Live data from Hacker News

TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

bbc.com

41–50 of 212 posts

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#41
post #3

TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship. This is a major part of its success, due to not allowing its network to deteriorate into culture wars and general unpleasant behaviour. I suspect any future social network much like TikTok will have exclusion as a major feature.

> TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship.

This is nonsense. All the social networks have things they will remove and ban your account for, from spam and CP upwards (Instagram and FB being notoriously touchy about sexuality). It seems that TikTok is heavier about politics than most, but censorship is not a boolean.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#42
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

Yeah. We said this about Facebook 11 years ago didn't we? Now another one ascends to the throne of the most popular and widely 'used'.

So how long until the users get screwed (again)?

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#43
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

your comment is contradictory - if there is no political content, what propaganda is there to distribute? per your own comment wouldn't they just be distributing the "catchy" content?

There isn't propaganda. I guess people say there is, because conspiracy theories are more fun than fact. But strong statements like "TikTok is propaganda" need to be supported with evidence.

I would say that the highly tailored experience of the TikTok algorithm would make a propaganda op quite easy to detect. The algorithm is so ridiculously good, that you would instantly spot a propaganda video, or notice when your feed begins to skew from what you like to see.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#44
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

your comment is contradictory - if there is no political content, what propaganda is there to distribute? per your own comment wouldn't they just be distributing the "catchy" content?

If you don't interact with political content you will never see it. But if you do you'll see a lot more of it. TikTok basically has auto-subreddits that are crazy specific because of its discovery algorithm.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#45
post #42
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

Yeah. We said this about Facebook 11 years ago didn't we? Now another one ascends to the throne of the most popular and widely 'used' . So how long until the users get screwed (again)?

I've never found Facebook or Instagram fun, but Tiktok is an absolute delight. The serendipity they put into the recommendations is key.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#46
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

I've decided to outsource dopamine production to The Chinese Algorithm and honestly it's going great

I love how positive and fun the content on TikTok is. It really is a breath of fresh air, never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#47
post #31

Honestly, good for them. TikTok is such a breath of fresh air in the social media space -- it's bursting with raw unfiltered creativity, interactions are really genuine and I've actually met now IRL friends on TikTok. Their recommendation engine is scary good at discovery which solves the "I don't know who to follow" problem, the ads are the least intrusive of any social media platform. If you don't "get" TikTok beca…

TikTok creators are pushing out so much incredible OC. It feels like half of the Reddit front page are just TikTok reposts (with the logo censored out, because Redditors are too cool to admit they like TikTok content.)

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#48

The big difference between Tik Tok and everything else to me: when I stop scrolling, I feel _good_. On Instagram, I scroll until I hate myself. On Facebook, I used to scroll until I got frustrated. But on Tik Tok - it's a dopamine hit without the hangover.

You have no attachment to the content you see on Tik Tok. Facebook and Instagram are social network based. Tik Tok is not.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#49
post #29

I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all). I don't have it on my pho…

your comment is contradictory - if there is no political content, what propaganda is there to distribute? per your own comment wouldn't they just be distributing the "catchy" content?

There is no political content right now, my point is that in case of escalating conflict or proxy-conflict with China they could absolutely run disinformation through this channel in a way that is somewhat transparent to their users to spark anti-war counter-movements in the US.

Re: TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020

#50
post #41
post #3

TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship. This is a major part of its success, due to not allowing its network to deteriorate into culture wars and general unpleasant behaviour. I suspect any future social network much like TikTok will have exclusion as a major feature.

> TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship. This is nonsense. All the social networks have things they will remove and ban your account for, from spam and CP upwards (Instagram and FB being notoriously touchy about sexuality). It seems that TikTok is heavier about politics than most, but censorship is not a boolea…

TikTok removes or makes it much harder to find content they do not want on the platform. Things that are not the right tone. There is very little political and culture war crap on it. They don't just censor for abusive, CP, spam and so on.
Post reply on HN