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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

eugenewei.com

101–110 of 233 posts

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. Less monopolies, more so western culture. Many of TikTok's algorithms would be subject to great scrutiny if run by a western company. YouTube would face riots if it were caught openly supressing or hiding videos of disabled, unattractive, or simply poor people. But such "innovation" is fine for a Chinese company. https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-use…

I feel like as of late, when China sees some success that the US does not, there’s a sentiment that they succeeded only because they’re a lesser society. They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom, or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodne…

>> a mature domestic tech industry and startup scene, would eventually produce something that would compete successfully

Is it too much to also believe that a company subject to a radically different regulatory regime, and different cultural norms, might field a product that would not be considered acceptable elsewhere?

For example: How does TikTok handle children under 13yo? That is a real headache for western social media firms. Does China enforce similar rules? Would not having to obey such rules not represent an advantage for a product aimed at young people? The lawsuits and imposed fines suggest TikTok is substantially advantaged.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53418077

"The company was fined 186m won (£123,000) by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC). The KCC, the country's media watchdog, said TikTok collected data of children under 14 years old without the consent of legal guardians."

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#102
post #5

Some really good points. Does anyone have a good explanation for why Chinese startups seem to have mastered build AI-centric apps while American startups (and large companies) lag behind? Edit: Want to rephrase this to avoid promoting nationalism. Why has ByteDance been so successful? TikTok / Douyin and Toutiao are both really big hits, Facebook hasn't had a comparable ground-up hit despite having top-notch ML engin…

Which other chinese startups with machine-learning as its core? Do you mind listing some examples?

[deleted]

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#103

"On my way in and out of this office, just one of several Bytedance spaces all across the city, I gawked at hundreds of workers sitting side by side in row after row in the open floorplan. It resembled what I’d seen at tech giants like Facebook in the U.S., but even denser." -- As much as US devs whine about open offices, it could be worse.

Oh, things can always be worse. But it's probably not a great idea to wait until they can't get any worse, before you speak up.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#104

"On my way in and out of this office, just one of several Bytedance spaces all across the city, I gawked at hundreds of workers sitting side by side in row after row in the open floorplan. It resembled what I’d seen at tech giants like Facebook in the U.S., but even denser." -- As much as US devs whine about open offices, it could be worse.

Found photos of Bytedance's open office:

empty: https://officesnapshots.com/2016/07/13/bytedance-offices-bei...

full of staff: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-04-22/bytedance-drops-payw...

with a faux ceiling: https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/tiktok-parent-e...

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference which actually changes quite a lot is that the maximum video length is much longer (six seconds vs a full minute). This lets people put more effort/content into their videos, allowing for more expressiveness than just memes. At the same time, a minute is short enough that it discourages the sort of rambling you might see on a freeform platform like YouTube. The outcome is a surprising amount of focused…

> I'm currently pretty deep in both crochet and recipe TikTok Anyone know if it is possible on TikTok to temporarily check out different genres, but not have them become a part of your profile? Basically an incognito mode I guess?

You can watch videos on Tiktok without an account. You can't search (on the web, at least - I've never installed the app) but simply visiting e.g. tiktok.com/tag/crochet will let you go through and watch content without limits. I used it for months that way.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#106
post #59

The simpler answer is TikTok paid an ample Chinese labor force to watch and heart U.S. videos. This gives the users a nice dopamine rush and brings them back. It was obvious by the number of likes and comments very dumb videos would have.

that's just plain wrong. if you even used tiktok, you'll understand how truly frighteningly powerful their algorithm is at finding exactly the kind of content you want to watch. i was never the kind of person to scroll my phone right before sleeping, but somehow i found myself doing that these days on tiktok, mindlessly just swiping up over and over again, not able to stop because almost every video seems to appeal precisely to my taste, even in the weird humor stuff.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#107
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon musk recently said China rocks and the US has become more entitled and full of complacement. I kind a have to agree, even my company starting to shift a lot of development work to team in china. Their output and hard work has been amazing.

Very minor correction: you probably mean "complacency" not "complacement". And I do agree to an extent; from where I am standing the American software industry feels a bit bloated/stagnant/wasteful/some word I can't think of that covers all three.

This reminds me a recent story in china: senior ms employees complaint against newly hired Huawei employees, who voluntarily worked overtime, and even showed off this to other senior ms employees.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to take a guess, Asia has always focused more on math in education than the US. Given that AI/machine learning is a lot of math it makes sense (they would have a larger talent pool for building the algorithms), but that's just one guess...

But I would argue that designing an algorithm that appeals to the human psyche in the way that Bytedance as done requires more than math skills. Designing the TikTok "For You Page" is not a pure ML problem, its a people problem that is being solved with ML.

Personally I felt the appeal of TikTok is that the design is ML-centric - clean buttons, very clear signal, not a bunch of mixed feedback signals like in other apps. Everyone on board seems to understand the importance of the underlying ranking algorithm

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#109

To pick up on one point from the (fascinating) article: > In the other direction, the U.S. hasn’t made a huge dent in China. Obviously, the Great Firewall played a huge role in keeping a lot of U.S. companies out of the Chinese market, but in the few cases where a U.S. company got a crack at the Chinese market, like Uber China, the results were mixed. I'm genuinely curious to know which non-Chinese apps/services have…

microsoft, bing, azure. skype, linkedin, z.cn, kindle, aws china, zoom, android, wework.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#110

Modern day tobacco. 100% unregulated addiction. FB, TWTR, GOOG, INSTA, everyone switched from timeline to personal recommendation engines and TikTok is just doing it so much better. Where will things be in 5, 10, 50 years? Terrifying and exciting. Do these tech companies sit on research to suggest that these algorithms can induce behavior-changing tactics through trial-and-error? Will they all have their tobacco-caus…

I've been re-reading Infinite Jest recently and it is amazing how prescient David Foster Wallace seems. The deep philosophical question - does American individualism mean anything in a world where the average person cannot be expected to delay gratification?
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