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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. That's basically the whole story.

Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally useful sense of the word, people just like it and use it. You may as well write a blog post saying "TV is addictive and it's dying because of commercials". It's just not an accurate conceptualization if the landscape.

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While you aren't using the words "algorithm" or "social", another perspective to see is that the "medium" is not just video. It is a specific type of short, repeatable, and trivialized pieces of video content. Created by mostly individual creators in niche social networks that convey extreme feelings of pain and pleasure in an infinite feed.

TikTok is addictive in every category. People are addicted to it just like people are addicted to other mediums like books, radio, and tv. Creators are also addicted to creating for it manipulated by incentives and sponsorship opportunities. It is a borderline technological narcotic.

To be human is to be addicted to something. We are addicted to the many "wants" in our lives being sold through these 15s-3 minute videos.

> You may as well write a blog post saying "TV is addictive and it's dying because of commercials"

When the going gets tough, the tough goes shopping.

There's actually a few books on this! i.e. consumerism and advertising

Four arguments for the elimination of television by Jerry Mander

Amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman

The shallows by Nicolas Carr

And the classic, brave new world by Aldous Huxley

Also Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The addictive quality of entertainment is a central theme, and the book contains the memorable Samizdat videotape that’s so entertaining you watch it immobilised until you die. The Samizdat is the reduction ad absurdim of TikTok era social media addiction.

I guess it’s not a new idea but it is a more potent version of the same. DFW himself had a serious TV addiction which is where that idea comes from.

My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.

Same here. I completely blocked myself from accessing to YouTube on my smartphone and MacBook, just because of the shorts. This stuff is so addictive that I couldn't avoid it in my free time for dozens of minutes every single time I've opened youtube.

Perhaps too late for you unless you open a new account, but I seriously recomend everyone here to never ever click on a YouTube short while logged in.

YouTube will proceed to show that content down your throat and if you are like most people you will let it. It will make your experience miserable though.

I've found quite effective blocking channels and actively informing yt "don't show me more like this"

I guess I'm lucky that the algorithm associates me with a very different crowd that I want to avoid at all costs.

All I get is Family Guy, sigma grindset nonsense, and military stuff. I hate all of those.

She can use custom apps for YouTube like Newpipe, which offer YouTube experiences without ads and Shorts.

I hadn't heard of newpipe before so just installed it and found that it had much more intrusive ads than regular YouTube.

There are no ads on new pipe. It just has a stupid trending tab with crap that is confusing. Ignore it, this is not your feed. Go to subscriptions which is what we used to have before tech giants convinced us otherwise with curated content.

Seriously, NewPipe is what all apps should aim to be like.

I had the same experience, but hopping over to F-Droid from the Play Store provided a different NewPipe (instead of 'Newpipe') that I believe is the pertinent one.

I think you download a clone of new pipe.

There is no Newpipe on the Play store, it breaks the T&S of the play store.

Here is the official website for Newpipe https://newpipe.net/

Git repo https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

I think you download a clone of new pipe.

There is no Newpipe on the Play store, it breaks the T&S of the play store.

Here is the official website for Newpipe https://newpipe.net/

Git repo https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

I deleted the browser and all but the most basic IM apps from my phone because every online experience seemed to be trending towards this.

Life is better, now. I highly recommend it. Your phone doesn't need a browser.

I wish I could filter out "shorts" from my Youtube subscriptions page/tab.

YouTube is video first.

I think TikTok is winning because their objective algorithm optimizes for a different outcome.

Facebook and YouTube optimize for time spent on the site. Youtube famously cut ad revenue for content that is watched for fewer than 10 minutes. They both make decisions based on what will increase time spent on the site, thinking that's the best way to sell ads.

TikTok optimizes for content that people love by giving the most reach to items that commenters buy gifts for. This has the side effect of making content that consumers really connect with get paid the most. There is a big difference between what people love and what makes people spend a lot of their time.

Facebook does not optimize directly for time spent, it's too hard. I know because I worked on these algorithms. Time spent is a metric Facebook monitors and works to increase over time, but basically no work is done to increase time spent directly. Facebook also tries to give more reach to content that people like. There are whole teams of people that work on that, they are just less good at it than TT.

Tiktok optimizes for similar metrics. There's no difference there. The main difference is that they are more focused and have been doing short form video from the ground up.

Could you share what metrics they optimistize or monitor? Or how do they improve their algorithms? I don't know how much you can tell but I always wanted to hear it from someone who has worked with them

Youtube is also a website first, whereas TikTok is an app first. Apps on mobile are usually harder to leave.

YouTube is losing (for me) because every video is now 12+ minutes long, and my sweet spot is closer to 5.

Sometimes you don't want long form content.

100% this. Everyone else is trying to make a tiktok clone and bolt it on to a maze of existing, and in some cases very similar, social media offerings. TikTok works because it's video only from the ground up.

then why didn't vine or snapchat or whatever other video first platform from yesteryear catch on as big too?

clearly there's more to it than "it's simply video first"

vine did! twitter mothballed it.

Twitter mothballed it’s because it didn’t catch on like TikTok did.

Vine was forced to intergrade into Twitter.

The fact that it's video first was necessary but not sufficient

yes thanks, that is much more clear

snap is not video first — yes it supports video, but it supports pictures just as well or better since they integrate into chats.

vine was literally killed by twitter.

vine did

snapchat isn't the same

they both had implementation differences and primarily execution differences that had little to do with their platform, and more so finances

its not just video, its video+algorithm, its video+algorithm+content-subsidies

a lot of popular content creators on TikTok are still from the vine days, getting paid a lot more directly by the platforms now, as well as from whatever they can monetize on and off the platform.

Bytedance (TikTok) is willing to throw a lot of money at this, and they've been extremely high on compensation for engineers for years before TikTok reached critical mass.

Phone hardware and telecommunications networks have only recently been powerful enough to support a TikTok-like social network. Video wouldn't have worked in 2015 in an era of 3G/4G phones and 4 inch iPhone 5's.

Vine launched in 2013, Periscope in 2015. I'm sure there are others. TikTok definitely takes advantage of the new hardware with their filters though.

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