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Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

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Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#481

Post by rumanator »

robbrown451 wrote: post #477
rumanator wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the algorithm rewarded me with 100k's views Question: a) why do you interpret that as a reward? b) what leads you to believe those views are real or even meaningful?

These are odd questions to me. I can understand why someone might not care about having some level of "internet fame." But I can't really understand how someone can not get how that can be rewarding to many. Do you understand why people are rewarded by an audience applauding them? Do you understand why a musician would be excited to hear their song on the radio? As for how they know the views are real... do you think…

> I can understand why someone might not care about having some level of "internet fame." But I can't really understand how someone can not get how that can be rewarding to many.

I've asked the question because I really don't understand the point the OP or you were trying to make. My question was very straight-forward: why do you feel that counter a) has any meaning, specially as a reward, b) is even real. Could you please shine a light on this?

After all, even the OP admitted that the counter was not a result of something users did or a reflection of the value of your contribution. The Op framed it as being a number that was gifted to you for no reason. Why do you see any value in it?

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#482

Post by dodobirdlord »

xster wrote: post #383
dodobirdlord wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't the logical equivalency be for China to strong-arm the NBA to sell ownership to a Chinese company if they want the NBA to continue to be watched by Chinese audience? Indeed. The real equivalent would be when China prohibited AWS from operating datacenters in China, forcing them to instead operate out of Chinese-owned datacenters.

Well no, it's not that complicated. To make it as illustrative as possible, your example is like the child of an American goes to work in China and China says, if you want to work, you need to use my shovel. My example is like the child of a Chinese goes to work in America and America says you need to be adopted.

Not really. AWS would like to run a datacenter business in China the way they do everywhere else in the world, but that happens to be illegal in China. Only Chinese companies are permitted to run datacenters. This seems like an exact parallel of the US deciding that social media companies that want to operate in the US have to be US companies.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#483

Post by enaaem »

graton wrote: post #392
crystaln wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously don't have much experience with China. China is an authoritarian state and all companies are subject to secret control by the state, essentially branches of the military. There is no legal recourse or protection from such intervention. The government can mandate spy code be inserted and any data they want. You're well intended here, but ignorant of how China operates. There is literally no way to enforc…

The person you are replying to is Chinese and lives in China. Or at least their post history says so.

Isn't hackernews blocked in China?

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#484

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

vinay427 wrote: post #467
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American brands have a huge presence in China. Chinese brands do not have much presence in the US. It seems like whenever a Chinese company appears to be making inroads, it gets banned: ZTE, Huawei, TikTok.

This distinction of brands is notable, in my opinion, as it is largely specific to Chinese brands rather than Chinese products and even then there are exceptions such as Alibaba and Xiaomi.

The US government allows China to export cheap, relatively low-tech goods to the US. However, it's clear now that the US government will ban any Chinese high-tech company that gains significant market share in the US. In some cases, such as ZTE and Huawei, it will go much further and attempt to put them out of business altogether, using sanctions and threats (e.g., threatening to end intelligence sharing with the UK unless it stops getting Huawei equipment).

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#485

Post by jianshen »

rumanator wrote: post #473
jianshen wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion is people don't realize the app/algorithm doesn't just reward the viewers, it rewards the creators. I do video/photo work outside of coding and at first what got me hooked was the effortless video tools (useful realtime effects, non-generic music). Not a video editor? Someone in my feed already posted a 15s tutorial so you learn how to create as you consume. Then after posting a few vids as a joke…

> the algorithm rewarded me with 100k's views Question: a) why do you interpret that as a reward? b) what leads you to believe those views are real or even meaningful?

a) If I'm being brutally honest, it's attention. Human beings enjoy attention even if it's totally dumb luck. I could say for this HN crowd that the traffic translates to revenue or some kind of practical benefit but honestly, it just felt good to get attention for something I created. That triggered a serotonin response in my brain that made me want to come back. I would assume it's similar to a HN post you submit making it to the front page?

b) They're real in that I get tens of thousands of comments and people actually reply. Most of the comments are reactions and jokes but I enjoy the thought that someone took the time to comment just like how I'm enjoying having a discussion here on HN. Whether or not it's meaningful is entirely subjective but probably goes back to my answer in a) - I appreciate the attention.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#486

Post by johnchristopher »

rumanator wrote: post #478
johnchristopher wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And HBO (which just repackages books into a format lazy people can digest and turn their brains off to) pales in comparison to the free MITx online video courses. That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance. Even some PhD laugh about stupid memes. Also: facebook/insta/tw is mainly about re sharing, not producing.

> That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You're out of line here. It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff made with cheap passive fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or pseudo-intellectual. Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good meal at a nice restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You may argue that they have different usecases in mind but that's not an intellectual ar…

> Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good meal at a nice restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

Expecting bubble-gum at a good meal restaurant is a better analogy of what that poster said and implied (`As far as the videos are concerned, they're very low quality compared to what the medium is capable of.` if videos is the food and restaurant is the medium then it follows you don't go to a MacDonald and expect a $400 meal). No one is expecting TV shows or HBO content on tiktok and no one is expecting nutritional content from bubble-gum.

> Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.

Hey, I am not the one comparing apple to oranges and reducing tiktok content to MacDonald food in order to make the point that HBO is better and thus tiktok is garbage.

He doesn't like MacDonald ? Good for him. But this sounds just like the "stop liking things I don't like" meme.

> It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff made with cheap passive fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or pseudo-intellectual.

But reducing tiktok to that is. (quote `Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a cell phone` which is technically wrong and intellectually dishonest since it conveniently ignores what tiktok content is).

But I see what you did here. You could have written it like “Everyone can now unlock the power of its smartphones to easily produce and share some kind of content to audiences that appreciate it, thus realizing one of the web2.0 era objectives of user generated content".

But no, you used term like "stuff" and "cheap" (go tell that to some teens and people that put hours into their 10 seconds video that the whole thing is cheap).

I get it, tiktok is beneath you and you don't like it. Assume it. But don't go around trying to justify it by comparing it to something it's not and that you happen to like better and expect no backlash if that's all the critic you can make.

> Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.

Except I didn't. Name-calling would have been "you are an arrogant pseudo intellectual". I clearly stated his claims were pseudo-intellectual arrogance, which is about a statement not the person.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#487

Post by dijit »

thinkloop wrote: post #386
crystaln wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously don't have much experience with China. China is an authoritarian state and all companies are subject to secret control by the state, essentially branches of the military. There is no legal recourse or protection from such intervention. The government can mandate spy code be inserted and any data they want. You're well intended here, but ignorant of how China operates. There is literally no way to enforc…

Why do countries, including China, mandate companies use their servers in various cases?

"Their servers" implies that it's something they own.

In fact it's more about ensuring that data is living inside their legislative boundaries.

The servers are not owned by China/EU/US states; they're still owned by the companies that operate them, just the data isn't exfiltrated to be outside the reach of the police.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#488

Post by dijit »

jjcon wrote: post #335
fqye wrote: post #258

If the US forced ByteDance to sell Tiktok, the US would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China, the spirit of free market and rule by law. If you are worried about data leakage to China, you set rules and law and enforce them. That is what China is doing. They asked Apple and other cloud service provider to store data in China. The US could setup clear rules and regulations about where to put data of US user…

> would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China I mean it is no different than the EU requiring US companies to host data in EU data centers. China has banned so many US companies - why is it unfair to retaliate? The use of economic power shouldn’t only be acceptable when done by corporations. Governments with a backbone should use it too (like the EU has done when appropriate)

I think it's wholly different to have data sovereignty laws on citizens (IE; keeping data within your regulatory/legislative area) vs the _forced sale_ of a public company.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#489

Post by rfoo »

mantap wrote: post #475
pmachinery wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't getting only one half of the picture, you're getting an additional half. Denouncing people who provide that other half as "suspect" is itself an attempt to ensure only one half of the picture is heard/accepted.

For someone in China to criticise the central government is for them to risk their liberty. It's not a good life to be dissident in China. Freedom of speech affects freedom of thought. If you can't say something then nobody else will hear it. And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it. So you have to imagine the missing comments from China, firstly the person who wanted to criti…

> For someone in China to criticise the central government is for them to risk their liberty.

Only with enough publicity. For now, in order to summon something which can threaten your real life, you have to at least post the criticism on Twitter, and have several people "reporting" it by making it go viral. Posting on HN is far more below than that bar, yet people imagine this is what's happening in a "reversed FUD" way.

> And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it.

True, but mind you HN is blocked by GFW. So if a Chinese citizen appears here, it means he can read whatever he want, sans the language barrier. Surely he can't have high profile public debate with his peers, but I've seen really healthy talks about these topics on "underground" communities, usually on blocked messenger services e.g. Telegram.

> So you have to imagine the missing comments from China

There are real reasons why people may not prioritize freedom (not saying that I agree with this) and are happy to accept an alternative narrative about China. OP talked about his own observations of whats happening on their state-owned media, and the general reception of these contents, then made his prediction on what would happen if the U.S. ban TikTok, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me and pointed out a potential weakness of the CCP narrative. It is usually a mistake to dismiss these words and fill the blanks with your imagination.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#490

Post by jianshen »

rumanator wrote: post #481
robbrown451 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are odd questions to me. I can understand why someone might not care about having some level of "internet fame." But I can't really understand how someone can not get how that can be rewarding to many. Do you understand why people are rewarded by an audience applauding them? Do you understand why a musician would be excited to hear their song on the radio? As for how they know the views are real... do you think…

> I can understand why someone might not care about having some level of "internet fame." But I can't really understand how someone can not get how that can be rewarding to many. I've asked the question because I really don't understand the point the OP or you were trying to make. My question was very straight-forward: why do you feel that counter a) has any meaning, specially as a reward, b) is even real. Could you…

According to their "algorithm", they show everyone's videos randomly to a small set of people and if people watch all of it (as in don't immediately swipe up), share or comment quickly then they show it to more people implying that the content I made is actually interesting to people. TikTok obv wants to surface good viral content to as many people as possible so the incentives are aligned. Think of it as being able to automate AB testing across hundreds of thousands of pieces of content.

As a result, I don't think traffic was given to me for absolutely no reason but there is a component of luck that they are explicit about which makes it even more compelling to creators. Compared to FB/IG/YouTube where I have to pay influencers or ad networks to get my work seen, they've evened the playing field a bit if my content has enough "inertia". It just motivates me to create better content next time and to try more often. You see how they're getting creators addicted?

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