Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The TikTok War

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 386 posts

Re: The TikTok War

#271

Post by khrbrt »

seebetter wrote: post #260
driverdan wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas I downvoted you because this is not true. Watch YT logged out and you will discover it quickly starts recommending far right videos, recommending more extreme videos as you watch them. As for "gender critical" and your following paragraph, people aren't being banned for simply misgendering people. It's intentional misgendering from hateful p…

That’s not true about YT wormholes pushing viewers into far right content. And yes people are being banned for innocuous misgendering. And for saying only biological women are women. It’s not hate speech to say that. Declaring things as true don’t make them true. Let’s try reasoning from first principles and acknowledging that principles actually exist. Amorphous relativism is a destructive force in society.

The YouTube alt-right pipeline is well documented.

ACM study: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3351095.3372879

MIT Technology Review summary of the study: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/29/276000/a-study-o...

NYTimes feature: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/yo...

Re: The TikTok War

#272

Post by thebooktocome »

seebetter wrote: post #260
driverdan wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas I downvoted you because this is not true. Watch YT logged out and you will discover it quickly starts recommending far right videos, recommending more extreme videos as you watch them. As for "gender critical" and your following paragraph, people aren't being banned for simply misgendering people. It's intentional misgendering from hateful p…

That’s not true about YT wormholes pushing viewers into far right content. And yes people are being banned for innocuous misgendering. And for saying only biological women are women. It’s not hate speech to say that. Declaring things as true don’t make them true. Let’s try reasoning from first principles and acknowledging that principles actually exist. Amorphous relativism is a destructive force in society.

What's the first principle that says "only women have cervixes"? It's medically false and objectively wrong.

Now who is peddling in "amorphous relativism"?

Re: The TikTok War

#273

Post by tw04 »

sharadov wrote: post #182
analyte123 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My naive question is how is Tiktok bad and all other American social media platforms - FB/Insta/Snap good?

I've never heard of facebook or snapchat or any of their major stakeholders being involved in mass (or any) industrial espionage.

The same can't be said of the Chinese Government. That seems like a pretty distinct reason to be more OK with FB/Insta/Snap than TikTok.

Re: The TikTok War

#274

Post by newacct583 »

dvt wrote: post #264
newacct583 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women This is a deeply misleading way of understanding this controversy. You can be "simply critical" of the way we define gender or of reddit's policies without being an asshole. "Inclusive" behavior consists, essentially, of just not being an asshole. If someone tells you they're a woman and you don't agr…

> share a bunch of memes making fun of them Making fun of people is crossing the line? This seems like a dangerous slippery slope to say the least. Suppose I make an entire career out of making fun of (say) Irish people. Jokes and stereotypes like "they drink a lot" and "they get into bar fights" and "they're dumb potato farmers" are my bread and butter. Most people would probably agree that this kind of speech shoul…

You picked Irish men (note your stereotypes: all male) because they're reasonably elite in modern US society and so this seems harmless. Repeat the analysis with jokes about women ("so emotional"), blacks ("criminal"), mexicans ("rapists" -- I think someone tried this once, even), arabs ("rag heads"), republicans ("nazis"), etc... Tell me you want all that stuff on your website.

But because you and your Irish buddies feel immune, everyone else needs thicker skin?

I mean, this really should be morally obvious. Laughing with someone (which is how you imagine those Irish drinking jokes) is having fun. Laughing at someone (needless to say there were no welcomed trans users on those banned subreddits) is being an asshole. Reddit banned a bunch of assholes.

Re: The TikTok War

#275

Post by skizm »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #124
skizm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Isn't that because Tiktock's content is manually curated (for better or worse)?

Is it manually curated? The article talks about how their algorithms are part of their core success. TouTiao was about the feed and the algorithm from the beginning. The first time a user opened TouTiao, the news might be rather generic, but every scroll, every linger over a story, every click, was fed into a feedback loop that refined what it was the user saw. Meanwhile all of that data fed back into TouTiao’s large…

Probably a mix of manual and automated. I know where was a big stink semi-recently about them manually removing content from "ugly" and "poor" people.

I guess no way to be 100% sure of the validity of the claims, but here is one article reporting on it: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

Re: The TikTok War

#276

Post by throw57654 »

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #59
bstar77 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the copy/paste exploit was addressed (in ios) I'm not sure what useful information "chinese spyware" can gather from this app. As long as it's being used for goofy dance and lip sync videos, I don't see the harm.

My personal feeling is that Tiktok is better then most other social media for the end users emotional state, at least based on my wife's usage. From a spying perspective, I tend to agree with you as well. That said - China doesn't let FB or Twitter in their country, why the hell should the US let them in ours? To me it is akin to letting them buy the NY Times or CNN. They may be benign now, but if tensions were to co…

TikTok is also banned in China.

Bytedance has an isolated version called Douyin.

I believe if FB or Twitter created specific versions that comply with China’s laws, they would be allowed.

Re: The TikTok War

#277

Post by Spivak »

dvt wrote: post #267
Spivak wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit banned a bunch of hate subreddits. Full stop. I don't care what you think about trans men and women but this is not a case of people being overly sensitive. "Gender Critical" is the spiritual equivalent of "Race Realists" and their subreddits were nothing other than a safe space for them to express their overt hate. This was not a place "simply" for people with an opinion. You don't understand hate speech. Mis…

> You don't understand hate speech. This is "no true Scotsman" in its full glory, but I'll bite. Even if we agree that "Gender Critical" was hateful, in no way would the sub be "hate speech" as it would need to (by your own definition) target specific people with the intent to hurt them (which was explicitly against the sub's rules).

I really don't think you get the kind of content that got GC in trouble. The subreddit followed the "name and shame" formula (that's way too common on Reddit) of posting "cringe" pictures/articles/screengrabs of trans men and women and then then insulting, shaming, misgendering, and otherwise making fun of them.

GC wasn't some Socratic circle discussing the intricate nuances of sex and gender and happened to hold the "wrong" opinion. It was a group of bullies who had it out for trans men and women.

Re: The TikTok War

#278

Post by pentae »

CogentHedgehog wrote: post #253
spinach wrote: post #227

It 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 cond…

[flagged]

> the_Donald was already long-defunct and had migrated to another platform. The Right got to keep its safe spaces.

This is a patently false spin that reveals your obvious bias. Even the most pedestrian research would reveal this sub was pushed out of reddit by the admins and so they set up an alternate forum.

I'm always amazed at how people feel the need to push their ideological agenda instead of calling a spade a spade.

Re: The TikTok War

#279

Post by throw57654 »

rvz wrote: post #149
eclipsetheworld wrote: post #105

Why 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…

TikTok is banned in China.

The company has an isolated version called Douyin that is only available in China.

Re: The TikTok War

#280

Post by YarickR2 »

Spivak wrote: post #262
spinach wrote: post #227

It 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 cond…

Reddit banned a bunch of hate subreddits. Full stop. I don't care what you think about trans men and women but this is not a case of people being overly sensitive. "Gender Critical" is the spiritual equivalent of "Race Realists" and their subreddits were nothing other than a safe space for them to express their overt hate. This was not a place "simply" for people with an opinion. You don't understand hate speech. Mis…

Well, you're making great progress understanding another people thoughts /s Your answer is filled with so much more hate than the one you're replying to
Post reply on HN