Hacker News Reader

Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

> I'm in my mid-40s: there's nothing deep or mysterious to "get" about TikTok. It's short-form video snips/vignettes, mainly of people showing off for their friends, trying to cash in on short-lived audio trends and meme pipelines, and sometimes both.

What this misses is that TikTok is a radically different experience for different people.

For some people, this description is very accurate. For other people, they would barely recognize TikTok on the basis of this description.

This is what has led to so many mis-representations of TikTok in the media, and the misunderstandings that result from that.

View on HN

>For other people, they would barely recognize TikTok on the basis of this description.

Not following. Who are the "other people" and how would they describe it otherwise?

TikTok has a very good algorithm for suggesting content for users, and this can end up with different users being exposed to radically different subsets of content offered through TikTok: in scientific terms, it’s very easy to get stuck in different local minima.

So for many users, TikTok will not involve “showing off to friends”, will not involve audio trends, and will not involve memes at all.

These users would describe it as containing short-form video content relevant to whatever their particular niche or interest may be.

Yes, the algorithm is a poor algorithm that overfits. It is not a good algorithm by any reasonable measure, unless the intent specifically is to commit users to such a funnel.

Whether the content is stupid cat videos or a DIY isn't relevant to my original point: it's short-form video content developed by people attempting to cash in on some meme (or niche), and very much in the vein of showing off for one's peers. Some like to think that if it's not an audio meme, but rather an undergrad waxing poetic about just learning Schrodinger's Equation or some handy person displaying his DIY skills that it's not about cashing in/showing off. But it is.

Of course the intent is to commit users to a funnel or funnels.

I still don’t think you get that when you complain about the content being trite or juvenile or commercial(?), you’re outing yourself as someone who will stop to watch that kind of stuff.

Because Tiktok aggressively individualizes the content shown, people with different tastes get radically different videos shown.

If you skip past the memes, fads, dances, etc. it will show you other types of content until it identifies what you will stop scrolling to watch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com