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TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

newsroom.tiktok.com

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Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#61

Post by wongarsu »

periphrasis wrote: post #60
wongarsu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can convey more information than the stationary images that dominate much of reddit, while taking less effort to consume than text (it's really hard to get people to engage with more than the headline in written content). TikTok is imho one of the closest approximations of a marketplace of ideas, or a penny-university. Every topic under the sun is talked about (even if TikTok tries to censor a bunch of topics), yo…

Sounds like a gigantic attention suck designed to stimulate addiction. Moreover, it’s unclear to me why opening the floodgates to more human expression without any concern for the quality of that expression is desirable. The virtue of social media seemed self evident in 2006 when we had little experience of what it would mean in practice; in 2021 however, I think the premise that megaphoning unfettered expression is…

Humanity as a whole has spent the last couple Millennia accomplishing preciously little. Not because there weren't people with bright ideas, but because pivotal ideas often took centuries to spread. Many see the introduction of coffeehouses as a place of conversation in the 17th century as crucial for the Age of Enlightenment [1]. The speed with which we can enact technological and social change is proportional to the speed of exchange of ideas. In the 20th century the power to spread ideas had largely monopolized, but now the internet gives us many-to-many interaction beyond the local level. And I will gladly concede that we haven't figured how to do that properly, Facebook and Twitter seem like mostly failed experiments. But that doesn't mean that cracking the code for global many-to-many interaction isn't worth it.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#62

Post by mohanmcgeek »

pugets wrote: post #23

I wonder how many of these users are unique. TikTok makes it simple to have two or more accounts. A number of content creators (especially ones who make NSFW non-nude content) have alt accounts that they can use when their main gets muted.

Yes. These numbers are probably made up.

Instagram despite being around for much longer and not being banned in the largest internet market (India) has only 1B MAU.

Tiktok isn't available in China either. That's a different app from bytedance if I understand it correctly

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#63

Post by periphrasis »

wongarsu wrote: post #61
periphrasis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a gigantic attention suck designed to stimulate addiction. Moreover, it’s unclear to me why opening the floodgates to more human expression without any concern for the quality of that expression is desirable. The virtue of social media seemed self evident in 2006 when we had little experience of what it would mean in practice; in 2021 however, I think the premise that megaphoning unfettered expression is…

Humanity as a whole has spent the last couple Millennia accomplishing preciously little. Not because there weren't people with bright ideas, but because pivotal ideas often took centuries to spread. Many see the introduction of coffeehouses as a place of conversation in the 17th century as crucial for the Age of Enlightenment [1]. The speed with which we can enact technological and social change is proportional to th…

I agree that precious little occurred in terms of technological advancement. However, I think it’s a more tendentious claim with respect to cultural achievement. For example, all the great epic poems of the Western tradition predate the Enlightenment (although there have been notable failed/incomplete epics since then). In terms of Humanism, it’s unclear to me that we’re doing better than our far less technologically sophisticated ancestors.

That aside, my broader concern is with our civilizational stability. We are still too close to and to involved in the events of the past two years to achieve any kind of objectivity, but I am increasingly concerned that, at least in the American context, things are not going to work out. Between worsening climate change, an incipient and solidifying neo-Fascist mass movement, the disinformational chaos of social media, the mass death of a pandemic, and an increasingly sclerotic US hegemony, our civilization is experiencing profound pressures of the sort which historically presaged extended periods of violence and chaos.

I hope that I am completely wrong, but it’s difficult to read the stories (and for that matter the crueler comments) of r/HermanCainAward and not come away with the conclusion that social media has broken our society to the tune of 2000 unvaccinated dead per day and counting.

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#66

Post by Abhinav2000 »

I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#67

Post by epsteindidntk »

Abhinav2000 wrote: post #66

I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it

Is this a tired meme peddled by Zuckerberg?

All I see are people dancing pool-side.

All I see is billions of views being taken away from FB/YouTube and others...and this is the great danger. Google, FB, and any gaming or streaming service is losing their prime demographic: teens.

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#68

Post by jcun4128 »

Abhinav2000 wrote: post #66

I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it

Would be interesting the math behind processing all of that data to get some useful metadata out of it.

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#69

Post by distribot »

Abhinav2000 wrote: post #66

I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it

I don't understand the big risk. They build a profile about the kind of short form videos you interact with. It's pretty limited.

Re: TikTok has reached 1B MAUs

#70

Post by dougmwne »

Abhinav2000 wrote: post #66

I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it

Their algorithm is definitely capable of determing gender and sexual orientation just from your pattern of swipes, and I imagine many other things that could be potentially sensitive. I imagine China could have a shadow social credit profile on every active user, figure out who is most susceptible to blackmail or targeted phishing for state sponsored hacking. Of course this is a massive national security risk.
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