8 ms·
TikTok and the Future of Social Media
- rapsey 5y agoThere is nothing of substance in this article.
- Overton-Window 5y agoMuch like in TikTok.
- rapsey 5y agoThere are a ton of cooking, fitness and home improvement channels that are quite educational actually.
- jliving207 5y agoYou mean on TikTok? Not sure if I agree totally... I will say it's a "convenient" for those who don't want to meaningfully educate themselves on subjects through text.
- rapsey 5y agoWell that content benefits a lot by video. As for not being as good as books ok whatever. No need to gatekeep education.
- uniqueid 5y agoNo need to gatekeep education. Well, there's a need if one actually wants to learn something. A novice generally isn't in a position to know whom they can trust to teach them. The internet could use, specifically when it comes to education, a lot more gate-keeping.
- jwilber 5y agoAwful and confusingly pretentious take. Being able to see the desired outcome alongside the steps required to achieve said outcome is far more effective for fitness and cooking than reading about them. Not to mention the time saved, ease of sharing the knowledge, reviewing, etc.
- axaxs 5y agoI'm not trying to be too negative on it, but it's because there's zero liability. I luckily had a father teach me a ton about home improvement. Half the videos they host should be seen as negligent at best, criminal at worst. But, it's no worse than YT, in fairness. But if any 'real' business did this, they'd spend all day in court.
- Gigachad 5y agoSo just like PHP tutorials then.
- quenix 5y agoI disagree. Have you tried the app yourself?
- eyelovewe 5y agoI basically agree, I have. My account of my limited experience is above. I never managed to get recommendations beyond kids dancing to pop songs with their dog
- quenix 5y agoStrange. I see things like • quality original skits & memes • craftsmen making shorts about things such as the assembly process for a certain furniture • doctors showing day-in-the-life videos as well as quick health advisories and PSAs • remixes of existing music and indie artists promoting new music • experts in niche fields, ranging from logistics, to theoretical physics, to law, to carpentry make quick, shallow-level explanatory videos of things that interest them • everyday Joes essentially vlogging about interesting things that may be unique to them (like a medial condition, situation, or something else) • … and yes, dancing teenagers.
- jliving207 5y agoBut yet I still enjoyed the read none the less. Totally agree though lack of substance.
- drloser 5y agoA guy wants to know what TikTok is. Instead of installing and using the app, he buy a book about it. I find it quite funny.
- eyelovewe 5y agoYou won the internet today IMO
- thombles 5y agoIn its defence, this is just a guy posting some observations and a quick book review on his blog, which is awesome. I don't think it was intended as a TikTok analysis for the HN crowd.
- reilly3000 5y agoTiktok does many things well but making videos easy to find is not one of them. It’s a miracle for discovery of new content, but a menace for ever being able to find it again. Video search is hard, but they really aren’t trying- they would rather you have to hit the like button on every video you might want to see again. The problem is that the likes list is also not searchable or filterable. The only way I was able to find a video I really wanted to share with somebody was to request a data export, wait 2-3 days, then run through a long CSV of my whole watch history to locate it. It’s pretty clear that they transcribe all of the content for internal use only-moderation and analytics at least; I wish they could use that for search as well.
- ehnto 5y agoI don't think discovery is what TikTok offers either but admittedly I have only seen it in action third hand. How often do you see things that are truly novel to your interests? My impression was that it's no different to other feed based apps in that it hones in on a few topics and you end up in a pretty narrow content bubble.
- reilly3000 5y agoThat is where it really stands apart- while it can get hyper-specific, its consistently mixing novel content types. Some has appeal based on a look-alike type of matching, others to general appeal, and more still to new and small creators. Once it has a sense that you're in a session you're not likely to abandon it takes greater risks on trying fringe content. Let me put it this way: give it a solid 2 weeks and you'll start discovering new parts of yourself.
- keewee7 5y agoHow does TikTok's recommendation algorithm work? It's the best I have ever tried. I have never found so many people with interesting hobbies on any other platform. TikTok actually learns from when I click "Not interested" unlike Instagram Reels that seem to ignore the "Not interested" button.
- dannyw 5y agoThat's like asking how Google's algorithm works. I can say that TikTok's recommendations feel actually under my control. Facebook and Google's recommendations seem to be about what THEY want to show me. I know in all cases, it's the platforms controlling these recommendations, but no means no. Meanwhile, on my YouTube home feed I keep getting Murdoch/News Corp propaganda under the 'breaking news' section no matter how many times I say "not interested". No, I never click on them. It feels like the hubris of product managers thinking they know best for me. Well, guess what, we have choices now.
- robgibbons 5y agoTikTok issued a press release explaining exactly how their recommendation algorithm works. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you/ https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-vide...
- yellow_lead 5y agoLook up collaborative filtering, recommendation systems, etc. A sibling has a informative link but this is an active research area in CS also.
- rvz 5y agoNo different to a typical personalisation algorithm then, since they need to track every single action, video, profile and button you click and feed you more garbage to consume; making their algorithm better and more valuable for their shareholders. As for the creators, they are once again working for the algorithm which can be manipulated and gamed by larger creators.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI think TikTok's keys are ease of use - you can just swipe mindlessly, no choices, next, next, next, next. Good algorithm to predict a mix of stuff you'll probably like and new stuff so you can still explore the space. The combination of the two makes it addictive. You keep hitting that Skinner box and you get rewarded. I personally used TikTok for a bit (only as a consumer) but had to cut it from my phone. It was too addictive. I found myself using the app for longer than I wanted. While TikTok is entertaining I don't really miss it now that I've removed it. I feel lots of videos there lack substance.
- hsod 5y agoA funny side note here is that ~2018 Facebook was crushing it in terms of minutes/day/user due to auto play videos with good next-video recommendations. Then they decided explicitly to disable auto play. They even switched to a different internal metric to explicitly discourage optimizing for this type of engagement. That being said, most of the big winners in the auto play era were from professional studios or had some kind of financial backing. TikTok seems to have a lot more viral amateur content. Good for them
- scotty79 5y agoIf tiktok was about ease of use they would give you a way to go to next movie of the same author that you are currently watching on "for you page".
- izgzhen 5y agoThe content on/recommended by TikTok has two main interesting characteristics as I observed: - Being very "personally relevant": It doesn't only recommend generally popular stuff. It can be very quick at picking up some niche interests of yours. - Feel very authentic. TikTok makes it easier for "ordinary people" to get millions of views "accidentally". And as a result, many popular video feels very authentic, which might be preferred compared to curated content like in Netflix or even YouTube.
- dannyw 5y agoTikTok actually gives people what they want. For people in my generation (20+-5), no one reads, cares about, or trusts mainstream media. We get our news from reddit, YouTube, and tiktok. Yet, search YouTube for anything newsworthy and you only see mainstream media these days. I don't want establishment bs, give me something different.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- RandomLensman 5y agoI suspect also that most in your cohort could not afford to pay for some of the pricier information sources (and that actually goes for a lot more people). So sidestepping cheap "establishment bs" might actually be the rational strategy.
- jka 5y agoIf you can get 70% of the calories for free, then despite the (usually known, or at least suspected, and generally down-played by the vendor) side-effects can be more attractive than paying full-price. The vendor has a strategy though.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI haven’t read an HN comment this upsetting in a while.
- 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dstaley 5y agoI was very resistant to signing up for TikTok because I didn't think I'd enjoy using the app in public with my sound muted. However, while home one evening a few days ago I decided to give it a shot and was completely astounded at just how fast the For You Page was able to adjust to videos I found entertaining and enjoyable. I think it boils down to a few factors, but the main one is simply that it's able to get a ton of interaction data in a very short amount of time. It's basically all the same data points as from YouTube, but nearly thirty times faster. While a YouTube video is typically eight or so minutes, a TikTok video might only be about 15 seconds. And since your entire screen is dedicated to a single video, TikTok is able to make very specific inferences that something like Twitter isn't able to. So after just a few minutes of swiping through videos, liking a few to indicate I wanted to see similar content, and following a few creators, I was able to get a FYP that felt specifically catered to my interests. Over the past few days, it's even changed dramatically, while still feeling personalized to me, whereas I find YouTube takes days, if not weeks of watching to accommodate to a new interest or topic. All that being said, it's certainly not without its frustrations. For example, there's certain topics I'm interested in that I can't seem to get it to show me videos from (mainly technology topics). I even went as far as searching specific hashtags in the hopes that was enough of a signal, but the FYP still didn't seem to suggest any videos from those topics. It may just be that tech-related videos don't do very well on the platform, and thus the algorithm is unable to collect and process enough data to make useful recommendations. Finally, I absolutely despise the fact that the Following page isn't chronological. I follow a few creators, and I want to see their new content, so you'd think Following would be the place to do that. Well as of right now, the first video on my Following page is from July 11, despite the fact that specific creator has posted six newer videos since then.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eyelovewe 5y agoI downloaded it, noticed that the initial content I was shown was some kids and their dog dancing to a pop song. Recorded myself drumming a fancy beat with some stick twirling, edited it to a short loop. (Not sure how these folks do anything musically related, the apps loop point setting was coarse and it took me ages to make it loop properly) I opened the app a few more times, saw more videos of people dancing to pop songs. Saw that I still had zero views two days later. I never managed to find any content that didn’t look like a line dance or a wanna be mc-hammer video. More kids dancing to pop music with their dogs. Never managed to find the addictive content. YouTube has me fairly pegged, however, I can usually safely skip the channel welcome and plea for likes and subscribe and hit meaty content showing me some woodworking or culinary tricks, etc. The takeaway for me is that a superficial ADHD format results in or best features superficial ADHD content. It’s not like I couldn’t see the restless nature of it and how it could thrive in our short attention span contemporary society, it’s that I felt it to be one more rung down a ladder shortcutting our race to be bottom. But I’m atypical, admittedly. I have never owned a tv in my life. Don’t Netflix or HBO or whatever is on these days, and YouTube tutorials are about as “vegging out” as I get. I want less screen time in life, not more. But yay for the tiktok devs, good job on the successful app
- yreg 5y agoI don't hate TikTok, but for some reason (almost?) every time I open the app it wants me to authenticate. In 90% of cases I can't be bothered so I just close the app and open reddit.
- daptaq 5y agoMy impression is that TikTok is the most shameless exploiter of curating content to maximize attention. You resign all the control and hope to petition "the algorithm" to change what you get to see -- like some kind of a god that ultimatly controls you, no matter what you sacrifice. They are in a position to spread propaganda and prevent imformation from spreading -- or you from being heard. Even more so, this can be individualized (especially with the rise of virtual influencers). I wonder, if it might eventually be able to change someone's mind by slowly nudging them in the right direction, breaking down pre-existing beliefs and positions. And as youtube, twitter, etc. have shown, one of the main ways to increase addiction is to spread controversy. Have people screem and cry at one another, who wants mediation? Society is being reduced to a means of entertainment.
- golergka 5y agoIt's very true regarding propaganda. Personally, I noticed that TikTok mirrors my interests and views very precisely in everything but politics – all the political videos I happen to see in my feed are to the left of my views and never to the right.
- scotty79 5y agoProbably you watched more political content to the left of your own views. You might like it more, or they may trigger you more, or cause more morbid curiosity. It's the same for me just because content to the left of my views causes my curiosity while content to the right of my views repulses me quickly with its stupidity.
- jdgoesmarching 5y agoNot to mention the app skews younger and as a result, left…er
- hidden-spyder 5y agoSuper offtopic, but how do you understand if something is leaning lefter than your thoughts and not right?
- rudian 5y agoTikTok scares me. They have found a way to get you addicted to 6-seconds content that you can watch mindlessly without ever choosing it. Basically like a TV except you have no control and your attention span becomes that of a child. It's literally a (non-chemical) drug and it should be treated as such.
- cmoscoso 5y agoIt’s literally a baby sitting as a service.
- switch007 5y agoTiktok is fantastic at disguising ads as videos. In to food? Look at this amazing restaurant, filmed in high quality, with lots of editing, exactly the length of a tv ad. All done because the person just loves the place so much /s Gay? The person is the advert for their onlyfans. It seems absolutely chock full of “brand ambassadors” just like Instagram.
- tmaly 5y agoTikTok is different from other social media. People seems to be nicer on there. Others have echoed this sentiment. The platform favors talent, it is a great way to learn how to film. You get feedback in terms of views in a very short time. I see the format as a new way to teach and educate. I coin the phrase “micro lesson” to describe the idea.