Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#61

Post by forapurpose »

catnaroek wrote: post #59
forapurpose wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument a lot, but: 1: If so many people are ok with it, then why not take a vote? If they are ok with it, they will vote for the current government. If they are not ok, then this argument is false and the current government should be voted out of office. Either way, a vote is good for China. 2: If the citizens are ok with it, then why does the government have to censor criticism and non-government ideas…

Trade, not democracy, brings prosperity.

Hmmm ... trade is important, but it's hard to miss the overhwhelming correlation between democracy and prosperity.

Name a '1st world' nation that isn't democratic. But plenty of poorer nations trade.

One theory is that democracy provides greater political stability and the rule of law, and those are essential to prosperity. People are not willing to risk their life savings on a business when the government or some other powerful figure can just take it away, or if political instability will undermine their economic opportunities.

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#62

Post by sanxiyn »

flyingaragogue wrote: post #44

First of all, I wouldn't consider Toutiao content to be "quality content", as the article says. It's still pretty much all "soft news". Secondly, this 100% engagement-driven algorism of content recommendation doesn't serve to inform readers in any meaningful way, as a proper News app should do. But rather, it just makes ppl keep clicking and wasting their time.

There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.

-- 1984, George Orwell

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#63

Post by yorwba »

forapurpose wrote: post #61
catnaroek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade, not democracy, brings prosperity.

Hmmm ... trade is important, but it's hard to miss the overhwhelming correlation between democracy and prosperity. Name a '1st world' nation that isn't democratic. But plenty of poorer nations trade. One theory is that democracy provides greater political stability and the rule of law, and those are essential to prosperity. People are not willing to risk their life savings on a business when the government or some ot…

Plenty of poorer nations have some kind of democracy as well, although in many cases it's debatable how free their elections really are.

I think the correlation between democracy and prosperity is indicative of causation in the opposite direction: citizens of prosperous countries want a say in matters that affect them, and they have the time on their hands to campaign for their causes. Many countries have only become democratic when their economies were already prospering, e.g. South Korea, which was a military dictatorship for much of its initial growth.

I also don't think that democracy is the best way to provide stability, since the election cycle tends to create uncertainty on relatively short timescales. How are you going to build a business if the electorate might decide in a few years that they want to make it illegal, or impose stricter regulations, or demand higher taxes? For maximum stability, an autocracy with a slow but predictable bureaucracy would be much better. Of course, if that means your slow but predictable death, it becomes the much worse option, but few people seem to be concerned about that in China.

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#64

Post by new299 »

whooshee wrote: post #54
nobahashi wrote: post #15

Hi Anu, 1.) Does the machine learning algorithm behind toutiao abide by the censorship effort from Beijing? For example, are any of the contents about the disappearance of the wife of the nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobao censored? 2.) What happens when the Chinese government demand board seats, much like Tencent and Alibaba? Or is toutiao already working with the Chinese government closely? 3.) Do you know whether or n…

Nobel Peace Prize is more political and ideological than any other Nobel Prizes. I don't consider it to be a 100% valid one. Not like academic ones where people send proofs. And that guy is named Liu XiaoBo not XiaoBao. His wife is fine, and there are no reasons to do anything about his family. Toutiao is just another company who runs for profits. Profits are focused. I don't see its popularity outside China even in…

"wife is fine"

Hu told BBC that three years of house arrest had thrown Liu into deep depression and a health professional had been prescribing anti-depressants medication for her. [1]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-25206137

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#66

Post by iflp »

com2kid wrote: post #11

This is what stuck out most for me: > The engine learns quickly – for most users, it takes less than one day to successfully learn their interests (indicated by 80% read rates). That is insane. I don't know of any other platform (except for maybe image heavy subreddits?) that have that rate of content consumption. Facebook obviously tries, but they are so focused on their limited content sources that they frequently…

> That is insane.

No, it's not. It's just easier to learn to entertain the average people, than to entertain the smaller group of more tasteful people, or to learn and sell things.

I was also quite impressed when I learnt the figures, and am still impressed at the fact that it managed to capture the mode of people's interest, but my every attempt to use Toutiao has ended in pain. I certainly spent longer than one day.

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#68

Post by thisisit »

Hi Anu,

Most probably this might not get a reply but I still wanted to know about this statement - "During the 2016 Olympics, a Toutiao bot wrote original news coverage, publishing stories on major events more quickly than traditional media outlets. The bot-written articles enjoyed read rates (# of reads and # of impressions) in line with those produced at a slower speed and higher cost by human writers on average."

1. What does writing original news coverage entail? Did the bot put together couple of news source to create an article or do you mean it transcribed the news from the live video feed as it happened?

2. How much of the bot feed works due to high declension? [1]. Because normally bot structure and output tend to make less sense as the sentence structure comes out all wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension

Additionally, there is quite a lot of focus on getting user to stay on the platform. Not to sound alarmist here but doesn't it mean you are most of the time helping people reinforce their world views? News should be reported as is but then if user engagement is so important news will be written right or left wing just to keep the user on platform.

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#69

Post by forapurpose »

yorwba wrote: post #63
forapurpose wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm ... trade is important, but it's hard to miss the overhwhelming correlation between democracy and prosperity. Name a '1st world' nation that isn't democratic. But plenty of poorer nations trade. One theory is that democracy provides greater political stability and the rule of law, and those are essential to prosperity. People are not willing to risk their life savings on a business when the government or some ot…

Plenty of poorer nations have some kind of democracy as well, although in many cases it's debatable how free their elections really are. I think the correlation between democracy and prosperity is indicative of causation in the opposite direction: citizens of prosperous countries want a say in matters that affect them, and they have the time on their hands to campaign for their causes. Many countries have only become…

> few people seem to be concerned about that in China

See my original post, above. The Chinese government clearly is concerned that many people in China are concerned about it.

> I also don't think that democracy is the best way to provide stability, since the election cycle tends to create uncertainty on relatively short timescales. How are you going to build a business if the electorate might decide in a few years that they want to make it illegal, or impose stricter regulations, or demand higher taxes?

That's not how democracies work; they don't elect kings and queens, who can arbitrarily change laws. They elect officials to a wide variety of roles, all responsible to the electorate, who must agree on changes through legal processes. In the U.S., a majority of the House, of the Senate (and sometimes 60% of the Senate), and the President must all agree on a new law. Also, the law must pass muster in the courts, and be legal under the Constitution. Also, voters get a powerful say in what the laws are. If you don't like a proposed or actual law, you can speak up, build support, and influence the outcome - it happens all the time. Finally, the federal government's power is limited to federal issues; states and localities override federal policies or create their own policies all the time. You can see the current U.S. president's lack of success in his legislative agenda as an example of how democracies work.

In an autocracy, one person can arbitrarily change whatever they want - they are not subject to other laws, a constitution, representative legislative bodies, electorates, or any of those other influences.

And the outcomes are clear: All the most stable countries are democracies, and even when they were much poorer than today (such as the U.S. in the 18th century).

Re: The Forces Behind Toutiao, China’s Content King

#70

Post by yorwba »

forapurpose wrote: post #69
yorwba wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of poorer nations have some kind of democracy as well, although in many cases it's debatable how free their elections really are. I think the correlation between democracy and prosperity is indicative of causation in the opposite direction: citizens of prosperous countries want a say in matters that affect them, and they have the time on their hands to campaign for their causes. Many countries have only become…

> few people seem to be concerned about that in China See my original post, above. The Chinese government clearly is concerned that many people in China are concerned about it. > I also don't think that democracy is the best way to provide stability, since the election cycle tends to create uncertainty on relatively short timescales. How are you going to build a business if the electorate might decide in a few years…

The Chinese government is concerned that more people will become concerned about human rights issues, not that there currently are many who care. Otherwise, censoring undesired opinions on the internet wouldn't be enough.

In your explanation of the way the US political system provides stability, the important factor is not that bureaucrats are elected, but that their process is slow. It would be equally stable if they were appointed by birthright or any other undemocratic process.

That voters get input into the legislative process is of course a good thing for them in aggregate, but the progress it creates diminishes stability. You can't just keep running your business the same way when the legal environment keeps changing.

Worse, the number of people who get input means that the outcome will be very uncertain. Maybe the law fails to gather support, or it is passed but later ruled unconstitutional, or it is amended after the next election cycle. You have to account for all of these possibilities. Things would be much more stable if you knew far in advance what will happen.

You have convinced me that a single person being able to influence everything might not be very stable either, depending on how fast that individual changes their mind. I now think that a large body of decision makers, appointed for life by any process (be it democratic, autocratic or random) requiring a large quorum of agreement for any decision, would be the most stable system.

If you really want to argue that democracy causes stability, your last sentence should have been: "All democracies are stable countries ...". But I'm not sure you could really argue that, considering the number of democracies who went through very unstable periods in their history. (E.g. civil war in the US.)

Post reply on HN