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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#81

Post by hardtke »

chvid wrote: post #21
rollinggoron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this very similar to Vine, the old video social network? Which Twitter bought and properly crash a burned?

The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...

This thread is completely missing the draw of TikTok, at least as it pertains to my teenagers. TikTok makes it fun and compelling to create content. My teenagers will actually go places with their friends to "make TikToks." The reason it is compelling, and this is not true of any other current social network, is that good content will get eyeballs -- the algorithm seems to be "fair" in terms of playing your content to enough people to see if it is any good, at which point it can get widely distributed. Most social networks start out this way, but eventually good user generated content gets drowned out by influencers and commercial interests. It remains to be seen if TikTok can stay this way.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#82

Post by zozin »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #71

Is anyone else here trying to reduce their use of technology outside of the workplace? My hobbies are music, painting, and woodworking, and it's all I can muster to focus on a screen from 9-5. I do comment here on HN and I peruse other websites, but I don't actively engage with any social media except HN. I just find myself questioning the merits of attention spent on these social media platforms, given the informati…

All of these apps are just a gigantic waste of time, and proven to be highly manipulative and emotionally draining. I've managed to avoid all of them, including FB which I only keep to message family members and friends.

The fact that normally astute, rational, intelligent individuals find themselves mindlessly clicking through games or video apps goes to show how addictive and manipulative these apps are. Some of my friends realize this, but they still waste time on them as if they cannot stop. It's sad. The top comment is correct, it's a modern/high-tech addictive substance.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#83

Post by filleduchaos »

starfallg wrote: post #79
filleduchaos wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference which actually changes quite a lot is that the maximum video length is much longer (six seconds vs a full minute). This lets people put more effort/content into their videos, allowing for more expressiveness than just memes. At the same time, a minute is short enough that it discourages the sort of rambling you might see on a freeform platform like YouTube. The outcome is a surprising amount of focused…

I think the real difference compared to Vine is the amount of money that Bytedance sunk into advertising TikTok in past 2 years. All of the sorting hat stuff is nothing new. Without the follow graph, it doesn't endure.

Yes, I agree, the form of the content on the platform and the community that form of content drives obviously does not matter at all.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#84

Post by aabhay »

kangnkodos wrote: post #26

The article didn't have many details about the "For You Page feed algorithm". Any guesses as to how it analyzes a video, and which properties it looks at?

Yeah I'm imagining a mix of facial features, audio/music metadata, and some kind of collaborative filtering between viewers and creators. The vast majority of feeds use at least geography based personalization to give you content in a familiar language, too.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#85

Post by newen »

whoevercares wrote: post #32
fooqux wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.

FWIW, many legal political donation in the west will be considered bribery in China.

Truth. Legalized corruption is still corruption.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#86

Post by mistermann »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #14
bsoist wrote: post #2

Very interesting. We might make real progress as a species if we can leverage this more generally as a society. Also, I expect the "machines" to disrupt the film industry in a very similar way.

How will showing people short video clips to create a drug like drip of enjoyable chemical reactions in the brain progress the species? > (and yes, one feed that contained the thirst trap photos of attractive Indian girls in rather suggestive outfits standing under things like waterfalls; some parts of culture are universal). Doesn’t sound like any version of progress that I would get excited about.

> How will showing people short video clips to create a drug like drip of enjoyable chemical reactions in the brain progress the species?

Possibly (pure speculation here): if you carefully observe, at massive scale, how a system [1] behaves, it may provide some insights into how it is implemented. And based on those learnings, iteratively improve how the platform feeds tests and analyzes responses to gain deeper understanding of the system over time.

[1] In this case, "the system" consists of individual human minds, as well as the overall network of minds.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#87

Post by creeble »

The article mentions that TikTok owes a lot of its early traction to its predecessor, musical.ly. but there's no mention of how/whether musical.ly got license for their lip sync music.

Was the success of musical.ly (and by some large extension, TikTok) based on the difficult-to-stop (because China) pirating of music?

I now unleash the piracy-is-not-theft dogs...

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#88

Post by basch »

ry_co wrote: post #50
xivzgrev wrote: post #40

this doesn’t surprise me at all. I work at a consumer company and we use neural networks to personalize feeds. Thousands of features feed in and each member gets a different feed. It doesn’t take much / long to personalize. What I am surprised by is that YouTube or others dont use as effectively. Neural networks are very well known. or, is there something “next level” that TikTok is using that isn’t well known? Also…

My gut instinct is that Netflix can't use the personalized algorithmic approach that TikTok succeeds with because Netflix has to pay dearly for its content, where TikTok does not. Because of the cost structure of licensing, Netflix cannot afford to have the diversity of content that TikTok's user-generated approach enables. A small content library makes it impossible to build a meaningfully personalized feed.

It's also much harder to tell why somebody liked a 2h movie, vs a 15 second clip. The 15 second clip only has so many properties, where as there's millions of reasons I might like one movie but not a similar one. Also, as far as Netflix, id rather see more diversity, and not see the same movie made over and over again. I would wager TikTok viewers are more willing to watch repetitive things play out.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#89

Post by jaybeeayyy »

quicklime wrote: post #77
dfxm12 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom Who made this argument?

The idea of Chinese people (and Asians in general) being obedient to authority is something that I’ve heard frequently from people and in the news, but I didn’t mean to imply that sandworm101 made that particular argument.

You can also look at the initial blaming of COVID on China in the media...The COVID pandemic was the result of either 3rd world-like food markets where poor/dirty people sell exotic meats to each other or that COVID got out of some underground lab where they do experiments and can't contain anything.

No one explicitly said that but it was implied pretty heavily especially when you look at how people received the news and interpreted it in memes and whatnot. I sent pictures of Wuhan to some family/friends and they were amazed at how big and impressive of a city it is. They thought it was like a small developing village.

It's kind of how we always talk about China though (regarding your initial comment) and I'm not sure if/when it will ever stop.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#90

Post by fsociety »

sandworm101 wrote: post #58
gazelleeatslion wrote: post #46

Modern day tobacco. 100% unregulated addiction. FB, TWTR, GOOG, INSTA, everyone switched from timeline to personal recommendation engines and TikTok is just doing it so much better. Where will things be in 5, 10, 50 years? Terrifying and exciting. Do these tech companies sit on research to suggest that these algorithms can induce behavior-changing tactics through trial-and-error? Will they all have their tobacco-caus…

>> research to suggest that these algorithms can induce behavior-changing tactics through trial-and-error? Cambridge Analytica certainly had that research. Media campaigns are no longer about "getting the word out", projecting an idea and hoping it sticks. Modern campaigns are about changing a narrative, moving individuals from one opinion to another through whatever means works best for that individual. I cannot see…

Cambridge Analytica was both snake-oil and a wake up call. A sign of where things could go if we don’t smarten up soon.
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