TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#501

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #372

mrtksn wrote: post #25

I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and prote…

> outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. I am sorry to hear this. Are you comparing yourself to yourself of yesterday, or are you comparing yourself to the fictional characters of others on social media?

It’s not really about me comparing. On Twitter (and reddit) the world is crumbling, what the society has become, WW3 must be imminent, anything is futile, very organization is evil, everyone is angry, and there are some people that are stupid beyond comprehension that that makes me think I shouldn’t even bother. The same old nonsense would keep be parroted repeatedly.

Then I look at Instagram, everyone is having a perfect life. By perfect I don’t mean a life I would like to have, I too go to vacations and restaurants, what I mean is a curated perfection of what life is “supposed to be”. It’s just dull. When combined with TikTok It makes me feel like the society dried up. It’s like When people don’t do evil things and not yelling they do extremely mundane stuff out of the mill.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#502

Post by B-Con » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:38 AM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #371

underwater wrote: post #184

I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News of all places. TikTok content comes across as completely vapid. It's like the worst possible mashup of bad television and social media. As a company TikTok seems to have zero goals beyond increasing engagement.

>TikTok content comes across as completely vapid. I think that's exactly the point. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and (to a lesser extent) YouTube are weapons of psychological warfare that have been optimised to spread political misinformation and outrage. TikTok, on the other hand, is just hot chicks dancing, stupid memes and Shrugging Black Italian Man. It reminds me a lot of old YouTube in that regard.

I see a reasonable amount of political/social content. I think it's there, you just didn't engage with it enough to get it in your FYP.

I must have accidentally liked a couple things to trigger it, so now I'm ignoring it going to train the algorithm.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#503

Post by rvz » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

markild wrote: post #495

romwell wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how I am discussing things that you said , and you are discussing me , while also making claims about me . What I value on TikTok is lack of unprovoked hostility of this kind in the communities that I have discovered there. Enjoy your day, my friend, and try to find another person to argue about.

I don't have any skin in this game, but I think it's very sad to see that the conclusion being drawn from this discussion is that it's unprovoked hostility. I see disagreements and different values. I hope both parties in this discussion can disconnect the message from the person. Having discussions with people we disagree with about topics we see differently is in my honest opinion the way we get out of the "us vs t…

Right but how was that 'unprovoked hostility'? How was disagreeing with someone with a reason being 'hostile'? For the claims, I just used what they already admitted?

All I wanted was evidence for their claims and that was it. Instead I got anecdotes, false equivalences in their arguments which is not substantiative.

I also just asked a simple question, they couldn't even answer it. For the second question they did not provide any counter evidence to my question. All my questions were left ignored.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#504

Post by GeoAtreides » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:42 AM UTC

rjh29 wrote: post #199

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing It's been interesting to watch the steady decline of Reddit and Twitter since they launched. They've always had a significant amount of doom-and-gloom clickbait headlines, but in the past it was far easier to filter out the bad and follow subreddits or Twitter people wit…

Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic,…

No, on smaller subreddits the downvote button also enforces conformity and a right opinion. You can be as polite as you can, as decent as a scholar, but if your opinion is wrong, you will get downvoted -- and once you get to minus 1, minus 2, chances are other people will downvote you, out of sheer reflex: opinion bad --> already in negative --> here, have another downvote.

It's easier, a thousand times easier, to use the downvote button to express disagreement than to actual type words and construct arguments, and that's how most people will use it.

And I suppose sometimes it can filter the toxic, inflammatory or misleading comment.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#505

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:48 AM UTC

GeoAtreides wrote: post #504

rjh29 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic,…

No, on smaller subreddits the downvote button also enforces conformity and a right opinion. You can be as polite as you can, as decent as a scholar, but if your opinion is wrong, you will get downvoted -- and once you get to minus 1, minus 2, chances are other people will downvote you, out of sheer reflex: opinion bad --> already in negative --> here, have another downvote. It's easier, a thousand times easier, to us…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#506

Post by sdk16420 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

nonfamous wrote: post #226

I think one of the reasons for TikTok’s success is that the content exists outside a timeline. Every tried to figure out when a particular TikTok was posted? It’s very hidden. That means two things: * More content for the algorithm to present. It’s quite happy to reach way back into the past to show you something you’ll like. * No time-sensitive content. This suppresses a lot of the political and outrage-driven conte…

It also reduces the amount of reposts, on Reddit, Instagram and Twitter it's full of 'forwards from grandma', which can disappoint users. But when users get served the original post by default, reposts will gain less traction, and in addition the original creator is more likely to gain followers from their old popular posts.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#507

Post by vkou » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #466

vkou wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are important differences between being influenced by domestic actors, as part of a domestic political process, and being influenced by foreign actors Just because the actors are domestic doesn't make it at all better. Domestic actors don't have public welfare in mind, they have their own welfare in mind. This influence happens behind close doors, and I, as a constituent, don't get to have any input on it. Fo…

>> Just because the actors are domestic doesn't make it at all better. Domestic actors don't have public welfare in mind No love for any social network from me, but there's a huge difference between a company looking for its own interest, and one being controlled by a state which may be in a hot (or certainly cold) war with your country in the near future. You can surmise that FB will put its interests over your own,…

> You can surmise that FB will put its interests over your own, but you can bet that a Chinese owned media will actively look to harm you and the place you live, it's just a matter of time.

There are plenty of powerful domestic actors that actively want to harm particular groups of people. Sometimes the cruelty and the harm is the point. Sometimes it's just a distraction, intended to pit half the country against the other half, while they get away with highway robbery. Sometimes it's because they are sociopaths on a massive ego trip.

And I'm not talking about Facebook's leadership, here. You are correct that it just wants to make money.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#508

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #93

mrtksn wrote: post #25

I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and prote…

> Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing It's been interesting to watch the steady decline of Reddit and Twitter since they launched. They've always had a significant amount of doom-and-gloom clickbait headlines, but in the past it was far easier to filter out the bad and follow subreddits or Twitter people wit…

I don't think doom and gloom made reddit less interesting. I think it is the opposite that some power users feel appointed to clean up anything they do not like or classify as misinformation. Although these "hot to get rich" posts certainly are nothing but.

TikTok is certainly not solving the Eternal September problem, it is accelerating it if it doesn't keep some groups separated at least. There is really good content, but there has been on Twitter and reddit too at first.

But only light-hearted content and artificial positivity can also be worse than doom and gloom in some cases. Political incorrect jokes are sometimes enjoyable. Not everything needs to be a message with the latest hot takes in pedagogy that don't even make too much sense.

I think healthy communities still don't take internet comments too seriously.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#509

Post by komali2 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

ByteDance is an unethical company that bows to pressure from the CCP to remove content from TikTok about the genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang [1]. Therefore, it's unethical to give time / attention / money to ByteDance.

[1] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/video-07282020180119...

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#510

Post by romwell » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

rualca wrote: post #482

romwell wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The social media functionality is the secondary purpose of the app That's like saying that providing people with groceries is the secondary purpose of grocery stores, the first being collecting money in exchange for them. Duh! How horrible! Everyone would be better off if they just grew their own food on their own farm, like in the good old days Saying TikTok is the "worst" thing is absurd given the article we're di…

> That's like saying that providing people with groceries is the secondary purpose of grocery stores, the first being collecting money in exchange for them. No, not really. Like Facebook or Google, TikTok's revenue comes from selling ads. The advertisement business quite literally is based on how much personal info they can gather on yourself, and how they can leverage it to allow themselves and third parties to expl…

In case I didn't make it clear, providing data about yourself and making yourself more "vulnerable" to advertisers is the currency you pay with for using the platform.

As far as I care, letting random people know random facts about me so that they're more likely to peddle me stuff that I actually like is not "exploitation", but that's merely an opinion.