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TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

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Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#231

Post by 4ggr0 »

ChrisRR wrote: post #191
Gatsky wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube is different imho. Lots of quality content, long form, carefully crafted. Many popular creators post infrequently. Not free of trash obviously, but qualitatively different to tiktok’s mind hacking. YT also pays creators better AFAIK.

Youtube also recommends you videos but at least it gives you time to stop and consider what you want to watch next out of the 10 or so recommendations Tiktok is bam straight onto the next video

Depends, if you visit YouTube Shorts it's almost 1:1 the same as Instagram Reels or TikTok.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#232

Post by 4ggr0 »

guggalugalug wrote: post #12
barbazoo wrote: post #11

I'm finally in a place where the only website I religiously check is HN. Because of it's nature, for me, it never takes up more than a few minutes every couple of hours. It took hard work to get there. I use Nextdns to block domains of websites and apps when I realize I spend too much time on them. Could I just allowlist domains, sure, and sometimes I do that when I need to look at something on Reddit for instance. B…

Amen. One easy step anyone can take towards this direction of intentful filtering is to refrain from pulling the phone out of the pocket when standing in line. Just stand there. Look around. Watch other people. Think. Listen. The world exposed via your pocket device will not miss you. And after a while, you will learn to not miss it.

This really is a feature I seem to lack. Standing in a line without at least listening to music makes me really uncomfortable. I don't know where to look, what to do etc.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#233

Post by fleddr »

Tiktok isn't yet peak engagement.

They should add eye tracking so that they know which part of the video you're looking at combined with facial reading to detect your emotional response. This saves users from the enormous effort of having to swipe or like. Fully effortless auto learning.

Holding a phone is also kind of tiring so let's project it into your eye balls using AR, plus you can't really look away.

You'll now have the ultimate human reprogramming machine. You can now change their opinion, culture, perspective, shopping behavior, or any behavior.

Pretty much any conspiracy theory you could think of would not be crazy, actually attainable. Technically, we're about 5 minutes away from it.

Given Facebook and Youtube's panicky response to this success, you can be sure that the model will be rolled out across tech. You'll be doing music and reading in a similar way soon. And that doesn't even take into account AI content generation, which is another revolution on top of AI recommendation.

I'll end with my final prediction. Some 10 years from now, when society is pretty much wrecked beyond recognition, there will be a hearing in congress: "so uhm...what is Tiktok? Is it like a website? Does it work with a mouse?".

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#234

Post by somenameforme »

googlryas wrote: post #196
somenameforme wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim is regularly repeated, but strongly and directly contradicted by literally every study on the topic. Here [1] is one from Pew in late 2019. 81% of Americans believe the potential risks of companies collecting about them outweighs and benefits. 79% are very/somewhat concerned about how the data collected on them is used. The big issue 81% also believe that little or no control over the data collection. Inte…

I don't think my statements and those poll results are at odds. If you look at the phrasing, the personal data in question is never specified. People may be imagining their identity/social security number being the data they are concerned about and not, say, that they were geolocated outside of a kohls.

Page 3. The top two concerns are social media sites (85%) and advertisers (84%). This isn't about social security numbers. The paper also gets into data profiling, which surprisingly and encouragingly, the vast majority of Americans are aware of and also concerned by. Tracking your location in real life is something extremely few people would be okay with.

It's interesting because this issue is also completely bipartisan. 75% of Americans believe there should be more government regulation on what companies are allowed to do with data, including 70% of republicans.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#235

Post by 4ggr0 »

clolege wrote: post #211
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you downvote ? I only have an up arrow.

You need 500 karma to do it

Do you know how the flag-function works? Sometimes I'm able to flag comments, other times the button isn't present.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#236

Post by clolege »

4ggr0 wrote: post #235
clolege wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need 500 karma to do it

Do you know how the flag-function works? Sometimes I'm able to flag comments, other times the button isn't present.

It looks like I can only flag comments once I tap reply?

You apparently also need 31 karma to do so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#237

Post by iso1631 »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #208
iso1631 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids? It's called parenting > It is much easier to set a limit on a device that is cold and inhuman and can't be pleaded with for more screen time than it is to try and manually enforce such a limit. If you don't want to do parenting, then you can also block access to netflix (or from the tv or whatever) at your router.

While I mostly agree with you there’s an interesting discussion to be had that China also has parents, and they’ve decided that it’s not enough to rely on parenting to address childhood addiction to things like social media. You can argue it’s a good or a bad thing but clearly they’ve taken a different approach, and whether that leads to empirically better outcomes is worth exploring.

A cynic could say China's culture is to cede far more to state control. US culture is to cede it to corporate control.

Either way it's a symptom of parents outsourcing parenting, because the culture in both countries is for parents to work 120 hours a week.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#239

Post by filoleg »

emptyfile wrote: post #180
filoleg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go. I do. Don't waste time by trying to find the stuff you want by explicitly searching for specific tags (aside from maybe for the purpose of the initial seeding, but that's not a must at all). That would indeed bring up just tons of kinda trashy content that seems like it is tailored to either teenagers or the lowest common den…

>A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos. yeah, getting "non-mainstream" fitness advice from freaking short form videos is just about the dumbest thing I've heard this month tell your friend to read a book sometimes, there's a reason why they exist…

He read plenty of books on the topic, and doesn't take TikTok fitness advice as some bible. I have already prefaced that he was seriously into bodybuilding, and I legitimately don't see how one can be serious about it if all they do is just watch TikToks and gain all their knowledge from it.

It is more for stuff like "oh, this is an interesting routine, let me look into it on my own later" or "damn, i didn't realize the nutritional benefits of XYZ, let's read up on it and see" or "oh, so this is how you can work lats more efficiently". TikTok isn't the end-all be-all, it is a starting point.

Re: TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

#240

Post by dirtyid »

iso1631 wrote: post #237
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I mostly agree with you there’s an interesting discussion to be had that China also has parents, and they’ve decided that it’s not enough to rely on parenting to address childhood addiction to things like social media. You can argue it’s a good or a bad thing but clearly they’ve taken a different approach, and whether that leads to empirically better outcomes is worth exploring.

A cynic could say China's culture is to cede far more to state control. US culture is to cede it to corporate control. Either way it's a symptom of parents outsourcing parenting, because the culture in both countries is for parents to work 120 hours a week.

TBH Chinese are still very hands on helicopter parents, even when they work ass off. The issue is you can be strict and controlling and still lose to corporations who spend billions to engineer addictive products. Which at minimum takes disproportionate resources / attention to mitigate. Hypothetically this is where parents complain to state to regulation since ostensibly corporations are suppose to cede control to state. Plus don't have to be the badcop trying to enforce screentime when state takes that choice away. Also plenty of parents who cede control to corporations and allow products to baby sit their kids by giving kids access to adult ID to circuvent restrictions. I feel like US voters are pessimistic their gov can shape corporations in some realms. Like loot box regulations for youth feels like it shouldn't be that difficult to pass.
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