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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

#131

Post by mrtksn »

freshpots wrote: post #129
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People need to stop looking at things in black and white.

How saying that USA is the absolute angel and China is the absolute devil is not a black and white but saying that USA and China pose similar risks is black&white?

Besides, a large number of Americans[0] are disputing the integrity of American elections, claim that America is ruled by a secret elite, claim that elections change nothing, claim that USA is about to be a dictatorship the moment gun control laws are introduced. Of course I don't believe in any of this BS but the movement of people who believe in this stuff is frightening and very weird things happen on the 6th of January in 2021 and things might change dramatically in near future. So yes, I do compare the USA and China in sense of a risk for Europe.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-bide...

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

#132

Post by MomoXenosaga »

moneycantbuy wrote: post #106

Shocking that this spyware app by the Chinese government has been allowed to obtain global dominance. Probability of psychological manipulation at scale is real. Huge national security risk. Sad so many people are eager for such addictive superficial distraction. Soon the AI will be able to make videos itself. Better hope the Social Credit System likes the direction you’re swiping.

This is fear mongering. The US has dominated culture and entertainment for 100 years now yet my country hasn't turned into batshit insane Jesus freaks. While the US Supreme Court was overturning Roe vs. Wade my parlement was extending abortion rights.

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

#133

Post by beardedetim »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #125
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.

Microblogs are _the thing_ just have always been "too early". Not sure _how_ this will work but I strongly believe that microblogs are the _end goal_ here.

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

#134

Post by xaedes »

freshpots wrote: post #129
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Comparing things that are equivalent is pretty pointless, because the outcome would always be the same: "they are the same". We compare things that may be similar but actually different. Comparing things highlights differences and commonalities.

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

#135

Post by odessacubbage »

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.

kids are in school 9 hours a day, 5 days a week for 12+ years. if we are not using that time to facilitate developing their attention spans then the blame lies solely on the educators. if kids aren't focusing in school, first and foremost look at the content and ask if any of it is actually engaging or meaningful. in my experience we largely dedicate them to shuffling around paperwork for which their greatest possible reward is a gold star and... more paperwork. we rob kids of agency or any sense of purpose and then snipe at them for not being sufficiently engaged in imp math 4.31, section 12, worksheet 29

the rudolph steiner/waldorf model is kooky in a lot of ways but one thing i do believe they got incredibly right is that they constantly have kids making actual things with their hands in the real world and all the technical concepts are buried within a grander narrative. also they let kids actually go outside.

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

#136

Post by mrkramer »

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…

>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.

This was Social Networking 101 and Zuck got it right and he won big but there are so many different forms of social networking that are possible and are happening today like ephemeral content(Snapchat), short videos(TikTok) etc.

Video was and still is huge opportunity and you could see that from the astronomical rise of YouTube since 2005/2006 till today. YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world and the second most visited website in the world.

Speaking of TikTok; the rise of TikTok was inevitable since Vine was also huge video opportunity but Twitter simple blew it away. If Vine had good leadership TikTok probably wouldn't exist or it wouldn't be as popular as it is today.

And also YouTube and TikTok are sort of hybrid social networks in a way that they are modern form of TV entertainment platforms because you can passively watch videos and get entertained nonstop without interacting with anybody. So they are not really at the same conceptual level as Facebook is.

>I think it would be hard to start something like this again, because people are afraid of data collection now in a way they weren't in 2006.

Then why the hell all wannabe successful people are on LinkedIn aka the directory of professionals. They keep signing up every single day because they want to be looked up and found by their fellow professionals and potential employers.

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

#137

Post by nprateem »

keiferski wrote: post #105

Facebook, it seems, is moving away from its traditional focus on text and images, spread among people who know one another, to instead adopt TikTok’s emphasis on pure distraction. I don't know why the author didn't make the obvious connection here. TikTok's emphasis is not on distraction, but on video . TikTok is successful because it understands the power of video without the legacy mental model of television: longe…

I think the shortness of videos hijacks the dopamine system hooking users thanks to constant, fast-moving novelty. I doubt they'd have been as successful with long-form, ad-free videos.

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

#138

Post by randomsearch »

keiferski wrote: post #105

Facebook, it seems, is moving away from its traditional focus on text and images, spread among people who know one another, to instead adopt TikTok’s emphasis on pure distraction. I don't know why the author didn't make the obvious connection here. TikTok's emphasis is not on distraction, but on video . TikTok is successful because it understands the power of video without the legacy mental model of television: longe…

I think TikTok’s success is based on: (1) far superior UX, (2) showing content from anyone as the default, giving them a large pool to draw from and avoiding the chicken and egg problem, and (3) an excellent (probably quite simple) ML loop that just throws video at you until it finds something you like.

TikTok feels like an intense drug hit compared to Facebook. It’s easy to lose time to it, a LOT of time.

I didn’t think I’d like it until it figured out I enjoyed DIY / makers videos. Then 30 mins went by before I realised and deleted the app.

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

#139

Post by k4rli »

nprateem wrote: post #90

A good analysis. Whether you like it or not, Tiktok is a classic example of disruption. They've not only circumvented the moat of their biggest competitors, but made it a liability - FB & Insta can't just abandon the social graph without disenfranchinsing their existing users. Absolutely textbook innovation.

Is there innovation? Seems like Tiktok is just a more "evil" iteration of Vine.

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

#140

Post by vultour »

ryandrake wrote: post #130
magic_hamster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't forget the obnoxious robotic voice plastered over every video. I only come across TikTok videos on Reddit, but the moment I hear the voice I move on.
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