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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

eugenewei.com

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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#21

Post by chvid »

rollinggoron wrote: post #8
chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

Isn't this very similar to Vine, the old video social network? Which Twitter bought and properly crash a burned?

The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends.

I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation).

Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#22

Post by taylorhou »

Fantastic read. Time for Ben of Stratechery to pass the baton :p - I'm assuming Eugene is now going to get a gazillion messages of employment or consulting requests at the aforementioned FAANG companies to help steer the direction of their tiktok ambitions.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#24

Post by fooqux »

rydre wrote: post #20
chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

> Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. American's will only wake up when it's too late. Zuck will bribe the government in the meanwhile. Corrupt countries become less competitive over time. America is trending on the path of corruption and it's visible to every outsider now, except for unfortunately American's themselves.

I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China?

Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#25

Post by actuator »

londons_explore wrote: post #17
codekansas wrote: post #3

Some really good points. Does anyone have a good explanation for why Chinese startups seem to have mastered build AI-centric apps while American startups (and large companies) lag behind? Edit: Want to rephrase this to avoid promoting nationalism. Why has ByteDance been so successful? TikTok / Douyin and Toutiao are both really big hits, Facebook hasn't had a comparable ground-up hit despite having top-notch ML engin…

Big US companies who have troves of user data usually have pretty strict policies about not just sticking it all through arbitrary ML pipelines for user privacy reasons. Small US companies don't have access to enough data. Companies in China have both lots of user data (1B+ internet users), and no privacy concerns about running ML experiments on that data (and observing user behaviour till they find success). Hence,…

Yeah, I have seen firsthand how paranoid big US companies are about doing anything with personal data specially media which is a good thing for users. This really slows down even simple analysis where you were looking at even a Yes/No output and makes some features impossible/hard.

But they are competing with companies now which don't have the same ideological issues.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#27

Post by fooqux »

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

> Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

I doubt that is the case here, since one could easily make the case that China has more monopolies and government control than the West. More likely, this has more to do with what makes things go viral. TikTok's rise was very much a viral sensation.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#28

Post by rydre »

fooqux wrote: post #24
rydre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. American's will only wake up when it's too late. Zuck will bribe the government in the meanwhile. Corrupt countries become less competitive over time. America is trending on the path of corruption and it's visible to every outsider now, except for unfortunately American's themselves.

I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.

> I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China?

I'm saying that America is relatively in my opinion more corrupt than the America of the past.

I'm not comparing it to China, China has a different set of systems. Both systems might work.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#29

Post by groby_b »

fooqux wrote: post #24
rydre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. American's will only wake up when it's too late. Zuck will bribe the government in the meanwhile. Corrupt countries become less competitive over time. America is trending on the path of corruption and it's visible to every outsider now, except for unfortunately American's themselves.

I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.

How do you think you get environmental assessments fast tracked? (Except we call it a "political donation" and "lobbying")

What do you think happens when a place like ALEC flies politicians on jaunts to get them to accept pre-written legislation?

Outside of political applications, what do you think happens when pharma reps take doctors to "conferences" in the Caribbean to get them to use their new meds?

On an individual level: What do you think that 'fraternal order of police' donation buys you, and what that car sticker is for?

It might be a bit more dressed up than a naked bribe, but it's still a bribe.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#30

Post by actuator »

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

If we were really seeing the effect of monopolies how would Tiktok hold ground in US. FB could have actively gone after it and not allowed FB authentication or ads of Tiktok on FB. In fact, as mentioned in the article Tiktok grew by leveraging the dominant platforms like FB, Instagram.

I would still wait and watch on Tiktok phenomenon. It is a viral thing but has no moat as such and only $0.5 billion in expected revenue for this year. There are enough companies which can move in this space and suffocate it.

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