TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#571

Post by xvector » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #394

mtc010170 wrote: post #149

I'm not a TikTok user.. or really a fan or user of any social media (and yes I realize I'm on HN).. but I find it silly that people are saying TikTok is somehow "better" for society or peoples' psyches than any of the alternatives. Do you remember when Facebook wasn't considered terrible? Twitter? Reddit? Instagram? Snapchat? This is just the latest one to rise to the top.. following very predictable patterns. It's g…

Indeed. That is the pattern. This is yet another social network doing the same typical social network things found on other networks with: * Far more invasive tracking * Designed to be addictive as possible. * Manipulation of content - seen and unseen * Feeds are gamed by larger creators * Lots of privacy violations and getting sued for it. Every other social network has all of these properties and TikTok isn't any d…

> Far more invasive tracking

False. It's actually not worse than any other social media platform. [1] It doesn't even try to exploit your browser and device, like Reddit does. [2]

[1]: https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e81626...

[2]: https://smitop.com/post/reddit-whiteops/

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#572

Post by panorama » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #493

antoineMoPa wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of tech-related accounts. There is also a lot of marketing, ux-design. Some examples : - @therubberduckiee - @loewhaley - @tony.aube - @cassidoo - @systems_analyst There is also urban design tiktok with @mrbarricade. Let's also be clear that the goal of the app is to entertain and I think it does this really well and cheaply. Then sometimes you learn something that you might use in your work or person…

I went through all those accounts you listed and this is all just aspirational meme garbage you see on IG. I feel like you're gaslighting us right now

I'm not who you replied to, but I find it hard to believe that you went to an account with the username "systems_analyst", who posts videos on networking and cybersecurity in an informative manner, and decided it was "aspirational meme garbage".

On HN, I give people who I disagree with the benefit of the doubt and assume they're always intelligent. But that doesn't extend itself to believing they're always arguing in good faith. I find it unfathomable that a critically thinking person truly believes a social network with close to a billion users is devoid of any useful content. I "feel" like you're trying to be contrarian and edgy for the sake of being so.

I think my earlier Twitter analogy is apt here. Of course you can't expect TikTok to be on par with Coursera. Similarly, you don't go to Twitter for dissertations. These social networks are entertainment first, and their algorithms and restricted formats lend themselves to a certain type of content. But the natural evolution of social networks at scale is that people easily discover new content that is legitimately useful to them, or find a community based on their professional or side interests.

I went to the #softwareengineering hashtag on TikTok and very quickly found a few helpful accounts. You can do this with any hashtag. Frankly, software dev TikTok feels more friendly than HN at a cursory glance.

https://www.tiktok.com/@shanselman

https://www.tiktok.com/@coderintuition

https://www.tiktok.com/@dantechtok

TikTok's audience age skews younger. I'm not saying these profiles will be helpful to you personally, but if I were in high school with a passing interest in development and got exposed to TikTok-style entertainment/info content, I probably would've started coding a lot earlier.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#573

Post by xvector » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

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.

TikTok content is precisely what you want it to be. Turns out when people are tired and looking for quick entertainment they aren't looking for deep philosophical questions, though you'll have no trouble finding plenty of that on TikTok if that's your thing.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#574

Post by xvector » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

marmshallow wrote: post #568

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.

It’s only positive cause HN also likes bashing FB. Just give it time and the tides will turn.

Alternatively, it's positive because people genuinely like using it!

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#575

Post by xvector » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:30 AM UTC

crvdgc wrote: post #435

panorama wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a non-user, I am genuinely curious about what are some concrete examples of productive contents? From my understanding, the only format of communication on TikTok is videos with a short time limit. I'd imagine it is hard to convey much to be considered productive.

> I'd imagine it is hard to convey much to be considered productive.

This is actually one of the most refreshing things about TikTok. Content density. What YouTubers take 10 minutes to do, a competent TikToker gets across in 30 seconds.

The platform itself encourages a maximization of information density.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#576

Post by xvector » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #472

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'm with you here. I was under the impression that there is a general consensus (backed by scientific studies?) in hackernews that social media consumption is detrimental to mental health. Also I always read negative comments about TikTok on YouTube and Reddit. I've only read praise for TikTok on hackernews.

Reddit and YouTube are very hive-mindy. HN users tend to actually try things themselves instead of just consuming the trendy mass opinion (though they do this too to some degree), which is why we might be seeing this distinction.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#577

Post by MrDresden » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #562

MrDresden wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we perhaps agree that there is a possibility for things to go bad in the future (in regards to data collection and privacy), but that today we have no concrete evidence of it?

Before making this comment, did you acknowledge the possibility that it could go bad in the future?

Ofc. To me the potential for issues is obvious.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#578

Post by radu_floricica » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:34 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,…

Meh. Sometimes if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not the fault of the downvote button. Reddit had a core culture of openness in the beginning - god knows I had enough debates in the comments. But at some point one side decided that debating isn't enough, and it needs to control the medium.

It might just be an amazing coincidence, but after they succeeded reddit stopped being fun.

And it wasn't even remotely subtle, because it went down kicking, screaming and throwing the wildest tantrums I've ever seen.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#579

Post by IkmoIkmo » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:36 AM UTC

mtrovo wrote: post #158

Are we seeing apex Facebook? I still have a lot of friends that use it daily but it's all for things that don't hold a company with a 1T market cap. Anecdotal data: - Facebook usage from my feed it's just older family members posting cheesy political posts and selling items on marketplace - Instagram became a selling channel for brands, be it with their accounts or with "partnerships" with meme/influencer pages. I se…

I honestly just don't get who is really using Facebook. My parents aren't on there, kids aren't on there (my friends are teachers). I have friends (30yo) who removed accounts. Not a single close friend whose account remains posts more than once every few months, the vast majority never post. A handful of people that aren't close friends post every now and then, but I'm so disinterested in the content that I typically unfollow them so it doesn't show up in my feed.

Just took a quick sample of my first 10 things in the feed: - Article from a paper I subscribed to a decade ago. (just unfollowed) - Ad about some stock related thing - 'suggested content for you': picture of a football team (PSG) lineup for 2021 posted by Eurosport - Sales listing for a 2nd hand yard sale group in my city that I follow - Post by UN Water that I followed a decade ago and had zero interactions with since (unfollowed) - A comment posted yesterday on a meme posted 5 months ago, by a person I met on exchange that I've not spoken to or seen in a decade (unfollowed) - Ad for furniture - Another sales listing for the 2nd hand yard sale group - 'Suggested for you': news about a guy going crazy at the airport after baggage delays, posted by a local news channel - A video of a building getting demolished (spam), posted in a (unmoderated?) FB group for selling bicycles that I joined years ago when I bought a bike (unfollowed)

There's literally not a single piece of useful content in here. One comment by a stranger-friend that was unfollowed. Two ads. Two wrongly suggested content I didn't ask for. One spam video. Two posts by orgs I never interacted with in a decade and unfollowed. And two listings from a 2nd hand group, that's the only thing I'll stay in (although the listings weren't interesting, the group has some good stuff).

And this is from a person who's on FB maybe 10 minutes per week, the 'good' content should've piled up. It's pretty insane how this crap can somehow be one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Re: TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

#580

Post by Banana699 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #311

n8cpdx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an out of touch take from the TikTok=China=bad days of 2019/2020. I see queer creators on TikTok all the time. Quite frequently actually. This was the second video that showed up for me today, with 500k views (it is propaganda out of the White House, in collaboration with a popular queer creator): https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdosCgTr/ Only 50k views from an amateur creator, because TikTok hates queers: https://vm.…

50k is really amateur numbers. 50k people have probably already read you comment. Charli Damelio's last post was her eating a bag of Takis for 20 seconds and it got 15 MILLION views. We're just not seeing those numbers in marginalized communities on tiktok but we do see queer creators with top-tier numbers on youtube, facebook, insta, etc. Where's the trans Charli or the obese Charli or the anti-capitalist Charli? Se…

>alt-right denial and dismissal of anything that remotely sounds "SJW" to them.

Purely Pragmatic Advice : if people deny or dismiss something you think is true because of "SJW fatigue", accusing them of being alt-right is the last thing you want to do if you want to effectively sway them.