.
|
| Framing advertising as "people trying to share beautiful
| things with you" is some hell of a newspeak.
| pixl97 wrote:
| "The paperclip optimizer is simply trying to make another
| paperclip, what's the harm in that?"
| lostmsu wrote:
| Maybe they are not the best minds after all.
| luckylion wrote:
| Nobody has "been used" to create those things. They do it
| knowingly and willingly, because they're paid huge sums of
| money in return.
|
| Don't turn it into "we just followed commands" or "we were
| tricked", own whatever you're working on.
| jbaczuk wrote:
| The shame of _those_ software engineers
| JohnFen wrote:
| I do think it brings shame on the whole field. It's not
| right, but it seems to be the case.
| ok123456 wrote:
| My feed is full of mostly educational content, lawyers and
| other professionals telling stories, language lessons, old
| computers and tech, and old commercials.
|
| Most of the videos seem to be 1.5 minutes long.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Agreed, but I don't want to excuse anybody. I think every one
| of those engineers signed up to do it in exchange for money.
| They used their talents, they weren't forced into it.
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| The problem is not just with the addiction, and it doesn't
| affect only teenagers.
|
| These systems show paid content mixed with user-generated
| content, promoting harmful advertisements, political
| propaganda, or any other ideology anyone with enough resources
| and desire to influence large segments of society is able to
| take advantage of.
|
| Let's not forget the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and not doubt
| that there are _many_ more such companies operating without
| public knowledge. This is all done legally, and within the
| terms of service.
|
| This is even without mentioning the rampant data siphoning and
| shady multi-billion dollar data markets that exist in the
| background, that generate most of their revenue. After all, all
| this technology and optimization is serving this end goal.
|
| These platforms are not just harmful to individuals, but to
| society as a whole. I hope one day governments catch up to the
| harms they're doing, and regulate them just as they did for Big
| Tobacco and many other truly evil industries.
| MattDemers wrote:
| >I hope one day governments catch up to the harms they're
| doing, and regulate them just as they did for Big Tobacco and
| many other truly evil industries.
|
| But how does that happen when our government officials (at
| least in North America) seem technologically illiterate, and
| rely on Silicon Valley for their re-elections and donations
| (therefore becoming more susceptible to lobbying)?
| blakebreeder wrote:
| idk, my TikTok feed is full of cats and dogs doing funny
| things.
| tester457 wrote:
| My question is why teenagers gravitate to horrendous content
| en masse.
|
| Young girls have feeds full of eating-disorder content, and
| young boys have feeds mixed with misogyny like Tate. Not all
| teenagers watch either, but these recommendations are a
| disease plaguing the platform.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| They don't gravitate towards it. The algorithm inches them
| towards that. It starts with exercise videos and healthy
| eating, which is fine, but eventually goes towards eating-
| disorder content. Similar for boys.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What's the motivation for rigging the algorithm to push
| people into negative content?
| munificent wrote:
| Here's an analogy to understand ad-driven social media
| apps:
|
| Imagine a world where there are thousands of companies
| out there that produce these strange little unpleasant
| pellets of food that they want people to eat. They don't
| want people to _buy_ them--the company is happy to send
| out pellets for free because they make money when the
| pellets get eaten. (Let 's not worry about how that could
| make economic sense. Maybe the pellets are made of
| sequestered carbon and the company is selling carbon
| credits.)
|
| So all these companies want to get millions of people
| eating their pellets, but people don't want to. They
| don't taste very good and they've got, like, better shit
| to do with their lives.
|
| But people _do_ like eating other food. And usually they
| have to pay for it, which kind of sucks.
|
| An opportunity exists here, and "social eating" companies
| pop up. These companies will ship you food _for free_ ,
| and you can eat as much as you want. What joy! The only
| catch is they've mixed some of these not-very-tasty
| pellets in with the food they send you. The social eating
| companies get paid by the pellet companies, which is how
| they're able to make and send you food for free.
|
| Here is the interesting question: _What kind of food do
| the social eating companies make?_ You might think that
| since they want to get as many people eating their food
| mixed-with-pellets as possible, they would make the best
| food they can. And, indeed, they do want to make food
| that is scrumptious, compelling, and mouth-watering. But
| what they _don 't_ want it to be is _satisfying_. Because
| once you 're sated, _you stop eating_. That 's the last
| thing they want because the more pellets you choke down,
| the more they get paid.
|
| So what they make is junk food like chips and cookies.
| Each serving is a single tiny delicious bite, but as soon
| as it goes down, you're even hungrier than before. Its
| high in anticipation and desire, but low is satisfaction
| and satiety. You crave it, but once you have it, you
| don't actually feel any better. If anything, the craving
| is even more intense.
|
| Now apply that metaphor to information. The most junk-
| food-like content is the stuff that triggers anxiety and
| anticipation if you _don 't_ watch it: fear of missing
| out, question-inducing "You won't believe...", alarming
| "You're doing ___ wrong...", etc. The content doesn't
| make you feel good if you _do_ watch it, it makes you
| feel _bad_ if you _don 't_. Because that way, when you do
| watch it, the nagging anxiety goes away a bit, but you
| still don't feel "done" and still want more.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| clickbate.
|
| that which inflames or causes controversy gets sent
| around or reposted.
|
| clicks == money.
|
| as does "sponsored content" aka "post this to everyone
| who meets demographic groups X and Y". just so happens
| that some of those people want folks angry about some
| topic.
| Phrenzy wrote:
| Emotions garner attachment. Negative emotions even more
| so.
| falcolas wrote:
| And birds and sneks. Good, wholesome stuff a vast majority of
| the time.
| dhimes wrote:
| I wonder what may happen in the future. I'm sure neither Purdue
| Pharmaceuticals nor the Sackler family expected to be seen as
| criminal in what they were doing (opioid epidemic). But when
| the outcomes were shown to be a result of their actions, they
| were convicted-- or at least forced into settlement.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-17 23:02 UTC)