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Comment by tonymet | Hacker News Reader

they mention data harvesting and influencing public relations as risks, and both are worrisome . another more subtle but pernicious concern is the trivialization of entertainment (which started from a low bar )

tiktok is addictive and much of the content is low bar , slapstick and sexually suggestive thirst traps .

there may be a good share of high quality content , but we all know time spent is on garbage.

our grandparents said “tv will rot your brain” and we laughed at them, but maybe because we just didn’t notice

tiktok will finish the job

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Imo tiktok is a bit of a mirror. Its a thirst trap for you. For the short time i used it, it quickly started centering around cute/funny pets and science explainer videos. I also doubt it would show thirst traps to the typical straight female user too too.

I think GP's point still stands. There is good content on TikTok, but given the time many users spend, the content isn't a good trade for time. Same could be said for other platforms. Tiktok/youtube worry me most since they seem to be the most addictive for kids.

I hate this argument. Firstly, the content is still on the platform and can be shown to a user at any time for any reason. Over time it could influence what you watch in any way TikTok wants. Secondly, it paints the user as some kind of pervert if they fall into "thirst trap". Men like looking at women - it's not something that needs to be swept under the rug.

"Sir the algorithm is correct. It just told me that you are a pervert and I am wholesome."

We truly are living in a computer's world where what AI thinks of us is increasing "the truth". Who has gotten time for nuance.

This is not tiktok specific. This is pretty much all user generated short form social media content.

Tiktok has just been better at surfacing the content. Also tiktok is more for consumption and less for socializing with friends or acquaintences.

fr it's scary how i watch ppl on it, they're like zombies. and yeah like half that shit is just girls "dancing" (shaking jiggly parts) in short clothes, like i mean that's fine but watching it all the time isn't healthy. look at how much is under #fakebody which is basically all people in short clothing trying not to get banned. and yeah probably you can make it show interesting stuff but it plays to people's weaker natures.

besides that literally the only reason we need to oppose tiktok is that it's chinese. i'm fine with them manufacturing commodity goods but they should not be providing any cutting-edge tech to us. personally i would like to see the government try to subpoena the tiktok algo from oracle and make it public so anybody can knock it off. that would be some poetic justice against china.

It's pretty ironic how a large swath of the public decided it was the right thing to ban anything that's Russian, but somehow it's a no-no to be opposed to an app because it's from the PRC. Not saying that necessarily means that no one should use any Chinese apps, but those against anything Russian really ought not to come to the defense of the PRC.

PRC is not quite on the same scale as long as they respect borders.

Russia is being banned because of their invasion on Europe and mass murdering civilians. It's more similar to US in this regard than to China.

Why can you talk about stealing technology so openly?

Why not do the same with other companies? Do you totally assume that it's just economic war?

This comment follows a pattern common in other comments criticising TikTok - the person says “this content I saw isn’t very good. Why would anyone spend their time watching X?”

> sexually suggestive thirst traps

Not realising that only they (and people with similar tastes) are seeing X. And it says more about them than it does about TikTok.

There’s plenty of room for thoughtful critique of TikTok and it’s current/potential impact on society - but this ain’t it. The original article by the economist is much closer.

Yeah people who complain about Tik Tok being filled with X bad thing are spending their time engaging with X bad thing. There's A LOT of really good content on Tik Tok.

somehow hackernews is full of saints who never check out soft porn on tiktok .

I’ll go one better than that. I’ve never installed TikTok, nor have I checked out someone else’s phone with TikTok one it. I couldn’t tell you what the UI looks like even if you put a gun to my head.

So no, we’re all not on there checking out soft porn.

slow clap

Isn't this exactly what they said about porn?

Last I checked - everyone's doing alright.

not sure where you are checking by most indicators they aren’t . and we have plenty evidence porn is harmful

What's your definition of alright, and what have you done to check?

If it's the kind of check where you look around, and see that the world goes by - then the same "everyone's doing alright" could be said to dismiss all of history's horrors so far.

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