Reddit CEO: TikTok Is ‘Fundamentally Parasitic’ | Hacker News Reader

Reddit CEO: TikTok Is ‘Fundamentally Parasitic’

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68 pointsykm78 comments

Heh. This sounds like a business person that doesn't understand their competition, so they self-righteously trashed them as a way of avoiding the question. I mean, I sure as hell don't know the reason for TikTok's success, but I'm not the CEO of reddit. TikTok has a billion+ users, despite it's crappy reputation as surveillance-ware, so there must be something to learn from them.

> I sure as hell don't know the reason for TikTok's success

I do. Simple service that came up with a massive user base to keep it propped up and focused around funny, cute, or stupid Vine replacement clips, then US kids flocked to it.

Annoyingly; my favorite tiktok and comment about it were found on Reddit

When I went to college to study TV and stuff, nobody, and I mean nobody, had any inkling that this was the future of entertainment. https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/f3syl1/duck_throws_i...

Tiktok first blew up in China, but currently biggest in India.

Apropos competitors: Does anybody know reddit's stance on pinterest? Pinterest has become valuable with more or less the idea of 'reddit for pictures'. Why has reddit not made a move into pictures by themselves, apart from starting a picture hosting service?

I think it simply succeeded because of the void left by Vine's shutdown and because it doesn't belong to Facebook like Instagram.

TikTok has a billion+ users, despite it's crappy reputation as surveillance-ware, so there must be something to learn from them.

How to do surveillance. Which is exactly the point he was trying to make.

Good for TikTok is good for the CCP. And it can be terrific at its job.

Personally, I found TikTok to be a funny, light-hearted app, but there's definitely an overaggressive approach when it comes to pushing content and re-engaging users.

Besides what he is saying, the app and platform are designed to spread content fast, with quick feedback loops of brand re-engagement through other platforms. If you use Reddit you will notice that content coming from TikTok gets shared constantly and it's designed in a way that drives indirect traffic back to them. There are even a handful of subreddits just dedicated to TikTok videos like r/TikTokCringe which got so popular that it is not for "cringe" anymore.

Not only the videos have a TikTok watermark, but also when they end they have a prominent display of the creator username (which presumably drives people who found the content funny to search for them).

This makes me think that he is actually upset about the fact that TikTok thrives on Reddit and there's nothing they can do about it.

Just look at TikTok itself. Have you seen their user experience when it comes to sharing content? It's a super highly optimized sharing experience that even remembers your preferred sharing channels, plus it has a significant number of features for soft sharing like downloading as a live photo or gif. I mean there's zero friction between TikTok and posting a gif to Reddit or any other platform because they make it incredibly easy.

This seems diametrically opposed to Reddit's sharing experience which is constantly tinkered to create a walled-garden (for example in iOS they disabled the ability to share videos directly into messages because this effectively made visiting Reddit unnecessary.)

The other super crazy part about TikTok is how their algorithm presumably works. It's really an incredible engineering accomplishment but one that is definitely transgressing the "creepy" line. They really analyze absolutely everything about your content in order to classify it and rank it. This article gives a good explanation: https://veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algorith...

> ”Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them,” Huffman said. “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”

That’s rich coming from the guy who turned Reddit into the Dark Lord of Dark Patterns. Can’t use Reddit web on mobile anymore without 50 nags to install the app, and sometimes it simply won’t load a page until you do. Guarantee they track every last thing you do, every subreddit you visit. Hypocrisy in the extreme.

tracking and privacy violations are only a problem when other people are doing it.

"We're protecting your data" means "we make sure nobody but us gets to profit from your data". That's not just true for Reddit and TikTok but for every tech company these days.

In the Transparency Report, links spez posted were all using the "old" reddit.

Seems that not everyone loves new Reddit. Even at Reddit.

>That’s rich coming from the guy who turned Reddit into the Dark Lord of Dark Patterns.

God bless old.reddit.com (which I use on mobile, as well).

How different is the tracking that TikTok does compared to what Facebook and Google does? Except may be TikTok might be shipping this data off to the Chinese?

It's not meaningfully different. It's not even different from literally every other successful business built on ads. They're all collecting data, and the ad industry is their customer - not the people making the content.

Is it different to reddit's app?

> might be

most definitely

Exactly this is the point. It's one thing to allow companies in your own country/influence sphere (NATO/western world) to build massive data piles about your citizens, but an entirely different thing to allow a national enemy (or at the very least, competitor) such as China to do the same.

Given that there are many young soldiers, policemen, politicians or employees in security-critical environments it's not far fetched that a social media app such as tiktok which has cam/mic access is able to serve as a remote controlled bug for its owners. For what it's worth, ordinary tracking of location data is already an interesting data pile - a bunch of phones that for half a year only appear on a US military base and then suddenly appear somewhere remote in Afghanistan? Most likely they're deployed soldiers. Then look at what they post and suddenly you have names, ranks, specializations... and as said, all of that is possible with ordinary tracking, the dangers of an actual bug are magnitudes larger.

This app specifically is getting mobile phones banned in sensitive military areas/buildings.

You mean like Facebook that was involved with Cambridge Analytica and still today allows hostile nations to interfere in our elections

Not that I disagree, but for some context, this is coming from the man who said "We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook - we know your dark secrets, we know everything"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PCnZqrJE24&feature=emb_titl...

While it may be true, saying that in front of Silicon Valley investors, while sitting next to a Facebook executive, is pretty rich.

TikTok: get in trouble if you criticize the Chinese president

Reddit: get in trouble if you praise the American president

in China TikTok will get in trouble with the government if the president of China is criticized

Do you think Reddit gets in trouble with the US government if the president of the US is praised?

The pot calling the kettle...

“I’m confident that Reddit could sway elections. We wouldn’t do it, of course. And I don’t know how many times we could get away with it. But, if we really wanted to, I’m sure Reddit could have swayed at least this election, this once.”

-Reddit CEO

Hello pot, here's kettle. Silicon Valley tech is really gonna eat itself

if tiktok is parasitic, whats reddit then ?

Sewage treatment plant. That doesn't work.

antagonistic

> “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”

> “I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone,'” he later added.

Does that mean Reddit doesn't track users? Or just that TikTok is extra good at it?

Geezus the day Reddit userbase becomes the same as TikTok is the day I'm fully migrating here.

There's room for a competitor. Digg v4 2.0!

I always forget Digg was a thing.

https://phaven-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/files/image_part/asset/...

Look at the irony. This discussion is taking place at Hacker News. Most wholesome place all over the internet.

Reddit is now banning folks for upvoting content!

Im on mobile, but there is a screenshot of huffman promising for life to not delete content by users.

Reddit is a propaganda tool 100% now.

(There is another post by him saying as so, they removed both)

You're not wrong:

https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-banned-for-upvote-policy/

and

https://old.reddit.com/r/SamandTolki/comments/f9fox2/reddit_...

I'll take TikToks 'parasitic' over Reddits toxic negativity any day of the week.

Go look at the front page of Reddit, then look at what's trending on Tiktok... From my humble perspective tiktok is a pretty positive place. Reddit on the other hand seems to have been overrun with political fighting and cynicism about literally everything.

It may not be popular among the tech crowd but for where I am in my life that is far more important to me than what permissions an app needs.

TikTok banned pro-LGBT content (until they were called out on it?), TikTok bans a bunch of things in countries that aren't illegal there (or in any civilized country, for that matter), TikTok bans criticism of certain political figures in some regions, so forth.

Positive, but at what price?

I don't like reddit, either, to be fair.

Reddit gives random moderators (who are often affiliated with companies or governments, without disclosure) the power to do all this and lots more.

Yeah, but it also gives any user the ability to start their own sub if they want.

Doesn't Supermoderators can hijack and own user's sub, too?

No. Admins aren't supermoderators, they're reddit employees, and the only way you can gain control of a subreddit if you're not an admin is by /r/redditrequest, which has very specific criteria. (Moderator has to have been offline from reddit for N days, so forth.) Even admins can't take control of subreddits arbitrarily. If they did, there are a few that would have been gone years ago.

Yep, make your own sub!

And then they shut it down, take it over, give it to other people, or quarantine it if they don’t like what you are saying.

The comparison to TikTok which is popular despite being Chinese run and Reddit which is acting in a way that makes me wonder if they are Chinese run is curious.

I wonder which service really has less free speech atm.

Well, you've just pointed out the problem with centralized social media platforms. Someone else owns them.

Yes, but, if you aren’t breaking rules and they claim to be defenders of free speech you could at least expect them to play the part. I’ve seen some real shananagans at Reddit including the CEO stealth editing posts.

Reddit acting as publisher is fine with me, they just still insist they are a neutral platform.

Lol. Huffman replacing his name with t_d mod names was a troll (a great one). It was isolated, not an example of a frequent occurrence. If you're upset that he was functionally able to do that, I'll refer you to my preceding comment.

I’m not involved in any of the Reddit communities... but... I can see past my own nose on this. It’s seems many people can’t.

It's not random at all. Moderators are appointed so as to suit a particular narrative. The subs are such echo chambers that it is hard to separate propaganda and truth.

The front page of hacker news is heavily moderated and political discussions are quickly gone.

You can either have productive interesting discussions (or in TikTok's case fun videos) or you can have free speech.

Its ridiculous to suggest that lgbt content prevents fun videos. Also there is a lot of political content on HN. Its just shit flinging and random off topic rants that get removed.

They have a moderation formula and it works. Any social media platform requires it to succeed. That is the reality of today's internet. lgbt content is controversial in huge parts of the world.

So are Jewish people/content, but surely you wouldn't suggest banning them would be "working" in any way but superficially: that's called racism. Banning people based on innate characteristics that do no harm is wrong, as most people agree.

Anti discrimination laws exist for a reason. It would be cheaper and easier for businesses to tell disabled customers to go away instead of building a ramp. A club might please its members more by banning black people.

But we had decided that this kind of action is a negative to society. Tech companies have just slipped around existing laws. Its time that the laws be updated to include web services. TikTok was also exposed to be shadow banning disabled users.

The president was impeached, and there was no mention of it on HN. To say there is political content on HN is absurd.

Political content is allowed as long as it's on-topic for Hacker News.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Julian Assange, a political prisoner, was on the front page yesterday, for example.

Tech-adjacent politics is allowed, and given current politics it has been happening more frequently.

There isn't really a tech angle for the impeachment.

Not just tech-adjacent political content, but intellectually-stimulating political content, too.

I wasn't arguing for free speech. I was arguing against homophobia, banning criticism of very specific political leaders (they don't ban political discussion), censorship of statues of religious figures and so forth. All of which things that TikTok has done.

There’s no reason we can’t make different judgements about different types of speech. I’m fine with HN removing political posts likely to result in flame wars, but I would have a problem with them blanket removing posts about, say, JavaScript. Likewise, I’m fine with TikTok removing harassing content but not pro–LGBT+ content. These are not contradictory positions.

> I would have a problem with them blanket removing posts about, say, JavaScript.

But even technical posts that reach the front page are sometimes removed. HN moderation policy is entirely vague and subject to the whims of moderators.

It's not entirely vague. Dupes are removed, flamebait is removed, incivility is removed, and pretty much everything is explained either by 'dang or by the Guidelines.

There was also the case where they flagged the accounts of disabled users to partially shadow ban them so they wouldn't be bullied since few people could actually see their posts.

Look at what you're saying: tiktok simply bans all political content. Reddit is a cesspool of toxicity because of how everything is political content. Do you see the difference?

TikTok doesn't ban all political content, and you're spreading misinformation.

Not every social app needs to be completely open to everything especially what may be considered controversial social issues. I'm not defending what they did, I'm just saying if their goal is to create a silly worry free experience, topics of controversy run counter to that.

They don't ban all political content, or all expressions of sexuality or romance, they do for a very specific subset of issues which just so happen to be discriminatory. Like I said elsewhere in the thread: Jews are controversial, a ban on Jews on a social media platform wouldn't be remotely justifiable in any circumstance.

Where are you seeing so much "toxic negativity" on Reddit? The homepage is pretty generic news content if you're not logged in, but the typical logged-in experience with any social network comes down to who and what you follow.

EDIT: I'm curious what people are disagreeing with here. I'm in dozens of subreddits that are all great communities.

Do you spend much time on /r/all?

No. That's not a subreddit, it's just an index of trending content. Reddit even created r/popular to make a more filtered and generic version of r/all.

Reddit is the worst.

Catering to constant conflict. Always testing limits of what is technically legal and what clearly falls under hate speech laws; all under the banner of free speech.

Reddit would love to be as technological advanced as TikTok but will never adopt their heavily edited approach because they know that there are far more eyeballs and moneys in constant conflict.

Reddit is much more pleasant when you filter the more toxic content. I like it a lot more after using Reddit Enhancement Suite to filter particularly nasty and/or unattractive subreddits. Kind of like real life, I just find a way to tune out what I don't like. If Reddit becomes 10% censored, it will stop being one of the few places that is actually interesting to me.

The controversial subreddits get a lot of attention (up and down votes) and so show up as hot/interesting threads, and have the most visibility. If you limit yourself to politics and news, then yeah, you'll see a lot of extreme comments and hotheads. But if you stop there and write off reddit as nothing but "toxic negativity", you've judge the 95% based on the 5%.

Go to, oh, r/bass (the musical instrument, not the fish), or r/rtlsdr (sofware defined radio), to name two I visit sometimes, you'll find pleasant, helpful communities. I imagine there are tens of thousands of other civil subreddits.

As a very small experiment, I guessed the names of a few subreddits that seem like they would exist and had a look around. r/poker, r/weather, r/airplanes, r/needlepoint, r/darts. 5/5, all nice communities.

To be fair, these two are hardly comparable. Reddit is very toxic for sure but if you're looking for serious information or thoughts, it's still has some of that left. Whereas TikTok is pure entertainment, you're not gonna find anything "useful" or thoughtful there, but from the handful of clips (a couple dozen maybe) I've seen over the years it's indeed a delightful place to be, and my friends who do use it love it (more than Instagram at least).

Reddit shows what the world is, tik tok shows the world you want to see. if you ignore this you will become the part of the problem.

Tik Tok shows the world that the oppressive governments and the 1950s wanted.

You shouldn't have to choose a 'fundamentally parasitic' app in order to get nice content. Its not like you're making a good trade-off. Its not like "oh record everything about me and everyone I am near, just so long as you give me good feelings instead of arguments!" sounds reasonable.

Yes reddit is a cesspool, and even HN seems to be slipping perceptibly, and no I can't think of anywhere nice and safe, but that doesn't mean tiktok is a good choice for anyone.

This misses the point that Reddit does effectively exactly what TikTok does with it's user targeting. Steve is the Pot calling the Kettle black.

The front page of Reddit is pure toxicity, sure. But Reddit gives me the ability to curate my feed. I can curate the subreddits that I want and switch to that custom field, keeping all that toxicity away while still getting the depth reddit provides for niche communities.

don't worry guys, I'm creating the new reddit. It's called fuckkit

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