8 ms·

Facebook readies global launch of its TikTok competitor

32 points by uptown 6y ago

zug_zug 6y ago
Lol. The only thing I want less than China spying on the cat videos I watch is Zuck spying on them, and reselling it to a 3rd party to hack my voting decisions....
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  The means by which facebook would alter your voting decisions would be by showing you targeted content that it wants to use to sway your opinion, or by letting advertisers do that for money. Why would you expect a Chinese government associated entity to not do the same, given they have a general, vague vested interest in discord among foreign nations?
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  Sure, but in the case of TikTok, there's one less intermediary in the chain trying to hack your voting decisions.
  - nickthegreek 6y ago
    Are people using the same TikTok that I am? There is currently a single skippable ad when I open the app (that appears maybe 75% of the time). Other than that, its a bunch of people under the age of 35 doing skits.. What am I supposed to be worried about when it comes to election engineering here?
    - Frost1x 6y ago
      I suspect if I were TikTok, I could keep track of the skits you watch and start directing similar skits with subtle political messages towards you in their place. If I were really nefarious, I might be able to professionally produce skits that look amature that are essentially well designed propoganda. I've never used the app but I'm sure they also request location information and a lot of people agree, so I can make a reasonable guess for most people where their home location and corresponding voting districts are. Also, over time, the type of media delivered may subtly shift anyways. When I started using Facebook, it required a .edu domain to register and focused on listing your courses, finding peers in your courses, campus events, and so forth. Now, it looks absolutely nothing like that, yet I still have a Facebook account (which I rarely check but thats another story, many of my peers appear to still actively use it). For now it's a bunch of silly videos, maybe it won't always be that way. You may be lured into a platform, grow accustomed to it and the convenience of a user base, then slowly go along for the ride as the platform shifts direction. Perhaps you may be vigilant of this (the reason I stopped using Facebook many years ago), however, a large portion of people may not. Now, whoever manages TikTok has a direct route of information to a wide group of people providing they don't upset them or a competitor doesn't lure them away.
      - nickthegreek 6y ago
        What young pretty American is making that subtle political content that china will start to slowly move me towards? I gotta be honest, the potential for abuse so much less than facebook as it is a video medium. Their best attack vector is to use that information outside of tiktok by trying to target ads on other American owned platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Google.
      - chvid 6y ago
        Pantomime to Trump speeches is thing on TikTok. This one went viral outside the app: https://www.tiktok.com/@whatchugotforme/video/6819061413877763334 https://www.tiktok.com/@whatchugotforme/video/68190614138777... Other than that apparently TikTok'ers were behind the small show up at the last Trump rally - though I don't quite understand that one. Anyway. Compared to Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, the levels of politics on TikTok is tiny and done in a much less agressive way.
    - dfxm12 6y ago
      The data about you it mines from your phone. I think this is the most recent security hole detected: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-apple-suddenly-catches-tiktok-secretly-spying-on-millions-of-iphone-users/#797845db34ef https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-a...
  - malux85 6y ago
    Well, that's a load off my mind
- rvz 6y ago
  Sure, but good luck if you are in Hong Kong given that your innocent 'cat videos' are being surveilled for any criticism's to the CCP, which will get you arrested or thrown in jail. Why do you think TikTok was withdrawing from Hong Kong after the security law was passed? In the UK or in the US, I can criticise the government on Facebook without them throwing me in jail. If I were in Hong Kong and did the same thing to the CCP on the other hand...
  - gowld 6y ago
    TikTok is run by a Chinese company in Shanghai. They weren't in HK for safety.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  What would keep FB from buying your cat videos from TikTok?
marsrover 6y ago
I personally would much rather Facebook succeed in this space. I’m extremely apprehensive about TikTok and how China is using the data. I’m fully aware that Facebook will collect data (possible the same data), but I believe the motives and outcomes are more in my favor when it’s my country doing it.
- nickthegreek 6y ago
  I'm pretty much in the opposite boat, I would never use the facebook replacement and really have no issue with Tiktok. My tiktok does not have access to my camera, mic or location services (i'm a consumer, not a creator) and I clear my clipboard prior to opening it. The solution I want is for Apple to provide more access toggles and transparency about what apps are doing
- m0xte 6y ago
  I'd rather the whole idea fucked off out of existence.
  - marsrover 6y ago
    That would be ideal but it’s not going to happen.
  - harshitaneja 6y ago
    What is wrong with the idea? I don't use it because i don't enjoy the content but I don't find anything wrong with the idea. Genuine question.
    - m0xte 6y ago
      52 minutes a day is average engagement. 800M users. 32,000 man years or 400 human lifetimes of attention wasted every day (if I got my mathematics right). We could be colonising mars or something instead of watching short videos of something totally ephemeral. And I’m sure in time it will be used much like Facebook to polarise people. Then again I’m shitposting on HN so perhaps I’m just a hypocrite :) Edit: the colonising mars thing was facetious and I probably should outline that. The issue is that our attention and mental health is more valuable than wasting on these shitty platforms.
fatjokes 6y ago
The problem I have with FB and to a lesser extent, IG is that you can't get away from politics. The issue with that is that in addition to data scraping, it opens users up to political manipulation (i.e., vote hacking). How is it on TikTok? I'm not an avid user and never got hooked. My impression is that it's just dumb dance videos.
- rboyd 6y ago
  > My impression is that it's just dumb dance videos you'd be wrong. it's a very important platform. besides dance videos there are also hilarious and cute dog videos.
- amINeolib 6y ago
  I've mostly gotten out of Politics on Instagram. You see them?
- unexpected 6y ago
  Tik Tok is INSANELY good at figuring out what you want to watch. At first it shows you a random selection of videos, but it pays very good attention to what you're lingering at, and starts showing you more and more of those types of videos. My wife and I downloaded Tik Tok at the same time, were shown the same videos in the beginning. Now, I basically see only Call of Duty: Warzone clips along with a few prank videos. My wife (far more political than I) sees a lot of videos of the protests, BLM activists, and other stuff. Tik Tok does not try to force you to watch videos that you're not going to watch. It's crazy good (and scary).
  - kalado 6y ago
    It is, I'm pretty sure the "lingering" part is exactly true, in that you don't have to like a video or even finish watching it for it to influence your feed to show more of similiar stuff. Just keep looking at it a bit longer than other videos.
  - moneywoes 6y ago
    Any idea for their algorithm is built?
siruncledrew 6y ago
Facebook seems to prefer to let others do the first-mover work to carve out a social market, and then come in a bit later and use their existing scale (with FB, IG, Whatsapp) to copy the same features into their apps. It’s basically what they did with Instagram Stories after Snapchat existed. There’s the whole China aspect with TikTok, but regardless this is just how Facebook competes with whatever is popular.
- nickthegreek 6y ago
  Except facebook's base is aging and many of the youth are not interested in jumping on the next facebook offering. They had to purchase instagram to get a younger audience but their insta story pivot was successful. Gotta be honest, the last thing tiktok needs is a bunch of 40+ yr olds opening up accounts and creating content, as they are much more inflammatory than the fun content creators filling up my For You Page on tiktok. Tiktok is still very different than most other social media because its not really about following people you know as discovering interesting content nooks thru the For Your Page.
  - xnx 6y ago
    I share your enthusiasm for TikTok. It's the first social media app that felt like fun instead of an obligation. I have no doubt something will come along and ruin it (olds, monetization, acquisition). For now, it's really magical. It genuinely gives me hope for the next generation. They are impressively clever short-form story-tellers and continuously innovating techniques.
- gowld 6y ago
  IG and WhatsApp where "first movers" that FB acquired. (Also, none of these are "first movers". They are just variations on the same idea. Vine is ancient.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
basicsbeauty 6y ago
There was no new original product from FB in the last 15 years.
patrickaljord 6y ago
What are the odds of it launching just after TikTok gets banned? I wonder if Facebook has turned into the social media version of the US dollar to the US government, it is just too valuable, all this information. They have a defacto monopoly on social media around the world and they're not going to let it go, even if force needs to be used (in this case banning the competition).

32 points by uptown 6y ago

Lol. The only thing I want less than China spying on the cat videos I watch is Zuck spying on them, and reselling it to a 3rd party to hack my voting decisions....

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
The means by which facebook would alter your voting decisions would be by showing you targeted content that it wants to use to sway your opinion, or by letting advertisers do that for money. Why would you expect a Chinese government associated entity to not do the same, given they have a general, vague vested interest in discord among foreign nations?
ciarannolan 6y ago
Sure, but in the case of TikTok, there's one less intermediary in the chain trying to hack your voting decisions.
- nickthegreek 6y ago
  Are people using the same TikTok that I am? There is currently a single skippable ad when I open the app (that appears maybe 75% of the time). Other than that, its a bunch of people under the age of 35 doing skits.. What am I supposed to be worried about when it comes to election engineering here?
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    I suspect if I were TikTok, I could keep track of the skits you watch and start directing similar skits with subtle political messages towards you in their place. If I were really nefarious, I might be able to professionally produce skits that look amature that are essentially well designed propoganda. I've never used the app but I'm sure they also request location information and a lot of people agree, so I can make a reasonable guess for most people where their home location and corresponding voting districts are. Also, over time, the type of media delivered may subtly shift anyways. When I started using Facebook, it required a .edu domain to register and focused on listing your courses, finding peers in your courses, campus events, and so forth. Now, it looks absolutely nothing like that, yet I still have a Facebook account (which I rarely check but thats another story, many of my peers appear to still actively use it). For now it's a bunch of silly videos, maybe it won't always be that way. You may be lured into a platform, grow accustomed to it and the convenience of a user base, then slowly go along for the ride as the platform shifts direction. Perhaps you may be vigilant of this (the reason I stopped using Facebook many years ago), however, a large portion of people may not. Now, whoever manages TikTok has a direct route of information to a wide group of people providing they don't upset them or a competitor doesn't lure them away.
    - nickthegreek 6y ago
      What young pretty American is making that subtle political content that china will start to slowly move me towards? I gotta be honest, the potential for abuse so much less than facebook as it is a video medium. Their best attack vector is to use that information outside of tiktok by trying to target ads on other American owned platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Google.
    - chvid 6y ago
      Pantomime to Trump speeches is thing on TikTok. This one went viral outside the app: https://www.tiktok.com/@whatchugotforme/video/6819061413877763334 https://www.tiktok.com/@whatchugotforme/video/68190614138777... Other than that apparently TikTok'ers were behind the small show up at the last Trump rally - though I don't quite understand that one. Anyway. Compared to Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, the levels of politics on TikTok is tiny and done in a much less agressive way.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    The data about you it mines from your phone. I think this is the most recent security hole detected: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-apple-suddenly-catches-tiktok-secretly-spying-on-millions-of-iphone-users/#797845db34ef https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-a...
- malux85 6y ago
  Well, that's a load off my mind
rvz 6y ago
Sure, but good luck if you are in Hong Kong given that your innocent 'cat videos' are being surveilled for any criticism's to the CCP, which will get you arrested or thrown in jail. Why do you think TikTok was withdrawing from Hong Kong after the security law was passed? In the UK or in the US, I can criticise the government on Facebook without them throwing me in jail. If I were in Hong Kong and did the same thing to the CCP on the other hand...
- gowld 6y ago
  TikTok is run by a Chinese company in Shanghai. They weren't in HK for safety.
AzzieElbab 6y ago
What would keep FB from buying your cat videos from TikTok?

marsrover 6y ago

I personally would much rather Facebook succeed in this space. I’m extremely apprehensive about TikTok and how China is using the data. I’m fully aware that Facebook will collect data (possible the same data), but I believe the motives and outcomes are more in my favor when it’s my country doing it.

nickthegreek 6y ago
I'm pretty much in the opposite boat, I would never use the facebook replacement and really have no issue with Tiktok. My tiktok does not have access to my camera, mic or location services (i'm a consumer, not a creator) and I clear my clipboard prior to opening it. The solution I want is for Apple to provide more access toggles and transparency about what apps are doing
m0xte 6y ago
I'd rather the whole idea fucked off out of existence.
- marsrover 6y ago
  That would be ideal but it’s not going to happen.
- harshitaneja 6y ago
  What is wrong with the idea? I don't use it because i don't enjoy the content but I don't find anything wrong with the idea. Genuine question.
  - m0xte 6y ago
    52 minutes a day is average engagement. 800M users. 32,000 man years or 400 human lifetimes of attention wasted every day (if I got my mathematics right). We could be colonising mars or something instead of watching short videos of something totally ephemeral. And I’m sure in time it will be used much like Facebook to polarise people. Then again I’m shitposting on HN so perhaps I’m just a hypocrite :) Edit: the colonising mars thing was facetious and I probably should outline that. The issue is that our attention and mental health is more valuable than wasting on these shitty platforms.

fatjokes 6y ago

The problem I have with FB and to a lesser extent, IG is that you can't get away from politics. The issue with that is that in addition to data scraping, it opens users up to political manipulation (i.e., vote hacking). How is it on TikTok? I'm not an avid user and never got hooked. My impression is that it's just dumb dance videos.

rboyd 6y ago
> My impression is that it's just dumb dance videos you'd be wrong. it's a very important platform. besides dance videos there are also hilarious and cute dog videos.
amINeolib 6y ago
I've mostly gotten out of Politics on Instagram. You see them?
unexpected 6y ago
Tik Tok is INSANELY good at figuring out what you want to watch. At first it shows you a random selection of videos, but it pays very good attention to what you're lingering at, and starts showing you more and more of those types of videos. My wife and I downloaded Tik Tok at the same time, were shown the same videos in the beginning. Now, I basically see only Call of Duty: Warzone clips along with a few prank videos. My wife (far more political than I) sees a lot of videos of the protests, BLM activists, and other stuff. Tik Tok does not try to force you to watch videos that you're not going to watch. It's crazy good (and scary).
- kalado 6y ago
  It is, I'm pretty sure the "lingering" part is exactly true, in that you don't have to like a video or even finish watching it for it to influence your feed to show more of similiar stuff. Just keep looking at it a bit longer than other videos.
- moneywoes 6y ago
  Any idea for their algorithm is built?

siruncledrew 6y ago

Facebook seems to prefer to let others do the first-mover work to carve out a social market, and then come in a bit later and use their existing scale (with FB, IG, Whatsapp) to copy the same features into their apps. It’s basically what they did with Instagram Stories after Snapchat existed. There’s the whole China aspect with TikTok, but regardless this is just how Facebook competes with whatever is popular.

nickthegreek 6y ago
Except facebook's base is aging and many of the youth are not interested in jumping on the next facebook offering. They had to purchase instagram to get a younger audience but their insta story pivot was successful. Gotta be honest, the last thing tiktok needs is a bunch of 40+ yr olds opening up accounts and creating content, as they are much more inflammatory than the fun content creators filling up my For You Page on tiktok. Tiktok is still very different than most other social media because its not really about following people you know as discovering interesting content nooks thru the For Your Page.
- xnx 6y ago
  I share your enthusiasm for TikTok. It's the first social media app that felt like fun instead of an obligation. I have no doubt something will come along and ruin it (olds, monetization, acquisition). For now, it's really magical. It genuinely gives me hope for the next generation. They are impressively clever short-form story-tellers and continuously innovating techniques.
gowld 6y ago
IG and WhatsApp where "first movers" that FB acquired. (Also, none of these are "first movers". They are just variations on the same idea. Vine is ancient.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

basicsbeauty 6y ago

There was no new original product from FB in the last 15 years.

patrickaljord 6y ago

What are the odds of it launching just after TikTok gets banned? I wonder if Facebook has turned into the social media version of the US dollar to the US government, it is just too valuable, all this information. They have a defacto monopoly on social media around the world and they're not going to let it go, even if force needs to be used (in this case banning the competition).