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I watched some TikToks recently by scrolling on the site and it was easily some of the lowest quality stuff I've ever seen in my life. They were literally just

I watched some TikToks recently by scrolling on the site and it was easily some of the lowest quality stuff I've ever seen in my life. They were literally just someone's face, a caption, and some random music for about 15 seconds. I've tried a few times now to search for tags of things I like and it is just the lowest denominator stuff I've ever seen on the internet. It's one step away from AI generated (and even that has started doing pretty great things now). I'm sure it's algorithm is amazing but is using TikTok any different to reading reddit or watching YouTube really? Does anyone actually transfer the stuff they read/watch from short term to long term memory?

permo-w 4y ago
if you think tiktok is bad, you should try instagram reels
gjulianm 4y ago
The "defaults" on TikTok are fairly terrible. However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well. I have - Learned several cooking recipes and some tricks - Cleaning advice I've actually put to use - How to use some woodworking tools. Also, general woodworking ideas - Cat behavioral advice In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") and the discovery is far easier than on YouTube.
- Tomte 4y ago
  "However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well." Can someone support that from Germany? I suspect that's highly locale-dependent. I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours searching for interesting stuff and liking things. I always get generic (and really bad) cooking videos and drunken people doing stupid things.
  - overlordalex 4y ago
    Do you mean for content in German? There might just not be enough of it to be anything but low-effort junk - I never got anything useful in German and gave up after about 20 minutes. I'm based in Germany but view English content and I can at least echo your sentiments about the lack of good content. I've read multiple times about how amazing the TikTok algorithm is meant to be and how quickly it learns about what to show you, and yet that has not been my experience at all. Twice now I've spent an hour attempting to train the algorithm but it's just endless streams of trash. The worst part for me was coming across an interesting video, for example some industrial machine process, only to be subjected to the exact same video hosted by another user. Most times they have just overlaid some music, but sometimes they crop the original or add some useless text overlays. The part that also annoyed me was it felt like the algorithm gave up every 20-25 videos and tried to show me something sexual, even though I was not interested. I always found the subject transitions extremely jarring and annoying - I already have my porn channels sorted thank you very much, I'm looking for a different type of wood-working
    - Tomte 4y ago
      I don't expect much from German content. ;-) I meant English language content, but with my phone being in Germany. Thanks for telling your experience!
      - denkquer 4y ago
        make sure you set your languages of choice in the settings of the app.
    - kredd 4y ago
      Fun part is its deduction of locale by looking at your number/sim card. I usually get an eSIM while travelling, and the company seems to be based in Netherlands. Was in Mexico last time, and was getting a constant stream of content from Amsterdam. Took me a while to understand why.
      - 4y ago
- tsss 4y ago
  > In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") I find that very hard to believe (despite how god awful Reddit has gotten by now). Reddit is pretty much the last place on the internet where real people post long-form content that is not a single-issue niche forum. I can't imagine that the mode of TikTok with its short videos, algorithm-driven discovery and lack of community (commenting) encourages quality.
  - preommr 4y ago
    It isn't. What they mean is a continuous churn of surface level stuff. E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. You're not going to have that on the top of the subreddit that many times - maybe once a year. On tiktok, that stuff will occasionally pop in, mixed with a bunch of other crap so the repetitiveness doesn't stick out in the short term. You also don't engage with it. There's almost no point to leaving a comment, it's all about mindlessly scrolling from video to video. This leads to lots of really easy to film but superficial stuff in large quantities.
    - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
      > E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. It's playing out exactly like elsewhere on the Internet: beginner content is best to produce because they are the biggest audience, and the algorithm snowballs that advantage further because it only sees engagement, not quality.
  - britch 4y ago
    I've watched a few 5+ minute TikToks about various things (cars, video games, plants, politics) in the past month I don't think these are hugely popular but they reach some audience. A big video will have 500k to Millions of likes. These longer videos usually cap out at a couple thousand. They're out there but it's not searchable. TikTok has an incredible breadth of content but takes a few days to weeks to get the algorithm to show you what you want. When I use it the algorithm is something I'm actively trying to manipulate. "Up vote" stuff you to see by liking and saving. "Down vote" by quickly scrolling away from a video. Any engagement is a signal to show you more of that -- if you're tired of seeing one type of video, you should immediately scroll as soon as you know you don't want to watch it.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  It seems we (well at least some) have come full circle re passivity when consuming content. TV is like this and was much worse. Back where I grew up, during forced socialism/communism there were 2 official TV channels and that was it. Then came computers and internet, me and many others and we greatly enjoyed that one felt in complete power what to do, what to see read etc. What you mention (maybe I don't get it since I never used tiktok and probably never will due to apparent addictiveness) sounds again like passive random consuming of whatever the other side decides is appropriate. You can tune it, and maybe it works a bit, hey its 2022. Surreal to me (and not in positive way), but to each their own.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    This matches what happened with advertising. We went from cable TV and broadcast radio with 12+ minutes of ads per hour to being able to choose what we watch/listen to "on demand" with few - if any - ads. And now we're heading back to increasing, unskippable ad load in popular audio and video formats.
tjpnz 4y ago
You haven't given it enough time to wreck your brain yet.
jasondigitized 4y ago
You need to search and then scroll and like stuff and follow people to get any signal in TikTok. There is a ton of great content. For example, maybe you are into weightlifting or gardening. Search for a particular aspect of weightlifting like "rear delts" or for gardening "pruning" and like some stuff or follow some creators you like. Rinse and repeat a few times. It doesn't take long to fine tune a feed that is pretty good.
- sovnade 4y ago
  Yep - it's cool to hate tiktok, but it's chock full of excellent content. Yeah there's a lot of trash (just like the internet in general) but just swipe it away. Follow creators you like, and the algorithm honestly does a pretty good job about showing videos I don't hate.
princevegeta89 4y ago
Quality aside - but for me who just tried Tiktok a couple times, there was always some severely disturbing content on the homepage including gross pimple popping, viral infections, skin diseases, and other content that's not considered normal. Although some of it seemed fake, it definitely throws sensitive people off guard and the fact this platform of an app does nothing about it is beyond my understanding. Fuck Tiktok
joegahona 4y ago
Keep it that way. Trust me, it gets addictive once it knows you.
sidlls 4y ago
You’ll have people say that there are good quality videos on TikTok and that you just have to spend a small amount of time training their AI to show you what you want to see. I’m unconvinced by arguments that TikTok’s AI is good. I think in the vast majority of cases it overfits to multiple local minima/maxima and bounces around between them. Most (by far) TikTok users are only ever going to see the lowest common denominator meme clips.
pbw 4y ago
I wrote about training my TikTok a while back: https://metastable.org/tiktok.html https://metastable.org/tiktok.html My take-away was there's good stuff on there and awful stuff on there. Similar to the internet itself. The HN comments on my post were very split between loving and despising TikTok: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360955
- bsnnkv 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, I missed it the first time around!
sschueller 4y ago
Interesting thing I found about tiktok is that you do not have to like or comment for the "algos" to figure out what you like. They appear to closely monitor how long you watch a clip and if you just read it's comments.
phailhaus 4y ago
I think this is a recent development, I've been seeing the same thing on Facebook's Reels. I believe it's taking advantage of the algorithm, by providing you the bare minimum to think that there might be a followup or punchline. But there isn't: it's just the one picture. By the time you realize you've been had, you've already watched long enough for the algorithm to silently register your interest. I hate black-box recommendation algorithms because of this. You have no idea what it's inferred from your behavior, so simply waiting too long is enough to bork your feed. How long is too long? No idea.
JeremyNT 4y ago
In my experience, the best way to discover the good content from TikTok is to simply wait until somebody reposts it to reddit and it makes it to the front page.
mikey_p 4y ago
It takes awhile but I have found some truly fascinating content on TikTok - Behind the scenes theatre stuff (I used to work in AV so this is relevant to my past interests) - Aviation interests - got tons of good videos around the Oshkosh fly-in - Farming videos - I grew up on a farm and enjoy many of these, I especially like comparing how this is done in different parts of the country - Ski-lift technician TikTok - videos explaining safety systems, backup power, and behind the scenes of ski-lift operation - Broadcast Transmitter engineering - folks working on terrestrial broadcasting systems which is loosely related to - Amateur radio - lots of folks showing off their shacks and mobile rigs - and more that I can't remember

permo-w 4y ago

if you think tiktok is bad, you should try instagram reels

gjulianm 4y ago

The "defaults" on TikTok are fairly terrible. However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well. I have - Learned several cooking recipes and some tricks - Cleaning advice I've actually put to use - How to use some woodworking tools. Also, general woodworking ideas - Cat behavioral advice In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") and the discovery is far easier than on YouTube.

Tomte 4y ago
"However, after spending maybe one hour at most scrolling and liking/disliking things to tune the algorithm, and search tags, it works fairly well." Can someone support that from Germany? I suspect that's highly locale-dependent. I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours searching for interesting stuff and liking things. I always get generic (and really bad) cooking videos and drunken people doing stupid things.
- overlordalex 4y ago
  Do you mean for content in German? There might just not be enough of it to be anything but low-effort junk - I never got anything useful in German and gave up after about 20 minutes. I'm based in Germany but view English content and I can at least echo your sentiments about the lack of good content. I've read multiple times about how amazing the TikTok algorithm is meant to be and how quickly it learns about what to show you, and yet that has not been my experience at all. Twice now I've spent an hour attempting to train the algorithm but it's just endless streams of trash. The worst part for me was coming across an interesting video, for example some industrial machine process, only to be subjected to the exact same video hosted by another user. Most times they have just overlaid some music, but sometimes they crop the original or add some useless text overlays. The part that also annoyed me was it felt like the algorithm gave up every 20-25 videos and tried to show me something sexual, even though I was not interested. I always found the subject transitions extremely jarring and annoying - I already have my porn channels sorted thank you very much, I'm looking for a different type of wood-working
  - Tomte 4y ago
    I don't expect much from German content. ;-) I meant English language content, but with my phone being in Germany. Thanks for telling your experience!
    - denkquer 4y ago
      make sure you set your languages of choice in the settings of the app.
  - kredd 4y ago
    Fun part is its deduction of locale by looking at your number/sim card. I usually get an eSIM while travelling, and the company seems to be based in Netherlands. Was in Mexico last time, and was getting a constant stream of content from Amsterdam. Took me a while to understand why.
    - 4y ago
tsss 4y ago
> In my experience, it's far better than Reddit (mostly because there's far more niche content, and it isn't limited to "recently posted") I find that very hard to believe (despite how god awful Reddit has gotten by now). Reddit is pretty much the last place on the internet where real people post long-form content that is not a single-issue niche forum. I can't imagine that the mode of TikTok with its short videos, algorithm-driven discovery and lack of community (commenting) encourages quality.
- preommr 4y ago
  It isn't. What they mean is a continuous churn of surface level stuff. E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. You're not going to have that on the top of the subreddit that many times - maybe once a year. On tiktok, that stuff will occasionally pop in, mixed with a bunch of other crap so the repetitiveness doesn't stick out in the short term. You also don't engage with it. There's almost no point to leaving a comment, it's all about mindlessly scrolling from video to video. This leads to lots of really easy to film but superficial stuff in large quantities.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    > E.g. for woodworking, there's only so many times you can show how the basics of "10 Things you're doing wrong", or why the tape measure moves at the end. It's playing out exactly like elsewhere on the Internet: beginner content is best to produce because they are the biggest audience, and the algorithm snowballs that advantage further because it only sees engagement, not quality.
- britch 4y ago
  I've watched a few 5+ minute TikToks about various things (cars, video games, plants, politics) in the past month I don't think these are hugely popular but they reach some audience. A big video will have 500k to Millions of likes. These longer videos usually cap out at a couple thousand. They're out there but it's not searchable. TikTok has an incredible breadth of content but takes a few days to weeks to get the algorithm to show you what you want. When I use it the algorithm is something I'm actively trying to manipulate. "Up vote" stuff you to see by liking and saving. "Down vote" by quickly scrolling away from a video. Any engagement is a signal to show you more of that -- if you're tired of seeing one type of video, you should immediately scroll as soon as you know you don't want to watch it.
saiya-jin 4y ago
It seems we (well at least some) have come full circle re passivity when consuming content. TV is like this and was much worse. Back where I grew up, during forced socialism/communism there were 2 official TV channels and that was it. Then came computers and internet, me and many others and we greatly enjoyed that one felt in complete power what to do, what to see read etc. What you mention (maybe I don't get it since I never used tiktok and probably never will due to apparent addictiveness) sounds again like passive random consuming of whatever the other side decides is appropriate. You can tune it, and maybe it works a bit, hey its 2022. Surreal to me (and not in positive way), but to each their own.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  This matches what happened with advertising. We went from cable TV and broadcast radio with 12+ minutes of ads per hour to being able to choose what we watch/listen to "on demand" with few - if any - ads. And now we're heading back to increasing, unskippable ad load in popular audio and video formats.

tjpnz 4y ago

You haven't given it enough time to wreck your brain yet.

jasondigitized 4y ago

You need to search and then scroll and like stuff and follow people to get any signal in TikTok. There is a ton of great content. For example, maybe you are into weightlifting or gardening. Search for a particular aspect of weightlifting like "rear delts" or for gardening "pruning" and like some stuff or follow some creators you like. Rinse and repeat a few times. It doesn't take long to fine tune a feed that is pretty good.

sovnade 4y ago
Yep - it's cool to hate tiktok, but it's chock full of excellent content. Yeah there's a lot of trash (just like the internet in general) but just swipe it away. Follow creators you like, and the algorithm honestly does a pretty good job about showing videos I don't hate.

princevegeta89 4y ago

Quality aside - but for me who just tried Tiktok a couple times, there was always some severely disturbing content on the homepage including gross pimple popping, viral infections, skin diseases, and other content that's not considered normal. Although some of it seemed fake, it definitely throws sensitive people off guard and the fact this platform of an app does nothing about it is beyond my understanding. Fuck Tiktok

joegahona 4y ago

Keep it that way. Trust me, it gets addictive once it knows you.

sidlls 4y ago

You’ll have people say that there are good quality videos on TikTok and that you just have to spend a small amount of time training their AI to show you what you want to see. I’m unconvinced by arguments that TikTok’s AI is good. I think in the vast majority of cases it overfits to multiple local minima/maxima and bounces around between them. Most (by far) TikTok users are only ever going to see the lowest common denominator meme clips.

pbw 4y ago

I wrote about training my TikTok a while back: https://metastable.org/tiktok.html https://metastable.org/tiktok.html My take-away was there's good stuff on there and awful stuff on there. Similar to the internet itself. The HN comments on my post were very split between loving and despising TikTok: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360955

bsnnkv 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this, I missed it the first time around!

sschueller 4y ago

Interesting thing I found about tiktok is that you do not have to like or comment for the "algos" to figure out what you like. They appear to closely monitor how long you watch a clip and if you just read it's comments.

phailhaus 4y ago

I think this is a recent development, I've been seeing the same thing on Facebook's Reels. I believe it's taking advantage of the algorithm, by providing you the bare minimum to think that there might be a followup or punchline. But there isn't: it's just the one picture. By the time you realize you've been had, you've already watched long enough for the algorithm to silently register your interest. I hate black-box recommendation algorithms because of this. You have no idea what it's inferred from your behavior, so simply waiting too long is enough to bork your feed. How long is too long? No idea.

JeremyNT 4y ago

In my experience, the best way to discover the good content from TikTok is to simply wait until somebody reposts it to reddit and it makes it to the front page.

mikey_p 4y ago

It takes awhile but I have found some truly fascinating content on TikTok - Behind the scenes theatre stuff (I used to work in AV so this is relevant to my past interests) - Aviation interests - got tons of good videos around the Oshkosh fly-in - Farming videos - I grew up on a farm and enjoy many of these, I especially like comparing how this is done in different parts of the country - Ski-lift technician TikTok - videos explaining safety systems, backup power, and behind the scenes of ski-lift operation - Broadcast Transmitter engineering - folks working on terrestrial broadcasting systems which is loosely related to - Amateur radio - lots of folks showing off their shacks and mobile rigs - and more that I can't remember