Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#461

Post by randomsearch » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

HN commenter here who has spent a lot of time on TikTok as a relative wanted me to use it.

Hard disagree on the OP.

It’s like every social network starts out (more positive, no ads), but it has especially lowest-common-denominator content.

It’s brilliantly engineered to suck your time away, I’m genuinely very impressed how manipulative it is, really a big step up. And at least one young relative is totally addicted to it, far beyond anything I’ve seen with other networks, so it works.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#462

Post by ehsankia » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #461

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

HN commenter here who has spent a lot of time on TikTok as a relative wanted me to use it. Hard disagree on the OP. It’s like every social network starts out (more positive, no ads), but it has especially lowest-common-denominator content. It’s brilliantly engineered to suck your time away, I’m genuinely very impressed how manipulative it is, really a big step up. And at least one young relative is totally addicted t…

> It’s like every social network starts out

Isn't that more reason to enjoy it while it's still great? Early youtube was fantastic, vine was a joy while it lasted, etc.

> but it has especially lowest-common-denominator content

Disagree. The whole point of having highly specialized recommendation algo is exactly to avoid LCD content. If I see low quality content, I instantly mark it as "uninterested". I have not seen a single "dance video" in almost a year. LCD happens on popularity based systems, TikTok's system is based on your specific usage pattern.

> It’s brilliantly engineered to suck your time away

Again, yes and no. It's engineered to match your preference. Personally, I have trained my to give me quality content. Of course it technically wastes my time. So does hackernews, but I still consider it great use of my relaxing time.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#463

Post by ehsankia » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:42 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #406

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

On the other hand, Tiktok is the only social media platform I absolutely can't stand. Low quality content, repeated jokes, people desperate for attention, impersonal, memes, and all of it video so there's an unavoidable fixed time cost. With so much good high content available on the internet and how little time people have, it saddens me that so much time is spent on the low quality noise.

How long have you used it for, and do you make liberal use of "Not Interested"?

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#464

Post by PopeDotNinja » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:49 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #406

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

On the other hand, Tiktok is the only social media platform I absolutely can't stand. Low quality content, repeated jokes, people desperate for attention, impersonal, memes, and all of it video so there's an unavoidable fixed time cost. With so much good high content available on the internet and how little time people have, it saddens me that so much time is spent on the low quality noise.

Regarding content quality, I don’t see TikTok isn’t meant to be an epic dessert at a 3 star restaurant. I see it as a can of Pringles when I have the munchies.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#465

Post by vinay427 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:52 AM UTC

edoceo wrote: post #385

Zafira wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China, the spirit of free market and rule by law The US will continue to shed international credibility so long as we Americans continue to engage and enable mainstream discussion of conspiracy theories and populist applesauce. This Trabant quality excuse of an administration is just a symptom of that. Honestly, I would not be surprised if the sole reason that…

"Trabant" was a pleasant surprise - it's an East German car - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

That is, I believe, what they were intentionally referring to when they criticized the quality. It doesn't seem to have a great reputation these days.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#466

Post by iforgotpassword » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:57 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #458

johnchristopher wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no fixed time cost, every video can be skipped (swiped) within the first milliseconds. I agree repeated jokes can be boring but it's really easy to skip. I also don't like videos that pick the influencer style "Hi everyone, so today I was in the kitchen and then you'll never believe what happened come on I have to show you, here's the top counter...". Next. As soon as I hear those kind of intro I skip. On Tik…

> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong In the board world of "video content", yes it is. It might be better than FB/Instagram/Twitter videos, but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO. Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a cell phone with a refreshing take on recommendations optimized for stickiness. It's the McDonalds of video content; maybe better t…

Sure but that's a very broad statement. HBO is a completely different thing to "people to people cellphone video sharing". I think we've opened Pandora's box here, this is just a mirror of society or humanity in general. It's not because of the devilish mechanisms those platforms put in place to get you hooked. Without active, rigorous content moderation this kind of videos is always what we end up with.

You might point at YouTube and how it's different here by boosting high quality content, but this is a) because they are running a lot of ads and are as such interested in curating content that advertisers would like their ads to run on and b) because they don't target the cellphone exclusively, so you can actually invest in a proper setup for your videos regarding camera, lighting, set, video editing.

The thing is that I can't see how TikTok can be profitable in the long run. Because of the low quality, low effort videos, it's much less attractive to advertisers, since the risk of ending up on controversial content is high. YouTube went through two or three iterations of this, each time refining their requirements for having a video eligible to have ads on it.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#467

Post by vinay427 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 8:58 AM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #457

jjcon wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So a US equivalent would be to require data to be based in the US Right, isn’t that what a sale to Microsoft would essentially do? The metaphor here doesn’t cover the fact that China has banned tons of American companies — should the US not respond in turn? I don’t know what the right response is tbh but I don’t think they should feel compelled to just shrug it off.

American brands have a huge presence in China. Chinese brands do not have much presence in the US. It seems like whenever a Chinese company appears to be making inroads, it gets banned: ZTE, Huawei, TikTok.

This distinction of brands is notable, in my opinion, as it is largely specific to Chinese brands rather than Chinese products and even then there are exceptions such as Alibaba and Xiaomi.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#468

Post by mvc » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

iknowstuff wrote: post #401

billfruit wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning something unless they/it has provabley broken US laws, merely out of spite and retaliatory motives isn't something that is acceptable in a democracy like the US. Also it appears the 'national security' threat of tik-tok seem way overhyped, it is like a country speaking of Instagram as a national security threat. Neither apple not Google has found TikTok problematic enough to pull it from their app stores. Suc…

I disagree. Trade is bilateral. If China plays dirty and bans apps left and right we should encourage them to stop doing that by retaliating, much like we do when they give state aid to their private companies (which skews the free market in their favor).

You think China is the only government that engages in state aid?

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-moderna...

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#469

Post by nl » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 9:03 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #458

johnchristopher wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no fixed time cost, every video can be skipped (swiped) within the first milliseconds. I agree repeated jokes can be boring but it's really easy to skip. I also don't like videos that pick the influencer style "Hi everyone, so today I was in the kitchen and then you'll never believe what happened come on I have to show you, here's the top counter...". Next. As soon as I hear those kind of intro I skip. On Tik…

> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong In the board world of "video content", yes it is. It might be better than FB/Instagram/Twitter videos, but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO. Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a cell phone with a refreshing take on recommendations optimized for stickiness. It's the McDonalds of video content; maybe better t…

> but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO

And HBO pales in comparison to live theatre. But that's pretty irrelevant.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#470

Post by johnchristopher » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 9:04 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #458

johnchristopher wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no fixed time cost, every video can be skipped (swiped) within the first milliseconds. I agree repeated jokes can be boring but it's really easy to skip. I also don't like videos that pick the influencer style "Hi everyone, so today I was in the kitchen and then you'll never believe what happened come on I have to show you, here's the top counter...". Next. As soon as I hear those kind of intro I skip. On Tik…

> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong In the board world of "video content", yes it is. It might be better than FB/Instagram/Twitter videos, but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO. Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a cell phone with a refreshing take on recommendations optimized for stickiness. It's the McDonalds of video content; maybe better t…

And HBO (which just repackages books into a format lazy people can digest and turn their brains off to) pales in comparison to the free MITx online video courses.

That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

Even some PhD laugh about stupid memes.

Also: facebook/insta/tw is mainly about re sharing, not producing.