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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 th

by 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
You realize you are training their datasets (its not really an 'AI' in any meaningful sense) to get a very precise picture of your personality and emotions, which will be later used for ads targeting, and character profiling if you become somebody interesting in later years. 'Training the alghoritm' is just carrot on proverbial curated-content stick (you could also select 10 categories of content you like and refine it yourself further down the road, this is just less obvious for the same). People were bashing Facebook/Instagram for this for a decade and many have stopped/rollbacked and just give few likes here and there for personal events of friends. I guess history even in digital world likes to repeat itself...
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  I was one of the people that didn’t care Facebook was doing that. I am one of the people who still doesn’t care that TikTok is doing it. I stopped using Facebook because my feed became garbage not because of any kind of privacy concerns. TikTok’s feed has been amazing and consistently feeds me content that I like. History probably repeats itself because a massive body of people don’t care about the things that you care about and are being delivered value that they do care about.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "History probably repeats itself because a massive body of people don’t care about the things that you care about and are being delivered value that they do care about" Yes, it is known that most people do not care about deep stuff, but about food in their belly and beeing good entertained. Panem et circenses. Btw. about the romans, in italy the prime minister is now a person who said she thinks Mussolini was a good politician. So yes, history repeats itself, if too many people do not care. Democracy is actually a quite fragile thing. Many things we take for granted only exist, because people care. And it will erode if people stop caring. So you are still free to submit to FB and TikTok as much as you like and hope this does not change. Because, you know, companies knowing all about you, but you nothing about them and their motives is just a receipe for long term empowerment of them and not you. And in the case of TikTok, there is an actual government behind it and de facto in control, which is not famous for democracy, nor human rights.
- delecti 4y ago
  People signed up for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter with the expectation that they'd get a reverse-chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. People were bothered by the algorithmic feed because it wasn't what they signed up for (and those sites' feeds are often quite bad at showing quality content). TikTok never promised that kind of feed, and by most accounts does a pretty good job at surfacing videos people will find interesting. It's an important difference.
- pedrosorio 4y ago
  > You realize you are training their datasets (its not really an 'AI' in any meaningful sense) Since you claim it’s not an AÍ in any meaningful sense, could you clarify what “training their datasets” means?
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    I don't work for Tiktok so no clue about their actual implementation, but if they have what everybody else +-has, its a sophisticated statistical data model. Some people put moniker AI on this, just like some people in marketing are putting AI into our TVs, toothbrushes, cars and god knows what else. Its got nothing with Artificial Intelligence per se, just a shortcut for 'something complicated I don't grok so its 23rd century magic'.
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      One can define "AI" in many ways. It certainly is not a conscious being "thinking" about what you would love to see next (much like AlphaGo isn't carefully "focusing" on the board and the possible moves), but a recommender system certainly displays some "intelligent" behavior in a restricted sense. What Tiktok is definitely not doing, is "training their datasets".
- britch 4y ago
  From my perspective FB/Instagram's algorithm (I'll throw in YouTube too) never really worked. They overemphasized showing me the exact same type of thing until the feed became boring. You liked this post about a chair -- here's nothing but chairs. I also joined FB to keep in touch with people I met in real life. It changed to push me to engage with groups and people I had nothing in common with. I didn't join TikTok to keep up with friends that way. The TikTok algorithm does a great job of showing me new stuff that I might be interested in, but is still related. It's remarkably good. FWIW -- It also seems to forget everything about me if I log off for a months. --- Sure, I'm training data sets. Everything I do online is monitored and analyzed by someone at some point. I spent a year of my life trying to "get off Google." IMO it's pretty close to impossible if you want to function in society. I'm skeptical that the TikTok algorithm knows anything about me that my search history doesn't show. I don't think TikTok is a "good thing" but I don't understand why it is sometimes painted as this unique evil. The worst part of TikTok in my opinion is how much time I've wasted using it, but that's nothing new for social networks.

by britch 4y ago

saiya-jin 4y ago

You realize you are training their datasets (its not really an 'AI' in any meaningful sense) to get a very precise picture of your personality and emotions, which will be later used for ads targeting, and character profiling if you become somebody interesting in later years. 'Training the alghoritm' is just carrot on proverbial curated-content stick (you could also select 10 categories of content you like and refine it yourself further down the road, this is just less obvious for the same). People were bashing Facebook/Instagram for this for a decade and many have stopped/rollbacked and just give few likes here and there for personal events of friends. I guess history even in digital world likes to repeat itself...

the_lonely_road 4y ago
I was one of the people that didn’t care Facebook was doing that. I am one of the people who still doesn’t care that TikTok is doing it. I stopped using Facebook because my feed became garbage not because of any kind of privacy concerns. TikTok’s feed has been amazing and consistently feeds me content that I like. History probably repeats itself because a massive body of people don’t care about the things that you care about and are being delivered value that they do care about.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "History probably repeats itself because a massive body of people don’t care about the things that you care about and are being delivered value that they do care about" Yes, it is known that most people do not care about deep stuff, but about food in their belly and beeing good entertained. Panem et circenses. Btw. about the romans, in italy the prime minister is now a person who said she thinks Mussolini was a good politician. So yes, history repeats itself, if too many people do not care. Democracy is actually a quite fragile thing. Many things we take for granted only exist, because people care. And it will erode if people stop caring. So you are still free to submit to FB and TikTok as much as you like and hope this does not change. Because, you know, companies knowing all about you, but you nothing about them and their motives is just a receipe for long term empowerment of them and not you. And in the case of TikTok, there is an actual government behind it and de facto in control, which is not famous for democracy, nor human rights.
delecti 4y ago
People signed up for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter with the expectation that they'd get a reverse-chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. People were bothered by the algorithmic feed because it wasn't what they signed up for (and those sites' feeds are often quite bad at showing quality content). TikTok never promised that kind of feed, and by most accounts does a pretty good job at surfacing videos people will find interesting. It's an important difference.
pedrosorio 4y ago
> You realize you are training their datasets (its not really an 'AI' in any meaningful sense) Since you claim it’s not an AÍ in any meaningful sense, could you clarify what “training their datasets” means?
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  I don't work for Tiktok so no clue about their actual implementation, but if they have what everybody else +-has, its a sophisticated statistical data model. Some people put moniker AI on this, just like some people in marketing are putting AI into our TVs, toothbrushes, cars and god knows what else. Its got nothing with Artificial Intelligence per se, just a shortcut for 'something complicated I don't grok so its 23rd century magic'.
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    One can define "AI" in many ways. It certainly is not a conscious being "thinking" about what you would love to see next (much like AlphaGo isn't carefully "focusing" on the board and the possible moves), but a recommender system certainly displays some "intelligent" behavior in a restricted sense. What Tiktok is definitely not doing, is "training their datasets".
britch 4y ago
From my perspective FB/Instagram's algorithm (I'll throw in YouTube too) never really worked. They overemphasized showing me the exact same type of thing until the feed became boring. You liked this post about a chair -- here's nothing but chairs. I also joined FB to keep in touch with people I met in real life. It changed to push me to engage with groups and people I had nothing in common with. I didn't join TikTok to keep up with friends that way. The TikTok algorithm does a great job of showing me new stuff that I might be interested in, but is still related. It's remarkably good. FWIW -- It also seems to forget everything about me if I log off for a months. --- Sure, I'm training data sets. Everything I do online is monitored and analyzed by someone at some point. I spent a year of my life trying to "get off Google." IMO it's pretty close to impossible if you want to function in society. I'm skeptical that the TikTok algorithm knows anything about me that my search history doesn't show. I don't think TikTok is a "good thing" but I don't understand why it is sometimes painted as this unique evil. The worst part of TikTok in my opinion is how much time I've wasted using it, but that's nothing new for social networks.