5 ms·

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

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 Tiktok I expect the video to show me the content directly (a skateboarder's tiktok would jump straight to the trick, no intro). Yes, there's the impersonal challenge culture where people repeat the same thing... so what, some of them are funny/interesting. It's up to you to skip. After a while I'd say my feed has maybe 5% of junk. And easily skippable. > 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. No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong

rsa25519 6y ago
Note also that if you skip a video quickly, TikTok will show fewer of that type of video, which I think is a fantastic feature
- logicchains 6y ago
  If you press and hold over a video, it also has an option to tell it that you want to see fewer videos like that, which seems to work fairly well. Unlike Youtube, where even if I downvote a video, it will keep showing it.
kenhwang 6y ago
> 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 than the niche it competes in, but its still garbage in a very convenient package. As far as the videos are concerned, they're very low quality compared to what the medium is capable of.
- iforgotpassword 6y ago
  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.
- nl 6y ago
  > but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO And HBO pales in comparison to live theatre. But that's pretty irrelevant.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  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.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You're out of line here. It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff made with cheap passive fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or pseudo-intellectual. Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good meal at a nice restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You may argue that they have different usecases in mind but that's not an intellectual argument, nor an arrogant statement. Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong I mean, just list the top 10 tiktoks ever, or even top 100... rank them on metrics like content, depth, purpose, knowledge. Then compare them to other platforms or content formats. It'll rank quite low. Of course if you rank it on other things like stickiness/addictiveness, fun, humor, aesthetic, novelty etc, it'll rank perhaps quite high for what it is (3-10 seconds usually) I think in the end it really depends what you're looking for when deciding whether something is low-quality noise.
- xnx 6y ago
  I really like the variety that is in my feed now that it has a history of what I've liked. The "top" tiktoks are not representative of what's in my feed at all. I'd wager that the top 10 most viewed TV shows also fare pretty poorly if rated them on content, depth, purpose, etc.

rsa25519 6y ago

Note also that if you skip a video quickly, TikTok will show fewer of that type of video, which I think is a fantastic feature

logicchains 6y ago
If you press and hold over a video, it also has an option to tell it that you want to see fewer videos like that, which seems to work fairly well. Unlike Youtube, where even if I downvote a video, it will keep showing it.

kenhwang 6y ago

> 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 than the niche it competes in, but its still garbage in a very convenient package. As far as the videos are concerned, they're very low quality compared to what the medium is capable of.

iforgotpassword 6y ago
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.
nl 6y ago
> but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say, HBO And HBO pales in comparison to live theatre. But that's pretty irrelevant.
johnchristopher 6y ago
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.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You're out of line here. It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff made with cheap passive fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or pseudo-intellectual. Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good meal at a nice restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You may argue that they have different usecases in mind but that's not an intellectual argument, nor an arrogant statement. Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise, which is wrong I mean, just list the top 10 tiktoks ever, or even top 100... rank them on metrics like content, depth, purpose, knowledge. Then compare them to other platforms or content formats. It'll rank quite low. Of course if you rank it on other things like stickiness/addictiveness, fun, humor, aesthetic, novelty etc, it'll rank perhaps quite high for what it is (3-10 seconds usually) I think in the end it really depends what you're looking for when deciding whether something is low-quality noise.

xnx 6y ago
I really like the variety that is in my feed now that it has a history of what I've liked. The "top" tiktoks are not representative of what's in my feed at all. I'd wager that the top 10 most viewed TV shows also fare pretty poorly if rated them on content, depth, purpose, etc.