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Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's the privacy issues that will defeat TikTok, I think it's the deception of a success economy being possible on the platform.

In the past few weeks I've been observing a lot of marginal content trending on the platform which indicates to me that a lot of the more quality posters aren't posting new content.

The minute quality creators leave a platform is the minute it dies. TikTok has not really been rewarding creators fairly, and pushes the idea that organic growth is possible, and that people have become really successful, but many creators realize after months of working for little to no reward that it's a false narrative.

There are billions of accounts on these platforms yes, but the main question is are they actively posting, engaged, and satisfied? The answer is most likely no, and that's why Twitter didn't sell fast too.

I wrote about this issue just earlier today -

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046338

View on HN

> The minute quality creators leave a platform is the minute it dies. TikTok has not really been rewarding creators fairly, and pushes the idea that organic growth is possible, and that people have become really successful, but many creators realize after months of working for little to no reward that it's a false narrative.

I heard the opposite story from 2 creators in my local language.

Their growth on Tiktok is crazy, one got a million followers in less than a year, this is almost impossible in YouTube or Any Facebook based social media, also the amount of interaction and views on videos is amazing compared to YouTube.

Its why many are going to tiktok, even if they don't like the Platform, its actually possible to reach people, while on other platforms such as Instagram, you have to pay to reach even half of your followers.

Now that YouTube has shorts I wonder how many creators are switching. Part of the reason you can get so many followers on TikTok is the video length. When it started you could only post a 15-second video. Later on they allowed you to link 15-second videos up to a minute in length. Then it was 3 minutes, and in February they changed the maximum video time to 10 minutes.[1]

Viewers can watch a lot more 15-second or 1-minute videos than 10-minute videos. If 5-10 minute videos start becoming popular, expect the reach new creators can get to drop drastically.

1. https://screenrant.com/tiktok-videos-minimum-maximum-length-...

They are all portrait mode videos though, not very versatile and useful in the long term... Actually, portrait content was dying off before TikTok...

It's bewildering how they warehouse so much content that will really not endure, at some point they're likely going to need to archive a lot of TikTok user posts, because the content is very low quality overall, and a lot of the content generated is limited by it's context.

It probably be a huge sticker shock to see the monthly cloud hosting bill for any one of these apps.

What does one million followers mean though? Who cares about that unless you can monetize. Teens can’t monetize so their social capital is views.

They monetize by advertising on behalf of companies to their viewers. And they have no idea how to price their monetization so I presume the companies are winning here

I noticed a similar narrative and noticed it even first hand on some accounts I am following on Instagram which only recently started moving to TikTok. The growth is insane. Comedians with something like 10k followers on Instagram getting 1-2m views on their TikToks in their first few vids. But they are fully adjusting to the TikTok format and dynamic.

On instagram I am increasingly seeing ads for popular sports and music stars - which I would suspect could be triggered by unsatisfying reach or growth for them and Instagram cutting down even more on free exposure.

If TikTok can sustain a mechanism that boosts new creators it will be golden for a long time. Organic growth seems to be dead for Instagram and YouTube unless someone puts in 10x the effort than for TikTok.

They constantly tweak the bias of what is shown on these platforms to keep engagement high. By the minute we talk about a trend online, the bias has already changed to a new focus. All of these sites are driven by manipulating users into compliance and over-investment of time and money. That is how they make ad revenue to pay overhead, and create product dependency.

The problem is that there are so many people addicted to the possibility of being a popular influencer that no one is being honest about how little real success and money they make on these platforms... In truth it may be a possibility that most users are completely faking social media success.

How do users know that those followers are human?

Based on what I've observed, most organic followers are scripts, and views are carefully metered and pre-determined based on each account's personal characteristics. The merit system isn't conducted without bias.

TikTok forces use primarily of it's app, and only offers limited use in web browsers, which makes their methods less transparent.

For successful YouTubers, the money coming from YT is actually not their primary income, one YouTuber publically said YT payout is ~1/4 of their total revenue. Their other main sources of revenue includes brand deals, affiliates, product/merc sales and direct donation.

Tiktokers are generally following YouTuber model in how they monetize their content, minus Ads revenue share.

If Microsoft said "Come work for us every day for free, you may get brand deals!"

Would anyone with talent, skills, and self respect jump to do it?

Working for free at a large and quite profitable company?

The problem is that because of how perception can be manipulated on social platforms based on that success illusion. It makes people think that the success comes just for creating simple content, and trumps one's ability to prioritize making money to do real world things like paying rent and for food. It's borderline exploitation of children, who often over expose themselves just for likes, and that is going to be bad for their future prospects in being taken seriously when they want to get real world and respectable jobs.

It's free work with little reward. The brand deals go to celebrity creators, NOT to normal creators, while the platform profits massively and underpays most everyone who does the real work. Most of the influencers on these platforms find that even the popularity they gain fades quickly in the real world, especially as the platforms begin to decline in popularity as well, and the minute they stop working hard for free.

We need to stop fooling ourselves about it all.

Umm people definitely don't consider posting on tiktok "labor" like you're suggesting. a) It's fun, and b) they're getting social status / minor celebrity status. Even if there was no chance of making any money I can guarantee you people would still try to grow a following.

Posting tiktoks =/= working a 9-5 at Microsoft

There are quite different experiences outside of your own. Many people and businesses work on TikTok and every other social platform, there is a creator fund on pretty much every major platform out there. Millions of people work full time to find success on sites like TikTok, and almost every trending post is an ad for some sort of business, or for profit. Don't just lean on your own personal understanding and experiences.

Fair. I guess I just don't think TikTok is misleading anyone into thinking once you hit x views, x likes, and x follows, you'll see an appropriate financial return. Maybe I'm wrong though. I figured everyone views (or at least should view) TikTok HQ as a kind of neutral medium, not an employer.

I have a moderately successful YouTube channel and good instagram following. Filming, editing , posting and commenting on 2 videos a week is absolutely a job.

Even normal creators, on YouTube and TikTok, can get paid; it's called the Partner Program and Creator Fund respectfully the bar to clear it is relatively low. From there you can earn yourself a percentage of those millions; at roughly one dollar for everyone million views.

It's not different than acting or professional sports; and it's far better than Facebook/Twitter model where they monetize your content with no path revenue at all. Among my list of problems with YouTube/TikTok, the revenue model is not one of them.

Vine died because quality creators left the platform, and they left the platform because Vine wasn't willing to pay them to stay. The formula is remarkably simple and for these next generations, many of them only know social media personalities. I fear that your definition of "quality content" has been shaped by your upbringing; what you consider "simple content" is "real content" for people who grew up on these platforms. I'm sure you are unaware of the thousands of creators who have millions of followers in niches you have never even heard about. While the content is "simpler" it is more diverse than you can even imagine; and thats where the staying power comes from.

Given that there are 8 billion people, a video that is watched by everyone on this planet once will make $8000 then. Not sure any self-respecting actor or professional athlete would work for that kind of money. Djokovic had a much smaller audience this Sunday, and he made £2000000. I don't see him switching to TikTok.

I think TikTok will stay for a while but you are onto something regarding the deception. An issue with TikTok is that the shelf-life of its content-creators is pretty short. Usually they hit it big with 1 video that gets picked up by the algorithm. And then all their subsequent videos are them trying to recapture that lightning. You can keep it going for a bit and develop a decent following but eventually it gets boring.

How do most users interact with TikTok? through the FYP (for you page) which is the algo curated feed that you can endlessly scroll through. From my observations - FYP starts out by showing you content from creators in your geolocation (drains so much battery cuz it loves to use location services). From there it will try to associate you with trending hashtags in content you are more likely engage with. Most important engagement metric is watch-time. So if you complain that your tiktok is full of porn/horny content then you probably have high watch-time in these areas. It will alternate between showing you vids of high user engagement (1M+), medium engagement (<1M) and low engagement (<1K) in the trending hastags/topics it associates with you.

So the content and trends move very fast. Eventually your schtick gets old.

Not everyone is cut out to be an entertainer. That quickly becomes apparent when scrolling through TikTok, but it's good at pushing endless encouragement, tips, and other hype that keeps people believing they can be famous for sharing their personal life details. If I was a parent, this would worry me terribly, because children are so impressionable.... But even grown adults overshare on the app frequently...

Not everyone is meant to be an entertainer, but now pretty much everyone invested in social media operates as if a camera is constantly on them.. This ego-centric self-esteem-influenced social media "influencer model" drives even terrible things now too, like school shootings and personal harm.

Isn't TiKTok doing a better job than incumbents like Twitter, IG?

"Economy"? What "economy" is ByteDance promising?

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