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TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

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Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#191

Post by bananabreakfast »

lucideer wrote: post #149
kp98 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong: I am familiar with the CS Lewis quote 1) In this case the nation working behind the scenes is China. American imperialism I concede is bad. However, the Chinese have quietly been breaking over 50 international regulations and laws from the WTO and universal declaration of human rights. 2) The Chinese do care what you do. Just last week the Swedish government was going to give an award to an activist in…

I don't think the above commenter was defending China, so much as pointing out that the US does much worse. Each one of your bullets is true, and more extremely applicable to the US.

They were absolutely defending china and mischaracterizing the US at the same time, as are you

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#192

Post by LunaSea »

melzidek wrote: post #133
_s4uu wrote: post #104

[flagged]

The CCP subsidizing a social media platform hurts no one. Meanwhile, are you aware how many countries the US military is simultaneously occupying at the moment? We have become a major evil, hated across the world. Not all Americans want this empire to perpetuate

> The CCP subsidizing a social media platform hurts no one.

It hurts everybody (especially children) influenced by the censoring peddled by the CCP.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#193

Post by justapassenger »

wil421 wrote: post #13
m12k wrote: post #11

"It is the third most-downloaded app outside of gaming this year. Numbers one and two are WhatsApp and Messenger, while four and five are the Facebook app and Instagram." Facebook owns 4/5 of the most downloaded apps - just let that sink in for a minute. This space needs competition pretty badly.

There was competition and FB used their war chest to buy them all, sans messenger. They forced people to download messenger to see FB messages on mobile. They also lied and said you had a message when you really didn’t. Just to force the messenger download.

Instagram was small app for hipsters, and everyone thought Facebook was crazy to pay $1B for it.

They weren’t a competition by any means, and would (speculation) most likely die if they didn’t tap into Facebook resources.

WhatsApp was only real big competition Facebook bought so far.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#194

Post by whycombinater »

kp98 wrote: post #116
logicchains wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, the Chinese government doesn't care what you do as long as you don't challenge it. The US on the other hand seems intent on enforcing its whims everywhere on the globe it can. War on terror, war on drugs, war on encryption, war on financial privacy, war on intellectual property infringement. To quote CS Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. Th…

You are wrong: I am familiar with the CS Lewis quote 1) In this case the nation working behind the scenes is China. American imperialism I concede is bad. However, the Chinese have quietly been breaking over 50 international regulations and laws from the WTO and universal declaration of human rights. 2) The Chinese do care what you do. Just last week the Swedish government was going to give an award to an activist in…

[flagged]

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#195

Post by dv_dt »

katbyte wrote: post #170
dv_dt wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can criticize both the Chinese Govt as well as our own government. For instance, China sees no holdback from imprisoning and killing anyone on the thinnest of pretenses, it's basically wielding ultimate authoritarian power to ruin or end lives. On the other hand, the US actually wields a similar authoritarian imprisonment power much more frequently than China, actually more than almost any nation in the wo…

> I think we can criticize both the Chinese Govt as well as our own government. In the west we can criticize our governments and are arguably more free. in china you can't and are arguably less free. I know where i would prefer to live.

I think you need to read my last line a little more carefully. I did not say the US is less free - I said that ruined lives are still ruined.

That one would personally prefer to have the freedoms of the privileged class of the US is not in question. But the US ruins lives at a 3x higher rate in prisons than China does. And it's not organ harvesting, but is cruelty that is personal, financial, and petty. Medical care is routinely denied, long term imprisonment in solitary conditions is considered torture in other nations, and is common in the US. And undeniably, prison is applied more frequently and for longer terms to a minority set of races in the US akin to how China persecutes minorities. (again I agree the degree is different but point out the rate is higher in the US, and ruined lives are still ruined). Those affected in that system really don't have the freedom to opt out of it.

Edit: The robber barons cruelly end lives too...

https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1184644551987777537

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#196

Post by euix »

komali2 wrote: post #51

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about v…

I think the fundamental misunderstanding that westerns have is that propaganda is separate from personal opinion, that posts supporting the CCP or astroturfing for China is part of a larger structure, there is a centralized intelligence and that people somehow contain hidden sympathy for western ideas but are afraid to voice them or mask it under the party line.

That may be so in some cases, but my experience is that the propaganda is a reflection of the zeitgeist of Chinese people. Propaganda works because it taps into fundamental beliefs and grievances of the masses. It may distort or channel it into certain directions but it is actually quite aligned with prevailing schools of thought in China and Chinese historiography.

Some of these include:

- The west is hypocritical, the goal of western human rights and democratization is to weaken or subvert China's rise with the goal of ultimately replacing a strong centralized Chinese state that encompasses its present borders for several independent states along ethnic lines and geographic lines that would be easier to manage from a western perspective.

- The fundamental strength of the west up to now is due to superiority capacity for warfare, subjugation of foreign lands through brutal colonialism and exploitation of their natural resources. Now the west in criticizing China in Africa and one belt and road initiatives is simply a cynical maneuver to kick down the ladder after one has already climbed up it.

I could go on, but from these two points stem all subsequent arguments and I think they provide the fundamental rationale for argument over all points of conflict between China and the west.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#197

Post by GordonS »

merpnderp wrote: post #131
GordonS wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is sarcasm? The things the USA did supposedly in the name of stopping "red danger" were utterly dispicable, and still have an impact today.

[flagged]

> Hell, just think of how many excessive deaths have been caused around the globe by the USSR's push of socialism, retarding growth by decades everywhere it won.

Hell, just think of the violence, misery and excessive deaths that have occurred across Latin America and the Middle East because of the USA's interventions.

My point is that just because the USSR did worse, doesn't excuse the USA's actions, which still have an impact to this day.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#198

Post by f33g91pv43232f »

jpalomaki wrote: post #137
nosianu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now weigh (e.g. multiply) the number of each with the number of people actually consuming it. Just look at Youtube: If a serious video that teaches you something interesting has a thousand views it can be called "very popular". The latest useless joke video easily gets a million views.

Just some counter examples: Joe Rogan, Veritasium (science), vloggers in general, Pritimive technology. I think things have flipped. TV used to be for serious content, Internet for cat videos. Now it's going the opposite way.

You can't counter a statistics statement with "a counter example". The statement was not "there is not a single example where...", it was about what you can expect on average.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#199

Post by aylmao »

enahs-sf wrote: post #7
rvz wrote: post #3

> TikTok poses a major threat to Facebook and Instagram in particular. Billions of downloads doesn't tell you if 'something is growing' it's the Daily Active Users. Ask them how TikTok plans to make money in order to remain profitable and they will completely fall tone deaf. This article tells you nothing about TikTok outperforming instagram.

While I agree that downloads in and of themselves aren’t super telling, if we think about the conversion rate to user this is still an insane amount of people. At 20% conversion, that’s 300M users. Even 1% DAU from that would be 3M people and probably from a segment of people that are the most valued (ages 14-25) to instagram from an audience perspective. Now what the retention looks like, that’s another story.

> Now what the retention looks like, that’s another story.

That's what's got me skeptical. There's a lot of people saying TikTok proves Twitter killing Vine was a bad move, but Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are wildly different "social networks". IMO the equivalent of putting Amazon, Youtube and Wikipedia on the same "website" category.

WhatsApp is incredibly useful. It's perhaps the "lamest" of all social networks— it doesn't have "creators", it's not known for its cool filters, it has no "likes", but it works and where it's used, it's as ubiquitous and used as phone numbers once were.

Facebook is very utilitarian too. IMO they haven't become "uncool" because they dropped the ball— they went for the general population. It's like they purposefully toned down their "cool" brand to widen the age of users that could associate with it. Now you can not only find pretty much anyone on Facebook, but also buy and sell on Marketplace, find a Job, find events, restaurants, find groups for parents, study groups, groups for people with rare diseases, the list goes on.

TikTok is very popular, but what's the demographic and what's the value proposition here? Teenage entertainment? If so, they're competing with Instagram, but also YouTube and Netflix. It's also perfectly plausible its users will outgrow it by the time they go to college or enter the workforce, or once the ads pick up to keep with the operational expenses.

The real challenge for the company will come in the form or retention and the broadening of their product + user base to compete on the next level, as something useful and not just entertaining, IMO.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#200

Post by Aunche »

komali2 wrote: post #51

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about v…

> It's everywhere and we don't seem to be fighting back. I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all.

Well one benefit of a censorship state, is that it's easy to censor all the astroturfers.

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