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

TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 725 posts

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#291

Post by vkou »

tablespoon wrote: post #90
the-dude wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to US based networks?

> As opposed to US based networks? There are important differences between being influenced by domestic actors, as part of a domestic political process, and being influenced by foreign actors. The latter is a far more serious threat to political independence. It's also pretty well documented that the PRC political authorities already use its domestic social networks in this way.

> There are important differences between being influenced by domestic actors, as part of a domestic political process, and being influenced by foreign actors

Just because the actors are domestic doesn't make it at all better. Domestic actors don't have public welfare in mind, they have their own welfare in mind.

This influence happens behind close doors, and I, as a constituent, don't get to have any input on it.

For a great example, I didn't get to vote on whether or not Fox news should peddle absolute nonsense 24/7 that radicalizes their base. Its owners made that decision, without my input.

If you want 'domestic' influence and oversight over your mass media, social networks, etc, use the political process to set some ground rules, and make everyone operating these businesses in your country follow them. Blaming or targeting the foreign boogieman is a distraction, when we've got plenty of domestic monsters living in our closet.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#292

Post by npteljes »

rvz wrote: post #232
reggieband wrote: post #66

I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. I used to think my dopamine receptors were burned out by the constant barrage of memes I received from reddit, Facebook and Twitter but TikTok proves they can refine that product to make it even more potent. When I visit reddit now it feels behind in the same way Facebook used to feel behind. Facebook's video feature (which they shove into my f…

Let the children be free to download this app and let them play in it. They are going to realise soon how much of an addictive nightmare this app is and it just takes a slip up or a scandal from ByteDance to anger the majority users on the platform. The news about it being the most downloaded app is great news if you are an investor in ByteDance; I don't know what you get out of it if you're a mere user. As always yo…

>They are going to realise soon how much of an addictive nightmare this app is and it just takes a slip up or a scandal from ByteDance to anger the majority users on the platform.

Have you seen this previously anywhere? Sounds like a pipe dream to me. Did, for example, Facebook's scandals kill Facebook? The spywares that Lenovo bundled even make a dent in Lenovo's brand? Reddit's constant push of dark pattern shrink their userbase?

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#293

Post by npteljes »

reggieband wrote: post #236
Waterluvian wrote: post #183

I’m a 34 year old who just got into Instagram and TikTok. I love it and hate it. I love all the creative and ridiculously funny content I find. But I viscerally cannot stand and get angry over so much attention seeking garbage there is out there too. Just smug unqualified nobodies telling people to “stop it” with a smug meme song regarding health habits or fashion or whatnot. Or “oh no no no no” or “thank you Diane”…

I want to spoil a magnificent movie, the Russian classic Stalker [1]. If you haven't watched the film and want to one day, please stop reading this comment. It is a deep film with many themes but one main theme involves a curious plot device. From the Wikipedia article: "The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside." The theme of that plot device is that once a grou…

The wish theme is present in the first Stalker game too. Along with a fascinating story about the human consciousness.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#294

Post by romwell »

aerosmile wrote: post #235
cronix wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are obese, queer, or otherwise the target of harassment. Their stance is it's easier to get rid of the person being made fun of or limit who can see their videos rather than the 10k people harassing them. > According to Netzpolitik, the social media company instructed moderators to find users who are “susceptible to harassment or cyberbullying based on their physica…

If you had an issue with Zuck calling early Facebook users "dumb f**ks," wait until you find out what's going on behind the closed Tik Tok doors. You have to remember - we're still in the honeymoon phase with Tik Tok and haven't learned to hate them yet. Once the media and all your friends start sharing hatred about Tik Tok, leaks are going to start coming out, and there will be all the other fun ways through which w…

Yeah, no.

TikTok's algorithm has introduced me to my (now) favorite neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ content makers. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of followers, some a few hundred.

I've learned more about these subjects (and myself!) than from most other sources.

The value of TikTok for me was that it linked up a bunch of neurodivergent/lgbtq+ people into a vibrant, supportive community.

Honestly, if they decide to keep it a clique... I don't mind at all. All the people I interact with there get me. I've never felt this anywhere else.

If my content is seen only by a small subset of people who are on the same page with me — awesome! That's who I'm making content in the first place.

I don't care about the ominous fear mongering. TikTok has made my life better already. It brings a lot of people together now in ways that other places don't.

More importantly, it inspires people not just to make content, but simply being themselves. And it takes away so many barriers for creating, it's insane.

Anyway, we are talking about specific things we like about TikTok as a platform that make it unique (so far), and you are talking in abstract. Anything can be potentially bad in the future. But currently, TikTok is the best thing to have happened to the Internet.

I can give my long list of reasons why if anyone is interested.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#295

Post by krapp »

m1aw wrote: post #282
underwater wrote: post #184

I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News of all places. TikTok content comes across as completely vapid. It's like the worst possible mashup of bad television and social media. As a company TikTok seems to have zero goals beyond increasing engagement.

I started using TikTok for a couple of weeks now and started to find it fascinating, the communities that are built around the bubbles the algorithm creates are quite interesting and have discussion between themselves. It's easy to reach out to actual subject mater experts for non-technical stuff, people you wouldn't typically see on HN or Reddit. Now does it bring __value__ to my life? No Will I keep participating a…

>Now does it bring __value__ to my life? No

You find it fascinating and interesting, you're discovering niche communities and engaging with them. You (presumably) enjoy creating content. That's value. Fun, entertainment and communication all have value.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#296

Post by yann2 »

cronix wrote: post #73
mrtksn wrote: post #25

I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and prote…

Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are obese, queer, or otherwise the target of harassment. Their stance is it's easier to get rid of the person being made fun of or limit who can see their videos rather than the 10k people harassing them. > According to Netzpolitik, the social media company instructed moderators to find users who are “susceptible to harassment or cyberbullying based on their physica…

Ah yes the Fundamental Right to Reach.

If you go by what Trump or Obama say its the most important thing. Not because they used it to generate Outcomes for everyone but because They are Good at using it to generate outcomes for themselves.

Nature discovering "Reach" is how we end up stuck with an "Endocrine system". Flood the whole body/system with a signal and hope for the best. Thats great in producing a pheremone driven anthill. Its not how we end up with a Nervous system and the Human Brain.

Understanding the difference between the 2 models is key to understanding where social media has actual value and where it does not.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#297

Post by throwawaysea »

rjh29 wrote: post #199
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing It's been interesting to watch the steady decline of Reddit and Twitter since they launched. They've always had a significant amount of doom-and-gloom clickbait headlines, but in the past it was far easier to filter out the bad and follow subreddits or Twitter people wit…

Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic,…

While I agree with you to some extent, niche subreddits are still subject to Reddit's overall content moderation and policies - which are ultimately based on politics (left-biased). This can range from shadowbans on linking to certain domains to bans on certain viewpoints that apply sitewide to affecting the kind of humor that is allowable to whatever else. Yes those niche communities are less toxic than the giant subreddits, but it still feels like a sort of artificial, inauthentic experience to some extent because you can only be the online person that nearly fits within the overton window of what is deemed acceptable by Reddit's admins and leadership. Others aren't welcome, or if they are there, they can't truly express themselves or be authentic.

This trend of niche forums becoming politically biased isn't limited to Reddit either. For example, much has been written from both the left and the right about how Ravelry, a knitting community, chose a hard-left political bias during the Trump administration (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/style/ravelry-knitting-ba...). When that sort of change happens, a whole lot of people cannot engage in that niche community because it feels like a hostile place to participate, even if the typical piece of content is apolitical.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#298

Post by spiderice »

Syonyk wrote: post #74
cwkoss wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really interesting if TikTok allowed users to make a sequential thread of videos, and added a scroll control to view "next video in sequence". Currently "part 2" videos are very tedious to find, if they could make a way to continue a sequence from the fyp with a simple gesture or button, I think they could seriously challenge longer form videos as well.

> I think they could seriously challenge longer form videos as well. Is this like the Twitter feed readers that take what should be a blog post on an external site and stitch them back into something readable, instead of a blog post in 40 parts? There are plenty of sites that focus on long form videos and it might make sense to put long form videos there, if one wants long form video content.

> There are plenty of sites that focus on long form videos

Youtube. It's pretty much just Youtube. They are the only player with meaningful market share. Even Facebook video is most effective at only 20-40 seconds.

I would welcome any competition to Youtube, even if it means TikTok expanding.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#299

Post by romwell »

nielsbot wrote: post #286
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have to disagree with you about the anti-queer slant. Maye it's what I've tuned the algorithm to, but I see far, far, far more queer and people of color on TikTok than any media form I have previously encountered.

They can (and do?) definitely firewall US content from China content.

Is this a statement about geography, or language?

Something tells me we don't have too many Chinese nationals living in China on hackernews either.

Or on Reddit. Or Facebook.

In fact, I saw the most content from China.. on TikTok. And since those were dance videos, I quickly skipped them. But I don't know if Chinese-speaking people in the US have the same experience.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#300

Post by baby »

cruano wrote: post #195
reggieband wrote: post #66

I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. I used to think my dopamine receptors were burned out by the constant barrage of memes I received from reddit, Facebook and Twitter but TikTok proves they can refine that product to make it even more potent. When I visit reddit now it feels behind in the same way Facebook used to feel behind. Facebook's video feature (which they shove into my f…

> I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. I'd compare it more to something like coffee, somehow every time I leave TikTok I'm happier than I was before. This did not happen with Facebook, Instagram, etc.

I'm not sure why people keep comparing these. I go on facebook for friends, I go on twitter for work, I go on instagram for showing off, and I go on tiktok to consume cocain directly to my brain
Post reply on HN