Hacker News Reader

Comment by periphrasis | Hacker News Reader

Why would I want to watch short form video content? Genuinely curious here.

It's a similar dynamic to why tweets can be better than long form blog posts. The time limit forces content creators to actually get the content out. On YouTube (which I still love) it's endless intros, ads, disgressions, and sidetracks. YouTube videos often have the similar quality, it's just 40 seconds of content spread out over 12 minutes. TikTok and twitter incentive for denser content.

I believe I read somewhere that the YouTube recommendation algorithm favors videos in the range of 12-20 minutes. True or not, I wonder if the rumor is a reason why many YouTube creators fall within that time window.

Don’t know about the algo (who does?) but the ability to place mid-roll ads was minimum 10min, now lowered to 8min.

It can convey more information than the stationary images that dominate much of reddit, while taking less effort to consume than text (it's really hard to get people to engage with more than the headline in written content).

TikTok is imho one of the closest approximations of a marketplace of ideas, or a penny-university. Every topic under the sun is talked about (even if TikTok tries to censor a bunch of topics), you have various experts from their fields giving insights into their daily lives (like snippets from the daily life on an arctic base) or short tutorials (how to draw an owl kind of stuff), but also discussions about philosophy or how to deal with daily life (e.g. how to declutter your space if you are depressed, or how to arrange furniture). And unlike e.g. YouTube's recommendation algorithm that makes everything seem bland because it only shows you stuff that's like stuff you already know, TikTok's algorithm keeps exposing you to new things tangentially related to what you watched/liked, so it's more like drifting though an ocean of videos, with new stuff happening all the time.

That said, TikTok should totally be enjoyed in moderation, and there are some places on TikTok you should avoid. If you linger on videos showing teens twerking, you will get more videos of teens twerking; and it's easy to see how that kind of content makes it a worse place for teens specifically (plus the extreme prevalence of filters, so everyone on TikTok looks "better" than their real life version)

Sounds like a gigantic attention suck designed to stimulate addiction. Moreover, it’s unclear to me why opening the floodgates to more human expression without any concern for the quality of that expression is desirable. The virtue of social media seemed self evident in 2006 when we had little experience of what it would mean in practice; in 2021 however, I think the premise that megaphoning unfettered expression is inherently good requires justification, particularly given the instability it has introduced at the societal scale and the addictive behavior, poor mental health, and loss of concentration it has often imposed at the individual level.

Individual humans got along just fine for millennia without being able to broadcast the minutia of their thoughts for likes and subscribes: what are we really gaining by suddenly being able to do so in the course of two decades, and is it really worth the trade offs?

Humanity as a whole has spent the last couple Millennia accomplishing preciously little. Not because there weren't people with bright ideas, but because pivotal ideas often took centuries to spread. Many see the introduction of coffeehouses as a place of conversation in the 17th century as crucial for the Age of Enlightenment [1]. The speed with which we can enact technological and social change is proportional to the speed of exchange of ideas. In the 20th century the power to spread ideas had largely monopolized, but now the internet gives us many-to-many interaction beyond the local level. And I will gladly concede that we haven't figured how to do that properly, Facebook and Twitter seem like mostly failed experiments. But that doesn't mean that cracking the code for global many-to-many interaction isn't worth it.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...

I agree that precious little occurred in terms of technological advancement. However, I think it’s a more tendentious claim with respect to cultural achievement. For example, all the great epic poems of the Western tradition predate the Enlightenment (although there have been notable failed/incomplete epics since then). In terms of Humanism, it’s unclear to me that we’re doing better than our far less technologically sophisticated ancestors.

That aside, my broader concern is with our civilizational stability. We are still too close to and to involved in the events of the past two years to achieve any kind of objectivity, but I am increasingly concerned that, at least in the American context, things are not going to work out. Between worsening climate change, an incipient and solidifying neo-Fascist mass movement, the disinformational chaos of social media, the mass death of a pandemic, and an increasingly sclerotic US hegemony, our civilization is experiencing profound pressures of the sort which historically presaged extended periods of violence and chaos.

I hope that I am completely wrong, but it’s difficult to read the stories (and for that matter the crueler comments) of r/HermanCainAward and not come away with the conclusion that social media has broken our society to the tune of 2000 unvaccinated dead per day and counting.

The short format is very much like sales pitches, so everyone there is like a salesman, bser of sorts.

Millennials created this trend, Generation Z is growing it. Social media is essentially an addicting & fun platform for mass brainwashing.

> TikTok is imho one of the closest approximations of a marketplace of ideas

Given they are fairly aggressive at censoring views that run against progressive perspectives, can they really be a true marketplace of ideas? Topics like the lab leak theory or nuanced views on trans issues will net you a ban a lot sooner than on other platforms.

> taking less effort to consume than text (it's really hard to get people to engage with more than the headline in written content)

Why would someone for whom reading requires little effort want to engage with people for whom reading requires too much effort?

Short form can force the creator to cut the cruft and show the important part. Recipes, for example, don't include backstories about Grandma's doll collection or unnecessary banter between hosts, but do show how to "fold in the cheese".

[0] meme reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NywzrUJnmTo

[1] how to fold ingredients: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1JjaT-Y8Pc

Same reason you’d use twitter I suppose. That said TT’s biggest advantage is it’s recommendation engine. It really picks up quick your interests.

Downsides of tiktok is:

* can’t find upload date

* cant effectively share links in comments (they aren’t clickable)

* pretty confusing video editor if you don’t wanna share results

Because you actually get to see people in their environment and interact with them by speaking in response, as you would have in an actual conversation.

It's not about content, it's about communicating with video snippets.

Very interesting distinction. I remain deeply skeptical that this is a good or useful technology, but you’ve effectively summed up why it’s compelling to users in comparison to other social media. Thanks!

Except it's not. A natural conversation, that is. Crafting a TikTok isn't as trivial as responding to someone in-person. Maybe some videos are as effortless as they seem, but there's a ton more effort that goes into popular ones that I see than meets the eye. I'm not talking about cosplay where the performer has clearly spent an inordinate time on their costume, but the sheer amount of writing and takes and retakes and editing that go into a good amount of the content (on my FYP anyway. Maybe I self selected myself out of the "talk at phone while driving to work" corner of TikTok that is more conversational.)

If it was simply the short video aspect lending itself to feeling like it's a conversation that's driving engagement, Vine wouldn't have died the ignoble death it did. So imo there's more to it than that but it's definitely successful.

It is about content (imo) but that content came at the exact right time in humanity's history - during a pandemic when many people are feeling lonely, and a time when many people have their own smartphone and Internet is ubiquitous. The content, along with the algorithm surfacing it, is highly personal. While a video is obviously not personally made for me, the character in the video talks to me like it was, and that small delusion, makes the content highly engaging, and the short duration makes for more signal to plug into the algorithm.

There's a broader question of "why would I want to consume any sensory input? Why would I want to read a book, watch a movie, look at a sunset, have a conversation?" I can't help you there, consult your local philosopher.

But if you do want to consume sensory input, what I find TikTok excels at is: * Dances / skits * Musical collaborations (esp. The Wellerman) * Funny little videos like with a kitten or puppy * Recipes / cooking techniques

I particularly had in mind “why would I want to consume this particular form of sensory input in preference to others?” and “why is this good and useful to an individual and a society as opposed to just a platform for selling noise?” and “what are the social, ethical, and economic trade offs of devoting our time, privacy, and money to platforms like this?” As you note, these are questions that don’t necessarily have answers; I’m just trying to clarify for myself whether I should view 1B MAUs with dread, indifference, or appreciation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com