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Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

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Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#221

Post by fikama »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85
rconti wrote: post #29

> I saw someone recently complaining that Facebook was recommending to them…a very crass but probably pretty hilarious video. Their indignant response [was that] “the ranking must be broken.” Here is the thing: the ranking probably isn’t broken. He probably would love that video, but the fact that in order to engage with it he would have to go proactively click makes him feel bad. He doesn’t want to see himself as th…

I absolutely loathe YouTube Face. If you've never heard of the term, it's that exaggerated, wide-eyed, often with an open-mouth, expression on most thumbnails. I know that at some psychological level it works, probably because it hijacks the part of our brain that is meant to respond to when a fellow human being in front of us makes that expression - there must be something dangerous going on behind us and we need to…

I belive it was tiktok of wendover productions guy (or one them, idk), he said there, that making a typos in videos is one another method of generating views on yt, becouse people likes to point the mistake in comments. And comments generate engagement so yt promotes that video

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#222

Post by bigtunacan »

Akronymus wrote: post #218
bigtunacan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payout is always less than the take, but the parent is correct. In most areas (of the US at least) casino slot machines are pretty tightly regulated to have to pay out a certain percentage of the take. To give an example, slot machines in Nevada must pay out a minimum of 75% of the take. Additionally, no programming/odds updates or machine resets may be made to the slot machine until the machine has sat idle for…

Couldnt all slots in a casino be connected to one big pot though? So that it isnt bound to any specific machine?

Not all slots are connected to one big pot, but a few (the progessives) can be. In which case yes, the takeout requirement is applied to the set of the machines rather than a single machine. So if you had four machines that are fed 250K each and one machine hits for 750K and no other machine hits then that would comply with a 75% takeout. This is majorly oversimplified, but I think you should get the idea.

Worse yet with progressives is they may even span multiple casinos. So that grand prize someone is grinding for and wasting their money on... it may never hit at that casino.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#223

Post by strogonoff »

stavros wrote: post #96
strogonoff wrote: post #15

> That’s because the company correctly intuited a significant gap between its users stated preference — no News Feed — and their revealed preference, which was that they liked News Feed quite a bit. The next fifteen years would prove the company right. Stop right there. What you mean is that their corporate wallets like it. These companies delude themselves if they consider “spend more time in the app” as an indicato…

"Heroin users said they didn't like heroin, but it turns out they take it quite often, so they must like it"

I have to say it’s slightly different.

— In case of some addictive substance, one might choose to do it to “get the kick” associated with that substance. Yes! The addictiveness makes the term “preference” highly questionable, and I can totally see how big social is pushing similar bio-psychological buttons with impunity. It’s an important point, but different to mine.

— In the case I described, the preference is in favor of keeping in touch with friends; and using Instagram is a necessary suffering to achieve that preference. There’s no alternative: all my contacts are there, APIs are closed, no competitors, etc. It’s more or less similar to claiming that my revealed preference is driving/taking taxis in a city where there is no public transport: I’d rather avoid both, but I do like to go places.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#224

Post by throwaway290 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #99
stavros wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Heroin users said they didn't like heroin, but it turns out they take it quite often, so they must like it"

I think your comment is both wrong and spot on. IMO the "wrong" part is that most heroin users will tell you they fucking love heroin. It makes them feel great/escape from life's problems, and users know this. The fact that users also know that heroin is destroying their lives isn't incompatible with loving it. The "spot on" part of your comment is that the addictive dynamics between social media and heroin are basic…

> IMO the "wrong" part is that most heroin users will tell you they fucking love heroin.

It's totally possible to choose to take a drug regularly and at the same time hate it (along with your own guts for choosing to take it). Source: former smoker.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#225

Post by strogonoff »

np_tedious wrote: post #62
strogonoff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those alternatives that you are comparing TV and newsfeed-powered social to? Point to a single product without newsfeed that lost to a product with newsfeed because of refusing to implement this feature.

MySpace?

If you are really suggesting MySpace lost to Facebook because of the lack of newsfeed, you should do your research. FB introduced the feed—in the sense that we’re talking about, as a non-chronological selection of content by an algorithm that maximises ad revenue—only after MySpace was no longer a threat. That’s when FB could get away with it, since the critical mass has been achieved and users had nowhere to run anymore.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#226

Post by strogonoff »

awillen wrote: post #72
nprz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crack seems to be a product people gravitate towards, but that doesn't mean it's a good product or beneficial for the user.

Nobody said good product or beneficial to the user - the discussion is about people's preferences. Many people have very strong preferences for crack over not crack.

Since we’re discussing preferences, drug sellers have a strong preference for people choosing crack over not crack.

Furthermore, their preference is the one that is consequential. Once you are addicted and chemically compelled to choose crack over what is more or less torture, the amount of agency you have is relatively insignificant.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#227

Post by thundergolfer »

reginaldo wrote: post #80
swyx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see also Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death (fantastic title) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death they were calling this out since 1984 - hard to distinguish between luddism and genuine problems

The book "Technopoly", by Postman, is also very well worth a reading. But I'd say the most relevant to this trend is "The disappearance of childhood". The book's thesis is that childhood is a modern invention, in that, before the printing press, and mass education / literacy, there was no need for childhood as a learning period. In the middle ages, childhood ended at age 7, as soon as children became more or less sel…

I’m personally quite grateful that to me the computer is an actively engaging machine. If I hadn’t become a programmer, I’d would, like most, find it difficult to resist becoming more and more passive as computer touchscreens engulf our lived environment.

I’ve read both Postman books, and Infinite Jest, but I’m adding End of Childhood to Goodreads, thanks.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#228

Post by thundergolfer »

rconti wrote: post #29

> I saw someone recently complaining that Facebook was recommending to them…a very crass but probably pretty hilarious video. Their indignant response [was that] “the ranking must be broken.” Here is the thing: the ranking probably isn’t broken. He probably would love that video, but the fact that in order to engage with it he would have to go proactively click makes him feel bad. He doesn’t want to see himself as th…

Agree that this insight is well expressed. Helps me understand more why auto play is probably more important and powerful on junk-social-media platforms.

On Netflix, auto-play is just pulling forward what you would probably watch later. On TikTok and Facebook, you’re autoplaying and auto-opting into a class of content you normally would retreat from.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#229

Post by pdinny »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #213

The 'Medium' trend seems to most off to me, but I've seen it repeated as truth by a number of people Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR A lot of people/companies don't seem to appreciate that the appeal of images and video come from the fact that they represent 'real' (or at least staged-real) events/people/places. Animated videos and scenes from movies seem like categorically different kinds of thi…

I strongly agree.

The article presents the various media as existing with some inherent ordering of value or preference. Text is not less than Image in any sense, just as VR is not greater than Video. These media may have different characteristics in terms of desirability for business metrics (especially in terms of product differentiation) which make it seem like there is some ordering.

Consider Twitter, which while it might not have the MAU of Facebook (a tall order!) is still a testament to the enduring value of text. And again, this isn't any case for Text being superior in any sense, but rather a way of pointing out that appetites for all of these media happily coexist and probably always will.

A similarly poor ordering (from the past) might look something like:

Medium: print (text) -> radio (audio) -> television (video) -> multimedia (CD-ROM hahaha)

We know of course that audio has not become less relevant over time.

OTOH the effort required for people to participate by creating works in these different media varies hugely. Text and Images are very accessible and are still far more accessible than Video (user research in my job suggests that they struggle to create quality video content more so than still images) and 3d graphics and VR are likely to remain inaccessible (relative to digital photography).

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#230

Post by callmeal »

bigtunacan wrote: post #164
drekipus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that. Riiiigggghhhhttttt

The payout is always less than the take, but the parent is correct. In most areas (of the US at least) casino slot machines are pretty tightly regulated to have to pay out a certain percentage of the take. To give an example, slot machines in Nevada must pay out a minimum of 75% of the take. Additionally, no programming/odds updates or machine resets may be made to the slot machine until the machine has sat idle for…

>To give an example, slot machines in Nevada must pay out a minimum of 75% of the take.

Machines plural - which means a machine that just paid out (in a casino with a large group of machines) can theoretically pay out again before a machine that has a string of losing spins.

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