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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#111

Post by est »

ry_co wrote: post #50
xivzgrev wrote: post #40

this doesn’t surprise me at all. I work at a consumer company and we use neural networks to personalize feeds. Thousands of features feed in and each member gets a different feed. It doesn’t take much / long to personalize. What I am surprised by is that YouTube or others dont use as effectively. Neural networks are very well known. or, is there something “next level” that TikTok is using that isn’t well known? Also…

My gut instinct is that Netflix can't use the personalized algorithmic approach that TikTok succeeds with because Netflix has to pay dearly for its content, where TikTok does not. Because of the cost structure of licensing, Netflix cannot afford to have the diversity of content that TikTok's user-generated approach enables. A small content library makes it impossible to build a meaningfully personalized feed.

tiktok sometimes do pay for their content, big hit artists get a exclusive contract deal. Tiktok is as a matter of fact celebrit managing service.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#112

Post by kirse »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #71

Is anyone else here trying to reduce their use of technology outside of the workplace? My hobbies are music, painting, and woodworking, and it's all I can muster to focus on a screen from 9-5. I do comment here on HN and I peruse other websites, but I don't actively engage with any social media except HN. I just find myself questioning the merits of attention spent on these social media platforms, given the informati…

Microsoft Launcher for Android comes with a screen-time usage widget that takes the place of a normal app icon... After a few days I was amazed that what felt like "small looks" and "short breaks" on my phone throughout the day added up to 1-2+ hours of screen time.

On the plus side I figured this could be steered into spaced-repetition flashcards for learning new stuff, but it's tough not to take a whiff of that social media crack isn't it.

I figure there's going to be a big market for things like tech-free resorts and curing device addictions once Gen-Z makes it to their 30s. They have unfortunately come out of the womb with a cell-phone in hand and will likely have a much tougher time being freed from the separation anxiety.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#113

Post by balola »

angel_j wrote: 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.

Chinese who master both English language and US culture are quite rare in China.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#114

Post by oefrha »

sandworm101 wrote: post #101
quicklime wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 socia…

You can start a rule-breaking startup today in whatever stringently-regulated regime and worry about fines later when you hit it big (and the fines are often peanuts if you hit it big, imagine any late stage VC-backed company being slapped with a record $5.7m fine). Also, the age verification honor system is really pretty much a joke, it adds a little bit of annoyance and pretty much zero deterrence. Basically it’s about knowing to put up that page in the sign-up flow. So this “advantage” you’re talking about is fairly weak.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#115

Post by jbay808 »

quicklime wrote: post #77
dfxm12 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom Who made this argument?

The idea of Chinese people (and Asians in general) being obedient to authority is something that I’ve heard frequently from people and in the news, but I didn’t mean to imply that sandworm101 made that particular argument.

I certainly saw a lot of people writing things like "they only succeeded because they welded people into their apartment buildings". I've also read that that only happened one time and was strongly criticized within China but oh well.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#116

Post by sandworm101 »

jaybeeayyy wrote: post #89
quicklime wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of Chinese people (and Asians in general) being obedient to authority is something that I’ve heard frequently from people and in the news, but I didn’t mean to imply that sandworm101 made that particular argument.

You can also look at the initial blaming of COVID on China in the media...The COVID pandemic was the result of either 3rd world-like food markets where poor/dirty people sell exotic meats to each other or that COVID got out of some underground lab where they do experiments and can't contain anything. No one explicitly said that but it was implied pretty heavily especially when you look at how people received the news…

>> poor/dirty people sell exotic meats

While I wouldn't phrase it that way, the so-called wet markets where dozens of live animals are sold in unsanitary conditions are a problem. Western nations do have a variety of health/hygiene laws that effectively make such markets illegal. They are seen as a primitive/backwards/dangerous throwback to something rightly done away with long ago.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#117

Post by mrkramer »

nemothekid wrote: post #44
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?

The article goes into this - for people just jumping into the comments: The author states that while western algorithms are based on your follow graph (e.g. Instagram is relatively useless until you follow someone and even then your feed is based on your follower graph, like what people you follow like), TikTok builds this data on video features. This increases TikTok's stickyness because you don't need to do anythin…

YouTube mastered this years ago and that's why it is 3rd most visited website in the world and 2nd most used search engine in the world.

I see TikTok as a better version of Vine but I still can't understand if TikTok is so much popular and so much worth why did Twitter shut down Vine? Twitter is like modern MySpace it will fail sooner or later if management doesn't get replaced and if they don't start thinking long term.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#118

Post by mrkramer »

chvid wrote: post #38
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?

Try downloading it and just play with it for a bit without signing up. Compare that with Instagram.

Well on desktop and even on mobile you can't browse Instagram freely without signing up or singing in, it is kinda double edge sword which forces you to join or backs you off.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#119

Post by vkou »

sandworm101 wrote: post #116
jaybeeayyy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also look at the initial blaming of COVID on China in the media...The COVID pandemic was the result of either 3rd world-like food markets where poor/dirty people sell exotic meats to each other or that COVID got out of some underground lab where they do experiments and can't contain anything. No one explicitly said that but it was implied pretty heavily especially when you look at how people received the news…

>> poor/dirty people sell exotic meats While I wouldn't phrase it that way, the so-called wet markets where dozens of live animals are sold in unsanitary conditions are a problem. Western nations do have a variety of health/hygiene laws that effectively make such markets illegal. They are seen as a primitive/backwards/dangerous throwback to something rightly done away with long ago.

Western nations don't have those kinds of wet markets, but we have plenty of our own unhygienic, dangerous practices when it comes to food.

Take factory farming, for example. Take the mountains of antibiotics we are shoving into factory farmed animals. Take the numerous warnings from experts in biology about how this use of antibiotics is incredibly dangerous, because it has the potential to be a breeding ground for antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

Now, consider what we are doing about shutting down, or even mitigating the danger posed by those factory farms. Next to nothing - there's a few fringe environmentalist groups, there's a small vegan movement, there's a few yuppies who make sure to tell everyone that they only source organic, hand-raised, cruelty-free meat that costs them $40/lb. But the average person doesn't give two damns about it - and the average politician in agricultural-heavy ridings is entirely in the pocket of those industries. [1]

Disclaimer: I don't buy organic, hand-raised, cruelty-free meat, that would cost me $40/lb. I'm part of this problem. There's a lot of utility in cheap meat. Meat is delicious. But alternatives do exist.

[1] See the popularity of ag-gag laws - intended to suppress information, so that the public only gets one side of this story.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#120

Post by treis »

chvid wrote: post #21
rollinggoron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this very similar to Vine, the old video social network? Which Twitter bought and properly crash a burned?

The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...

>I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation).

I don't really see it. We've seen the TikTok model before in Imgur, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Digg, and probably others. It's mostly memes, funny videos, how-tos, and attractive women. They've hit a sweet spot of editing tools and enforced short format to provide a constant stream of quick entertainment. But I don't see anything earth shattering or ground breaking there.

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