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TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

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Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#121

Post by zarzavat »

fragmede wrote: post #56
zarzavat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok doesn't just show inane dance videos in America. It shows them throughout the world. If China had some evil plan to poison the minds of youth they are not just targeting American kids. In reality, Hanlon's razor applies. It's better explained by apathy rather than an evil masterplan. China simply doesn't care about non-Chinese kids, they consider that the American government is responsible for American kids' w…

When an APT like China is concerned (or, eg the CIA), you'd be foolish to wantonly apply Hanlon's razor. I'm not saying it never applies, but some of the lengths nations go to in order to gain an advantage over their adversaries is astounding. Think NSO iPhone hack†. It's been documented that the CCP requires a party member be allowed to see into the company's private business dealings, or else face the same fate as…

I have not wantonly applied Hanlon's razor. You missed the first part where I said that TikTok is the same in every non-Chinese market. Friend or foe. There is no targeted attack towards America. They simply do not care about non-Chinese kids at all.

Obviously China does care about the Chinese internet, it is heavily censored as we all know. But it is a giant leap from "China censors Chinese-TikTok" to "China is trying to make American kids stupid with dance videos". The corollary is that the people claiming this want China to heavily censor American TikTok so that it is more like Chinese TikTok!

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#122

Post by Grumbledour »

alexvoda wrote: post #99

I still wish for a clone of Google+ v1 to succeed and replace Facebook. Sometimes i still wonder why it failed.

I would still argue it didn't. It worked alright and created long lasting communities that still miss the platform. Of course, it did not kill facebook, but that seemed always like a laughable short term goal.

Everything else was just googles M.O., wasn't it? Create new shiny platform, rebuild everything around it, annoying a lot of people but also creating some value for those that opt in. Than never address the issues that arise, change strategy midway and remove all integrations, but maybe create new ones when you do the inescapable surface-level redesign that only creates more issues than addressing existing ones (Because now there is a new "strategy"). Repeat until product is canceled.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#123

Post by DocTomoe »

cardamomo wrote: post #43
askafriend wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why default to blaming the students/employees? The educational system and employers have a responsibility to be engaging and enriching if they want interest and passion back from their students/employees. I'm not saying there's no problem with overconsumption of cheap media. But I think we're too quick to jump to blaming individuals. We can just as much flip the question around and ask what educators and employers ar…

David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" comes to mind as a well written critique of the kinds of jobs you seem to be describing. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullsh...

Sure. But there are also plenty of very necessary jobs which are not permanently engaging.

Airline pilots tend to do love aviating, but spend most of their flight standing by in case the autopilot goes awry. Most medical doctors don't have a massive catastrophe happening around them all of the time. Artisan bakers still have to knead dough.

All in all, most work generally is boring rather than fulfilling.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#124

Post by yakak »

slategruen wrote: post #91
captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

> people are afraid of data collection now in a way they weren't in 2006 I disagree with this one. They might be afraid of sharing their data explicitly i.e. sharing everything happening to them for everyone to see (even strangers). The trend now is sharing content to people they only have very close relationships with. But them being afraid of big tech collecting and analyzing their data? I don't think so.

I think social media gives a distorted view given anyone you see has little problem with it. I've met a lot of people (out in the real world) who express disinterest in starting/restarting because of all these little razor cuts and extremely vague upside. In the early noughts, a lot more people expressed regrets like limited computer skills or some other personal limitation as a reason they felt left behind or less involved instead of having a reason they chose not to opt-in.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#125

Post by ImPleadThe5th »

captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

I know it will never happen, but I would love a resurgence of micro-blogs.

All this talk of decentralised social media and all these new solutions, just to full circle back to self-hosted personal blogs.

I feel like in the tech circle they never left, but they aren't consumed by the general population.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#127

Post by stereolambda »

askafriend wrote: post #36
timeimp wrote: post #19

I've heard (anecdotally) that the attention span of all the younger users has taken a dramatic shift south. Educators and employers are noticing they cannot keep students / new employees engaged. Makes me wonder what damage is happening, long-term, with all these short bursts of dopamine that TikTok gives it users.

Why default to blaming the students/employees? The educational system and employers have a responsibility to be engaging and enriching if they want interest and passion back from their students/employees. I'm not saying there's no problem with overconsumption of cheap media. But I think we're too quick to jump to blaming individuals. We can just as much flip the question around and ask what educators and employers ar…

I don't think we need to think of it on the basis of blame at all, on the societal level. Individually, I think you have a better life if you have or learn conscious control of your attention. But on a large scale, if the population doesn't have immunity, it is a problem to deal with somehow. Either by "engaging" or changing the structures of institutions. But we have to have some methods of doing this, which are hard to come by when the problems are new.

The methods of engaging me employed by modern video games and fast-cut video platforms seem off-putting to me. More importantly I don't see how we can do anything meaningful when communicating like this. Life is largely search, not only exploitation of rewards.

If I was a teacher maybe I'd come up with some strategy, probably a compromise, but don't treat it as a thing they don't do just because they're lazy. It's like expecting that all people will deal with smog by designing and building their own air cleaning devices.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#128

Post by bencollier49 »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #73
fragmede wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an APT like China is concerned (or, eg the CIA), you'd be foolish to wantonly apply Hanlon's razor. I'm not saying it never applies, but some of the lengths nations go to in order to gain an advantage over their adversaries is astounding. Think NSO iPhone hack†. It's been documented that the CCP requires a party member be allowed to see into the company's private business dealings, or else face the same fate as…

What's an APT?

An advanced persistent threat. A sophisticated targeted attack.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#129

Post by freshpots »

mrtksn wrote: post #96
ngold wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disrespect, but....Chinese spying company? It's free and you are definitely not the product, but your information and contacts and photos and videos sure look tasty to the CCP.

I'm not American, most of the people aren't and from our perspective FB and TikTok are exactly the same. In fact, Europeans and British can positively say that FB had a substantial life changing impact due to personal data misuse and political manipulation. It's one of the core reasons most Europeans would like to see their data protected and Tech giants held accountable. Be it American or Chinese or another one. You…

Are you really trying to compare a dictatorship state to America? And I say this as as foreigner....you are creating quite the false equivalency here. But muh both sides....People need to stop looking at things in black and white.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#130

Post by ryandrake »

magic_hamster wrote: post #46
remflight wrote: post #22

TikTok is crazy addictive. I’m in my 50s and I watch it for an hour when I wake up and an hour before I sleep. It’s entertaining as hell but I know it’s bad for me. The fact that Instagram is copying them is sad.

My 50s are still a long way ahead of me and yet I didn't last 10 minutes on tiktok.

I check it out every few months or so when there's a new TikTok article on the front page of HN, and I can never understand it. All I see is 20-something nobodies dancing and making faces in front of a camera. I'm in my 40s and it's just not for me.
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