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i have watched tiktok regularly for 2-3 years, and till this day I only get pandas/ hippo videos. It seems it depends on viewer nature.

TheFreim 2y ago
When TikTok showed up on my radar a few years ago I decided to download it and see what it was all about. Within just a few minutes (3-5 iirc, certainly less than 10) I was presented with a video of a gaggle of what looked like 12-14 year old girls "dancing" wearing almost no clothes. That was enough for me, I deleted the app and haven't looked back. Perhaps it was a fluke, but it was severely off-putting.
- 39896880 2y ago
  My theory is that TikTok is optimized similarly to YouTube in that it uses viewing time as a signal of interest. So, you could open TikTok, see underage people dancing, turn your phone to your spouse and say "can you believe this is what this app shows?" and the app will take the fact that you played the video as a sign you want to see more. I don't remember if there's even a downvote button. I had the same experience you did, but in the opposite direction gender-wise, and it took a bit longer to get too young, but it got there.
  - robrtsql 2y ago
    Deep within the settings, there's a "Don't show me things like this" button in TikTok. Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval.
    - echelon 2y ago
      There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough. If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it. Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.
      - tivert 2y ago
        > There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough. Literally right after you said that, you described why a dislike button is necessary: > If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it. > Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.
        echelon 2y ago
        That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice. Your suggestion was, > Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval. The audience for this would be small. Social media platforms have found that users engage with content they "don't like". If showing users content they don't like resulted in less overall engagement, the platforms would rewrite their algorithms in a heartbeat. A competitor to TikTok already faces an enormous uphill battle. If such a platform chooses to remove a proven strategy for traction and engagement, then it's doubling down on the headwinds and infirmities. I wouldn't count on it being a successful venture.
        tivert 2y ago
        > That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice. If you're looking to start a competitor, you need to differentiate somehow. Not using "rage and anger" to drive engagement would be pretty appealing to a user. It's also worth noting that the context of this thread was two users who deleted the app because it showed them stuff they did not want to see. And the wider context has been TikTok has been utterly clueless handling concerns from the public and regulators, so I don't think reasoning from the assumption that whatever TikTok does is necessary is the right way to go. And if you are right, it's just more proof that modern capitalism doesn't incentivize making things people want, rather it incentivizes making the things that exploit them most effectively. The appropriate political adjustments should be made to beat those companies until their users' morale improves. > Your suggestion was, Wasn't my suggestion. I think the source of your confusing is that you wandered into a conversion between users while thinking you were a platform.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
danpalmer 2y ago
This article is about TikTok Live, a separate part of the product. I don't use TikTok, but I think it's a little less short-video feed, and a little more Twitch Hot Tub streamers (https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub...). I think the target market and how discovery works in the product are quite different so it's quite possible you've never ventured into it if you're there for the short videos and not the streamer worship.
- neilv 2y ago
  That Twitch link is interesting. My read is that they're disingenuously trying to spin obviously intentional sexual content as, rather, a matter of interpretation of the wide range of imaginations of the viewers. And they experimentally made a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" swimwear category, while they figure out how to keep milking the intentional sexual titillation content, while still keeping advertisers happy. (Related: The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue wasn't about sports, nor about travel, nor about anything else other than the obvious.)
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    I have no comment on the way Twitch handled this, was only providing the link for context. I find the culture around this fascinating. We've got platforms trying to find the right balance of moderation in an attempt to not appear to be porn sites because that would be perceived as bad by society, while taking as much of that traffic as they can and normalising this type of content at the boundary, and while also trying to appease their own sources of moderation such as advertisers and payment processors. We've got content creators who may well not identify as sex workers, convincing themselves that they're different because of some boundary, and children looking for attention and emulating the increasingly normalised behaviour at the encouragement of a platform that prioritises views and exposes harmful metrics.
quitspamming 2y ago
This article isn't about people being offended at seeing sexual material on TikTok. It's about how TikTok _knew_ that children were being paid in TikTok livestreams to engage is sexual behavior. It is good that _you_ didn't consume it, but many were, andd TikTok knew that many were and let it happen to profit from it.
- debit-freak 2y ago
  Can you quote the evidence here? The link is paywalled.
  - quitspamming 2y ago
    https://archive.is/XCx6E https://archive.is/XCx6E
    - debit-freak 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - lunatuna 2y ago
        This is whataboutism. Doesn’t work here.
        krageon 2y ago
        [flagged]
        quitspamming 2y ago
        So unless Forbes investigates literally every social media site and app they aren't allowed to report on one, or else they're jingoistic xenophobes? That poor argument aside, they DID in fact report on other social media sites, the same year, a few months earlier than the even did on TikTok. https://archive.is/J1kjN https://archive.is/J1kjN

TheFreim 2y ago

When TikTok showed up on my radar a few years ago I decided to download it and see what it was all about. Within just a few minutes (3-5 iirc, certainly less than 10) I was presented with a video of a gaggle of what looked like 12-14 year old girls "dancing" wearing almost no clothes. That was enough for me, I deleted the app and haven't looked back. Perhaps it was a fluke, but it was severely off-putting.

39896880 2y ago
My theory is that TikTok is optimized similarly to YouTube in that it uses viewing time as a signal of interest. So, you could open TikTok, see underage people dancing, turn your phone to your spouse and say "can you believe this is what this app shows?" and the app will take the fact that you played the video as a sign you want to see more. I don't remember if there's even a downvote button. I had the same experience you did, but in the opposite direction gender-wise, and it took a bit longer to get too young, but it got there.
- robrtsql 2y ago
  Deep within the settings, there's a "Don't show me things like this" button in TikTok. Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval.
  - echelon 2y ago
    There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough. If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it. Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough. Literally right after you said that, you described why a dislike button is necessary: > If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it. > Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.
      - echelon 2y ago
        That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice. Your suggestion was, > Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval. The audience for this would be small. Social media platforms have found that users engage with content they "don't like". If showing users content they don't like resulted in less overall engagement, the platforms would rewrite their algorithms in a heartbeat. A competitor to TikTok already faces an enormous uphill battle. If such a platform chooses to remove a proven strategy for traction and engagement, then it's doubling down on the headwinds and infirmities. I wouldn't count on it being a successful venture.
        tivert 2y ago
        > That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice. If you're looking to start a competitor, you need to differentiate somehow. Not using "rage and anger" to drive engagement would be pretty appealing to a user. It's also worth noting that the context of this thread was two users who deleted the app because it showed them stuff they did not want to see. And the wider context has been TikTok has been utterly clueless handling concerns from the public and regulators, so I don't think reasoning from the assumption that whatever TikTok does is necessary is the right way to go. And if you are right, it's just more proof that modern capitalism doesn't incentivize making things people want, rather it incentivizes making the things that exploit them most effectively. The appropriate political adjustments should be made to beat those companies until their users' morale improves. > Your suggestion was, Wasn't my suggestion. I think the source of your confusing is that you wandered into a conversion between users while thinking you were a platform.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

danpalmer 2y ago

This article is about TikTok Live, a separate part of the product. I don't use TikTok, but I think it's a little less short-video feed, and a little more Twitch Hot Tub streamers (https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub...). I think the target market and how discovery works in the product are quite different so it's quite possible you've never ventured into it if you're there for the short videos and not the streamer worship.

neilv 2y ago
That Twitch link is interesting. My read is that they're disingenuously trying to spin obviously intentional sexual content as, rather, a matter of interpretation of the wide range of imaginations of the viewers. And they experimentally made a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" swimwear category, while they figure out how to keep milking the intentional sexual titillation content, while still keeping advertisers happy. (Related: The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue wasn't about sports, nor about travel, nor about anything else other than the obvious.)
- danpalmer 2y ago
  I have no comment on the way Twitch handled this, was only providing the link for context. I find the culture around this fascinating. We've got platforms trying to find the right balance of moderation in an attempt to not appear to be porn sites because that would be perceived as bad by society, while taking as much of that traffic as they can and normalising this type of content at the boundary, and while also trying to appease their own sources of moderation such as advertisers and payment processors. We've got content creators who may well not identify as sex workers, convincing themselves that they're different because of some boundary, and children looking for attention and emulating the increasingly normalised behaviour at the encouragement of a platform that prioritises views and exposes harmful metrics.

quitspamming 2y ago

This article isn't about people being offended at seeing sexual material on TikTok. It's about how TikTok _knew_ that children were being paid in TikTok livestreams to engage is sexual behavior. It is good that _you_ didn't consume it, but many were, andd TikTok knew that many were and let it happen to profit from it.

debit-freak 2y ago
Can you quote the evidence here? The link is paywalled.
- quitspamming 2y ago
  https://archive.is/XCx6E https://archive.is/XCx6E
  - debit-freak 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lunatuna 2y ago
      This is whataboutism. Doesn’t work here.
      - krageon 2y ago
        [flagged]
        quitspamming 2y ago
        So unless Forbes investigates literally every social media site and app they aren't allowed to report on one, or else they're jingoistic xenophobes? That poor argument aside, they DID in fact report on other social media sites, the same year, a few months earlier than the even did on TikTok. https://archive.is/J1kjN https://archive.is/J1kjN