Very insightful read. Loved the part describing TikTok's algorithm as essentially a zero friction, global 'market maker' for content producers and consumers. Really clicked with me.
TikTok and the Sorting Hat
181–190 of 233 posts
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#182> 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…
IMO TikTok's draw is that it's the anthithesis to American / western social media culture. It's algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship. What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content fil…
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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#183I installed TikTok out of curiosity after reading this article. I scrolled without stopping for a couple hours and then uninstalled the app. An endless stream of algorithmically curated 30-second videos is pure crack to my brain, apparently. I bet a lot of younger folks with still-developing brains are also unable to resist.
I'm on the younger side, it's very addictive. People love to come up with wild theories for why the app blew up, but I think it's just pure algorithmically curated fun.
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like as of late, when China sees some success that the US does not, there’s a sentiment that they succeeded only because they’re a lesser society. They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom, or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodne…
I don't thing the things GP is talking about are indicators of a lesser society. I don't want to look at unattractive people, and there is nothing wrong with a social media service optimizing for that preference.
I get your point, but I mean I see a ton of fat and ugly people on tiktok anyway, they even get huge followings because theyre funny and cool (though sometimes it's just because people can't look away lol). So maybe you should reconsider how you view people, unless you only want content you can drool over.
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#185> 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…
IMO TikTok's draw is that it's the anthithesis to American / western social media culture. It's algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship. What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content fil…
That's hardly "nonwestern" or unique.
Big part of the appeal of snapchat was that you could be silly and send goofy shit without leaving a permanent record of it on your feed...
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#186> 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 founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture...This is important to the article's thesis.
This is the opposite of the article's thesis. Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok.
The article's thesis is that AI doesn't need to understand the culture when it can understand the person at an individual level. The closing anecdote emphasizes the point: a Chinese startup that has a number 1 news app in India and not a single person in the company can read any of the content in their app (Hindi)?! How is that for not understanding a culture?
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 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,…
You don't need one but there's some indication that they do use it as input into their models: https://www.tiktokbeautiful.com/
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those applications will be a great waste of time, but they are there to solve the problem behind all social media: loneliness and seeking care. You can distract your mind with other things for a while, but sooner or later you will fall back on social networks, unless you stop being alone or have enough attention. I think that living beings do not know how to survive alone, so being alone is something bad biologically…
I think that this level of analysis is really essential. It's not enough to say that something is addictive, we need to ask why. Going one step further, I think that when social media came on the scene society in general was already fairly isolated and looking for some type of connection. Social media offered a quick fix, but frankly exacerbated the issue. It is a really vicious cycle. It feels even harder to connect…
I appreciate it, it really is something worth investigating because it is a problem that affects the entire planet basically (looking at the amount of active users that social media have).
The most fundamental questions I could find are:
Loneliness occurs only in logical intelligent beings or also in animals?
Loneliness is something created by our mind or is it something physical like the lack of a resource such as water, food, air? (maybe some of our organs release some harmful chemical when we are alone for a long time, I don't know, something similar to adrenaline)
How long is the maximum time that a person spent alone and what symptoms did he present? (This could guide us if loneliness causes physical damage)
If loneliness does not cause physical damage, then do we do the damage ourselves? Why? Perhaps our sexual reproduction cycle is related to this? But then, Why do the elderly also suffer from loneliness if they have already passed their reproductive stage? And what about children?...
But the fundamental question: Can someone survive alone? If the answer is yes, I immediately leave my city and go to live in the forest, it is not a joke.
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#189Some 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…
It's not just AI, every change is an opportunity China can grasp. They got enough men, money, and are motivated to compete in the market. If nothing is changing, it would be very hard to challenge current monopolies, but we're living in a world that is rapidly changing.
An example is the electric vehicle. Though EV cannot replace traditional vehicles at a full scale right now, the traditional vehicle industry is not very efficient, things are not standardized or intentionally walled by monopolies. As for EV, conceptually it should be simpler, more straightforward, and more standardized, then companies can easily prototyping and mass-producing EV on a really large scale - that's what China good at, what they're not good at is they don't have recognizable branding, but there are not too many EV brandings as traditional vehicle brandings like Daimler or VW. Both government and companies see this as a great opportunity to lead these market so it's been greatly promoted.
The semiconductor industry is another field that China may want to compete in the future. Traditionally, Intel is pretty much non-challengable. However, since mobile become dominant, and Apple started to get rid of X86 and move to Arm, there might be a big change in the future. If operating systems and software are willing to support Arm, it would create yet another chance for China to participate in the competition.
Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat
#190Does this dodge the problem of political speech ?