TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#421

Post by systematical » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

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…

Yep this older millenial is staying away. I do enjoy the links my friends send me. I watch and immediately close. "Download the app" they say. Nope. I'm mostly down to just a few minutes of twitter and instagram a day and a bit of reddit. The latter I don't really consider social media, its just what forums evolved into IMO and I've been using those since the late 90s so no difference. Facebook is probably just a few minutes per week. If it wasn't a convenient way to contact a distant connection I'd delete it entirely.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#422

Post by whoknowswhat11 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

romwell wrote: post #294

aerosmile wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Some people want tiktoks algo to exposure folks to the right wing militia folks and jam up the interaction heavily (offsense / counter offense).

Tiktok (arguably) doesn't do this, but keeps people exposed to happy bubbles. If you click away quickly from LGBTQ+ you'll see less of it? Maybe?

I'm not LGBTQ myself but I get plenty of that content. I can imagine tiktok also paying attention to this country by country (ie, Saudi Arabia probably not getting as much?).

I read these types of things as the outrage / offense response, and at least from what I can see plenty of interesting (and diverse) folks are on tiktok. My feed feels MORE diverse their then facebook for example (including more unusual things relative to my FB feed including viewpoints) Comments seem more positive as a result.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#423

Post by manojlds » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

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…

> The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist.

That is what everyone thought when opening up trade with China - make it as a reason to make the country more open and move away from dictatorship.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#424

Post by TeeMassive » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

This is not unlike how the power that be in China do their business. Harmony at all costs, even if it means suppressing those who got screwed over.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#425

Post by whoknowswhat11 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #312

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…

TikTok's algorithm is just pre 2017 YT and FB cranked up by 100X. For some reason the media hasn't gone after TikTok yet for pushing people into "echo chambers" but they basically just feed the most engaging content with no breaks on the train. I read an article about the parent company and they have one of the most popular news app in India as well despite none of the engineers being able to read what content is bei…

Despite this claim tiktok seems like it pushes some the least outrage machine type stuff. At least my feed is filled with interesting folks.

HN is going down the road too now of the google is horrible, apple is horrible, facebook is horrible type headlines. I don't necessarily disagree - but... boring? Repetitive? There are never any positive suggestions any more (ie, here's how apple should screen for CASM). It's just pure outrage factory in some cases.

Luckily for me at least HN still has some "boring" content with lots of what seem like smart interesting folks posting - keeps me coming back :)

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#426

Post by unraveller » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #306

Dah00n wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>much more stimulating To you, yes. Not everyone is you though. >It does actually take a sort of literacy to understand and appreciate art. No it doesn't. It might add something (or nothing at all or detract from it) but if it is a hard requirement then it isn't art. > Go talk to anyone about art who has spent a lot of time studying it and then talk to someone who just walks through the museum to take instagram pictu…

No they don't. It's a popular view nowadays because people want to have egalitarian views on everything but someone who has played Bach for 20 years has a deeper understanding of (his) music than someone who listened for ten minutes and can pick up on things that someone else cannot. E.F. Schumacher coined the term 'adaequatio' for this. "What enables man to know anything at all about the world around him? … Nothing…

It's more dire for the average person to get stuck in an assessment loop that may not have their best interest at heart.

The problem of art being impossible to appreciate without sufficient training is that there then becomes no way to detect dishonest art. The worst possible intentions are officially impossible. There is no way to stop the dissent into art created for the sake of producing "inadequate and impoverished" feelings in all but the most devoted followers. Post-modernism is one such authority play all the way down.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#427

Post by TeeMassive » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

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,…

Yeah that's what I've experienced too. I usually unsubscribe to all default subs, especially /r/politics and /r/all.

Then the rest of the niche specialized communities are just pure gold. In particular: data_hoarders, anything D&D related, netsec and programming are ok.

The rest however are just obvious old accounts bought by influence campaigns, which now sells for hundreds of dollars. (not to hard to see if you look at their posts history). Reddit made it so that having multiple accounts is much more easy than respecting the rules, especially with their one post by 10 minutes rule for most default subreddits.

Their new site revamp however reeks of a Product Manager (tm) who got too much free time on his hand. If old.reddit.com goes away I don't know if I'll even bother. Thank God for the SingleFile extension for saving my favorite posts.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#428

Post by romwell » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #416

teawrecks wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social media functionality is the secondary purpose of the app, the first being surveillance and data collection. Of course Google, Facebook, and a million other companies do the same thing, all completely disregarding user privacy in favor of selling your information for a quick buck, thereby making the internet a more hostile environment for taking advantage of the technologically uninitiated than ever before.…

Precisely. The first purpose is pure invasive data collection of everything on the platform; otherwise how else is that so-called 'legendary recommendation algorithm' supposed to work? That and your data is the key asset that is being sold over and used by other companies as well, which is a violation of user privacy. The news here is reassuring to investors and the users like the parent comment are once again the pr…

>the users like the parent comment are once again the prime product addicted under a para-social relationship with other addicted influencers

That's quite a leap from what I said, not to mention a personal attack.

Comment [0] doesn't make any factual claims about TikTok (please, go and read it).

Comment [1] is outdated, as the policy they has changed since then. "That wall was black two years ago" is a factual claim, but the wall has been repainted since, and anyone with a pair of eyes can go take a look.

Also, as a member of the several demographics mentioned in that comment - and, ostensibly, oppressed by TikTok -, me saying that my experience was the opposite and extremely valuable should make you reconsider your words.

Have you been affected by TikTok's policy towards vulnerable people? If not, please do not speak on our behalf.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#429

Post by ehsankia » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

panorama wrote: post #399

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 get the temptation to write it off (I don't personally use TikTok daily), but to me this take feels similar to people who used to assume Twitter is just for people reporting what they ate for lunch. That might have been the case at the start but TikTok has _plenty_ of niche content, some vapid, some productive, which frankly depends on the media you engage with.

Indeed, every time I see a post on HN/reddit assuming TikTok is just people doing dances and other vapid content, it's almost from people who have never actually used TikTok.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#430

Post by rcconf » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

TikTok is great because it values good content above else. Every other social media platform tends to value followers and popularity over content to reach people.

Facebook: Number of friends

Instagram: Number of followers

Twitter: Number of followers

Snapchat: Number of friends

YouTube: Unsure exactly, but hard to go viral

TikTok: Value of your content

Consistently on TikTok you see very popular users with millions of followers only get a few thousand views.

That’s the best part of TikTok. You make good content, and the platform puts you to the top. Your popularity does not matter. Everyone gets a fair chance. It’s absolutely fantastic.