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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

eugenewei.com

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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#131

Post by kakkun »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #104
reedwolf wrote: post #93

"On my way in and out of this office, just one of several Bytedance spaces all across the city, I gawked at hundreds of workers sitting side by side in row after row in the open floorplan. It resembled what I’d seen at tech giants like Facebook in the U.S., but even denser." -- As much as US devs whine about open offices, it could be worse.

Found photos of Bytedance's open office: empty: https://officesnapshots.com/2016/07/13/bytedance-offices-bei... full of staff: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-22/bytedance-drops-payw... with a faux ceiling: https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/tiktok-parent-e...

What's the purpose of the faux ceiling? I would have hoped the large expansive space and glass ceiling would be used to help alleviate feelings of claustrophobia.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#132

Post by starfallg »

fooqux wrote: post #27
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.

>TikTok's rise was very much a viral sensation.

The main reason being ByteDance had deep pockets to acquire users. The amount of ad spend on user acquisition was unreal at $3m a day through 2018 and 2019. Literally billions were spent on promoting the app. Any half decent social media app would have done well.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#133

Post by Dirlewanger »

matz1 wrote: post #15
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…

Elon musk recently said China rocks and the US has become more entitled and full of complacement. I kind a have to agree, even my company starting to shift a lot of development work to team in china. Their output and hard work has been amazing.

Can't be that hard to do hard work when no one gives a shit about the ethics of it.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#134

Post by stevesearer »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #104
reedwolf wrote: post #93

"On my way in and out of this office, just one of several Bytedance spaces all across the city, I gawked at hundreds of workers sitting side by side in row after row in the open floorplan. It resembled what I’d seen at tech giants like Facebook in the U.S., but even denser." -- As much as US devs whine about open offices, it could be worse.

Found photos of Bytedance's open office: empty: https://officesnapshots.com/2016/07/13/bytedance-offices-bei... full of staff: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-22/bytedance-drops-payw... with a faux ceiling: https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/tiktok-parent-e...

I run Office Snapshots (first link) and hadn't seen the faux ceiling you linked to -- definitely interesting.

@kakkun My guess is that it would be limit direct sunlight, though if that were the case, a shade higher up might look better.

I do remember someone telling me that if you go into a Costco food court people often gravitate to the tables with an umbrella on them even though they are indoors. Their theory was that people do like to have something over their heads in such a big warehouse-size space.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#135

Post by wenbin »

mgraczyk wrote: post #121

> How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps Part of the explanation is that they weren't in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded. musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture. This is import…

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience).

They raised money to build education product with short videos in it.

The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part.

Sounds familiar?

YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and kept videos.

Instagram was initially a checkin app with photos. Then they cut the checkin part and kept photos.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#136

Post by zerowangtwo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #14
bsoist wrote: post #2

Very interesting. We might make real progress as a species if we can leverage this more generally as a society. Also, I expect the "machines" to disrupt the film industry in a very similar way.

How will showing people short video clips to create a drug like drip of enjoyable chemical reactions in the brain progress the species? > (and yes, one feed that contained the thirst trap photos of attractive Indian girls in rather suggestive outfits standing under things like waterfalls; some parts of culture are universal). Doesn’t sound like any version of progress that I would get excited about.

What's the long term end goal for society? I think one feature of such a society would be unlimited entertainment available for anyone, which TikTok provides.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#137

Post by zerowangtwo »

angel_j wrote: post #59

The simpler answer is TikTok paid an ample Chinese labor force to watch and heart U.S. videos. This gives the users a nice dopamine rush and brings them back. It was obvious by the number of likes and comments very dumb videos would have.

Maybe you just don't understand the particular brands of irony/satire or the current trends going on at the time those videos you've seen were made?

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#138

Post by casefields »

nemothekid wrote: post #44
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?

The article goes into this - for people just jumping into the comments: The author states that while western algorithms are based on your follow graph (e.g. Instagram is relatively useless until you follow someone and even then your feed is based on your follower graph, like what people you follow like), TikTok builds this data on video features. This increases TikTok's stickyness because you don't need to do anythin…

Sounds like the algo's that the porn companies have started movie to. Stickyness works.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#139

Post by Barrin92 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #47
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.

>> the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. Less monopolies, more so western culture. Many of TikTok's algorithms would be subject to great scrutiny if run by a western company. YouTube would face riots if it were caught openly supressing or hiding videos of disabled, unattractive, or simply poor people. But such "innovation" is fine for a Chinese company. https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-use…

>YouTube would face riots if it were caught openly supressing or hiding videos of disabled, unattractive, or simply poor people. But such "innovation" is fine for a Chinese company.

You don't need an algorithm to hide unattractive people. Ever seen a modern TV show or a casting contest or seen the latest comic adaption in cinema? People voting out the unattractive or even unconventionally attractive is an old story, the more mainstream the content the more the stars look like models. On Youtube it happens with Likes and on TikTok it happens through some ML magic, I guess in China there's no fucks given about actually baking it into the algorithm directly but that's hardly more than a technical detail

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#140

Post by jehlakj »

wenbin wrote: post #135
mgraczyk wrote: post #121

> How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps Part of the explanation is that they weren't in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded. musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture. This is import…

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and ke…

For a second I thought you were going to mention vine.
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