An under-appreciated aspect of this "war" is how bad US companies have been at building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it - their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable areas this could expose.
The TikTok War
221–230 of 386 posts
Re: The TikTok War
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right, Cambridge Analytica wasn't a thing...
That's considered a scandal, and was on behalf of political groups, not the government itself.
You say political groups when there's only democrats/republicans dicothomy on the US.
Republican interests channelled through russian oligarch friends made TRUMP possible.
Let's see what happens on the coming elections...
Re: The TikTok War
#223"the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished" This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going in that direction. It's worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx or China or both.
It's unfortunate that you were downvoted for this; you're absolutely correct. No one in China gives a fuck about Marxism, and the CCP certainly isn't trying to wage some ideological war to establish some sort of Marxist utopia. To think so is to completely misunderstand the CCP's motivation, which is a dangerous thing when the tensions are escalating and war could be the result.
Re: The TikTok War
#224As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it's their turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don't worry you guys will see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year olds...
Re: The TikTok War
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked." All these apps use behavioral design to get you hooked. Tiktok is oversocialization on steroids. You have people not only acting out the behavioral scripts embedded and triggered in some meme music or voice you have people mimetically acting out what others are acting out. The psychological manipulation possible though TikTok is immense.
You can phrase it cynically, but that stuff isn't inherently bad. Or at least, it's not worse than anything else people aimlessly browse on the internet. Mostly, it's just fun.
The aimless, constant dopamine hits are incredibly scary. Especially because people who tend towards using it are the ones who need it least. Especially in children.
I guarantee this: children who use TikTok (and YouTube to an extent, etc), will have issues in the future keeping attention on work, and other forms of important and difficult problems and introspection.
Our roommate who used it in our house is a dopamine addict. He never reads, is by far the laziest and sloppiest, he’s also unapologetic about it and unwilling to acknowledge it, sucks at conversation generally because he has nothing to add because all he does is game, YouTube, TikTok and work, and they all feed into each other. And worst - he’s just totally comfortable being the laggard. Everyone else is happier. They contribute more. They clean, they maintain. They do more and have more to talk about because of that.
I fear a generation of children raised on constant dopamine drip. I already see how hard it’s become for me to sit and read or sit and meditate and I try and avoid all that (Twitter is my vice). But I have a friend with a daughter who is addicted to YouTube/TikTok and I fear greatly for a generation raised like that.
Re: The TikTok War
#226I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't…
> Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.
How did you get there? I played with TikTok for a while, but never escaped the "teenagers making videos about other teenagers to pop music" ghetto, and it didn't seem like there was a way for me to tell the algorithm what I wanted without just hoping it surfaced something that I could like.
Re: The TikTok War
#227It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas.
Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women (they say it's to stop hate, but they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran into trouble because they aren't inclusive enough with their language. Someone got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the pronoun 'he' about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for "misgendering" people, or demonetized for not having the correct opinion.
American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political agenda.
Re: The TikTok War
#228I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't…
Something about Tiktok, whether the algorithm or the sheer volume of content, seems to discourage the sort of look-at-me envy-bait narcissistic posturing that is so common on Instagram. To be popular on Tiktok you actually have to do stuff (even it's fairly banal like dancing or telling stories), not just be (or pretend to be) someone. I found it funny that the author of this post is trying to defend liberal values l…
>Why is this?
I replied to the parent comment by accident, but:
That's the kind of content that survives the crucibles of Chinese censorship, "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics (especially politics) is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. It's why TikTok's content policy is designed to protect the status quo, often misinterpreted as being pro-Beijing when it's broadly pro-establishment. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. That said, I guess it's possible for TikTok to be weaponized to sow division, but why would they need to when the whole of western media sphere is doing so already.
IMO the style has it's place, whole of China has no choice but to live under it, but in the west, a plurality of content management philosophies calibrated for different audiences is good. There's lessons in managing toxicity to learn from TikTok even if it gets banned.
Re: The TikTok War
#229Save yourselves, please!
A message from Hong Kong.Re: The TikTok War
#230Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share. It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China, however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to expand into Western countries. Isn't this ant…
Good question. If you want to get into the Chinese market, you must comply with its laws and not get in the way of angering the CCP. China is one of Apple's largest markets due to its access to over 1B+ people and it now has its hands tied and anything the CCP wants removed, Apple will do it. [0][1][2] Like you just said, TikTok already compiles with this security law and censors/bans whatever the CCP requests. By mo…
> or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US.
How does complying with China's laws in China will get you banned from the US? The US has all the right to establish the laws for products distributed on its own territory, as China does for its own.