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Comment by nemothekid | Hacker News Reader

I like that they asked actual users, and provided actual examples; it's something I've always felt off about Instagram's Reels vs TikTok. However the takeaway is that your TikTok feed is curated by hand by artisan robots vs Instagram is curated by lizards who only care about data.

Both companies are completely data driven with some amazing engineers; but why is the Reels product boring, while TikTok is engaging has to be something other than TikTok pulled the "wholesome" lever. (There was a ~month where I was getting incredibly depressing sideshows, so I don't think tiktok is 100% wholesome).

My theory has been that people have been conditioned out of posting to Instagram (if you don't have a literally perfect life, then why post) and as a result Instagram just has less content to draw upon. I think this effort to chase TikTok isn't going to pan out because "regular" people aren't posting to Instagram.

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As a millennial I can tell you exactly why TikTok is better:

1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.

2. Reels are often poor quality. What I see is mostly life hacks that are actually really stupid or jokes that never pay off.

3. TikTok has a creator culture that seems far superior to Reels. What Facebook/Instagram seem to fail to realize is that the problem they have isn’t a lack of a video platform but rather a lack culture. TikTok somehow did foster a really cool culture of people creating content, perhaps using their stitches feature.

4. Instagram is a photo sharing platform. Imagine if every other thing you saw on TikTok was a still photo. It would be jarring. That’s the current experience with reels.

5. I don’t know if this is actually true but it feels to me that you can get a lot more exposure quickly on TikTok than with Reels. I don’t post TikTok videos but know enough people who do and it seems they are very much able to get tens of thousands of views with minimal effort and while being relatively new to the platform. I don’t think you can get those numbers with Reels.

6. TikTok nailed ads. They are obvious, easy to skip, and not jarring at all. Instagram is a mess.

7. I come to Instagram to seek specific kind of content from my friends. I get reels from total strangers. I come to TikTok to get lols from random strangers and sometimes see friends. This is very personal but this is a major reason for me to use both and to dislike Reels.

> 1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.

OMG this... a million times this :/. YouTube has similar issues--where you watch one video from some sitcom or cartoon not because it was from that particular show but because it happened to be about something interesting and suddenly YouTube is SURE you LOVE that show and want EVERYTHING IT HAS about that show--but it isn't quite so bad as Instagram, where I've heard a ton of stories about ending up pigeonholed by its algorithm into something they have a phobia for or past trauma related to, and now they are afraid to use the app, because it really does feel like you click on one pimple popping video (which has come up as the SPECIFIC issue for MULTIPLE people I've talked to, INCLUDING MYSELF a while ago) and BAM the app is now nothing but pimples being popped, 24/7.

It's the dreaded "more of the same shit" algorithm that people confuse with deep learning and AI. The sad reality is that recommendation teams in these companies maintain some ugly gobbled together if .. else logic rather than a proper recommendation engine. Proper recommendation engines are hard. That's why recommendations change dramatically if you just use a vpn or travel. The IP address based geo location trumps everything else they might know about you. That's because there's a big if else around whatever other logic they have.

Add promoted content/ads to the mix that they are paid to promote and you end up with a mix of content that is primarily based on where you are, what they want to pimp in that region, and more of the same shit you were clicking on anyway; more or less in that order. The exact same shit quite often actually. Even filtering that out seems hard.

They are incentivized by ad clicks, not by your amusement. That's the business mistake that allows Tiktok to prosper because they are still trying to grow at the expense of their competition which means that they are in fact incentivized by your amusement as observed through your addictive behavior in the form of content clicks.

Instagram was like that once. And then Facebook bought them and started messing it up. Facebook was once like that until Facebook became an advertising company. The mistake that gets made over and over again in this space is that at some point they think they've won and start milking their network for revenue. The process of doing that destroys and erodes that network and something else pops up that is more interesting for users.

Tik Tok is doomed to go there too. Just a matter of time. It's irresistible for shareholders and advertisers. They'll get dollar signs in their eyes and they'll mess it up.

>It's the dreaded "more of the same shit" algorithm

This problem of not-enough-novelty in YouTube's recommendations is exactly why I am working on a team to develop alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel name to get a list of similar channels.

As an example: our recommendations for Tesla's channel includes James Locke, a small channel (~10k subscribers) with a researcher working on Full Self Driving for Tesla vehicles. There are also dozens of Tesla driving, electrification, and investing channels along with channels for some of Musk's other companies like The Boring Company on the list:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC5WjFrtBdufl6CZojX3D8dQ/

Proper recommendation engines are hard

Recommendations are hard in general, if at all possible in a meaningful way.

Idk why everyone is so focused on feeding a user from a spoon when they are adult and can explore by themselves. Just give them the option to explore North-West instead of a stupid slit facing 312° which they accidentally picked as an initial direction.

I’ve always wondered why they are so bad at learning such an obvious lesson from their supposed biggest threat. TikTok seems to always mix it up; even if you do actually want to watch pimple popping 24/7, they seem to throw in some totally unrelated thing once in a while. Turns out people easily find things they didn’t even know they would enjoy this way, and when they have many interests, their feeds are way more engaging.

What’s so hard about randomizing 10-20% of the time?

TikTok seems the only one who actually put thought about it, because that's exactly the beef I have with Spotify as well. You play a "song radio" and find a new song so you move to that other song radio but only to get exactly the same list maybe shuffled a bit. Somehow they create bubbles of content and that's it, no way out. At least on Spotify you can change bubbles, while on YouTube good luck.

Exactly. Youtube and Spotify show me the same things for six months at a time.

It's probably really easy, it's just crazy that they don't seem to want to. I could imagine them chasing the local maximum.

> you watch one video from some sitcom or cartoon not because it was from that particular show but because it happened to be about something interesting and suddenly YouTube is SURE you LOVE that show and want EVERYTHING IT HAS about that show

Extremely relevant Ryan George Youtube skit about this[1]. Once you click it, Youtube will probably want to show you nothing but Ryan George videos, but that's not a bad thing.

[1]: https://youtu.be/d8fJPvXyfc0

I actually used this accidentally to my advantage on Insta. I accidentally clicked on a fashion ad and now EVERY ad is fashion-something, which is the last thing I would ever care about.

Now I can easily spot any ad instantly because Insta is too stupid to realize NOTHING else I interact with has to do with fashion but because of that one time a year ago, they keep trying and I can quickly skip it.

I had one of those crop up in the reels carousel and freaked out because I very nearly tapped it by accident because there's no way to undo algorithm views on IG*

I'm as disgusted with the managers who think it's ok to push that content to people as I am with the content itself.

* FYI on YouTube I've had decent success correcting the algorithm if you go in and remove the video that started it from your watch history.

The reason I haven't deleted Instagram yet is because the algorithm is so bad it's as if there isn't one at all. It makes it much easier to break the dopamine cycle and not feel addicted. I spend half my time on there telling it that I don't like what it's showing me and I still get the same crap in my feed over and over.

> 6. TikTok nailed ads. They are obvious, easy to skip, and not jarring at all. Instagram is a mess.

Did they really nail ads or could it perhaps just be that they still consider themselves in a growth phase (perhaps depending on market) where they deliberately try to not use them as hard as they think they could?

A lot of the TikTok users that I follow are now getting sponsored to do ads as part of their regular content, and I will typically watch it because I am interested in the person and therefore interested in how they execute an advertisement. Win/win/win.

> I don’t think you can get those numbers with Reels.

Can you even watch a reel without an account? Because I know I can't watch stories and after clicking one or two pictures my IP is blocked entirely from Instagram for x hours.

I don't have this problem if someone sends me a TikTok link.

5. You can get a lot of exposure on tiktok whereas on Instagram they intentionally lower your organic exposure down to where it's now 1% or so of people who follow you who actually see your posts. Of course people are not going to post on Instagram then.

> Reels are often poor quality. What I see is mostly life hacks that are actually really stupid or jokes that never pay off

I keep seeing obviously reposted popular tiktok videos. The same ones, over and over again but with different accounts. Same on YouTube shorts.

I agree with all of this and I think the only thing I would add is that Tiktok understood the assignment was to be a mobile app. Everything about Tiktok is streamlined for mobile from the menus, to the time allotments, to a myriad of other design choices. Mobile is the future and, while I don't mean this to be snide towards pc enthusiasts, I find that a lot of people in my generation (millenials) and farther back just cannot comprehend how enjoyable a well designed mobile experience can be because they're stuck in old mindsets and habits. But Gen Z is growing up with phones that don't suck in their hands and the status quo of 'good enough' mobile apps is eventually going to be subverted by apps like TikTok imo that actually embrace mobile as a valid primary medium and not just as a lucrative lowest-common-denominator market.

> a lack culture. TikTok somehow did foster a really cool culture of people creating content

they were the only place you could post and share a video of yourself dancing / lip-syncing along to licensed music without getting DMCA'd

> I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that's work.

Yes, you in fact get better recommendation as you use it more.

Reading HN, sometimes it feels like I must be the only one in the world enjoying good recommendations from both YouTube and Instagram. I do have many thousands of watches and likes on YouTube and Instagram, but it didn't feel like work, because I accumulated them over years of use.

1. Is on point. I’m just a hobby photographer and follow some people for inspiration. I clicked on a comic from the discover page at one point and after that all the recommendations were just random Reddit like comics and posts. Same was when I randomly saw a picture of a tattoo and after that I only had tattoo pictures and reels in the discover section. It’s insane how bad it is.

I agree with all of this except for TikTok ads being obvious. To me, it is not at all obvious which ones have the little "sponsored" at the bottom.

I feel like TikTok took the Vine idea to its natural extent. Meanwhile Facebook/Meta shoehorning Snap & TikTok features into Instagram ruined Instagram and wasted their lead.

Many big tech companies don't perform real R&D, instead they're fast-followers - piggybacking off whatever their competitors do, but the truth is that "disruption should come from within" because letting a competitor design your next product feature is f'n foolish (we see this a lot with consumer hardware too).

Imagine if Facebook/Meta actually focussed on Instagram's core strengths, and had cultivated a proper community or reason for being (e.g like YouTube or Twitch), rather than just spending all that time thinking about how they can squeeze more ad revenue: sure they might have not have had such big short-term ad sales, but Instagram would have found its feet and not have been so easily disrupted - heck, this might have led to innovative ways of advertising: two-birds-with-one-stone imagine that! (/s)

I think I speak for many when I say this is a core frustration with Facebook/Meta. There is nothing exciting coming out of their company because they don't make new ideas* and that leaves themselves open to disruption. By being too focused on ad revenue their acquisitions haven't progressed since day one, instead each looks like a Frankenstein's monster of the same app but with loads of ads and competitor's features bolted on.

* Even the much hyped metaverse isn't offering anything new.

Kind of funny when somebody talks about having PM experience from Meta... Bro, you didn't do anything at all.

Yeah, what happened to Vine? I haven't heard that name for quite some time.

Twitter just turned it off one day a few years ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It actually blows my mind how Twitter decided to kill Vine when it was very clear that they had an amazing opportunity. Vine was still very popular when they axed it especially considering how many of the popular TikTok and YouTube creators today were originally big on Vine.

Starting to wonder if it was bias towards what they consider "valuable" users on Twitter e.g increasingly irrelevant celebrities, literal twitter addicts and journalists and how they didn't use it. Rather than understanding they could build the breeding ground for the next round of creators/celebs/influencers.

I wonder if that is part of the reason @jack is no longer the CEO

> I think this effort to chase TikTok isn't going to pan out because "regular" people aren't posting to Instagram.

For me that isn't the case - I follow mostly "regular" people and enjoy it, but...

The problem I have with Instagram is that when I open the app I want to see the photos that people I've followed have posted since I last opened, it in time order. Yet It's quite a struggle not to see reels or suggested posts or people posting spam. 50% of the time I open IG the first post shown to me is from a hashtag I follow but its an image of an attractive young women with a very loose connection to the hashtag.

By copying other successful paradigms within IG and FB, Meta are destroying what remains of the products and users they have. I occasionally use TikTok but don't want to see a weak version of it on IG

This is an issue that is killing FB/Insta and I am not sure why nobody in Meta seems to get this. Apps attract people with certain expectations and mindset. When I want to login to FB/Insta, I want to see posts from people I know. Unfortunately, I made a mistake to like posts from few groups and that was basically the end of my newsfeed. Now all I get is posts from the grops from random people. Eventually it becomes same-old same-old and you quit.

But here's the most braindead thing FB has done: They actually have feature called "show first" which I tried to use it to force FB show posts from friends and not from groups. But some PM there probably made decision that this is not a good idea and forced to limit to only 30 people! So, now when I log in to FB, I get few posts from 30 people and then it's garbage from groups again.

It is beyond me how no one can see these issue there.

Ironically by pushing Reels so hard Instagram has been TikTok's best promoter. A large portion of reels have a TikTok watermark.

TikTok is banned in India now, but when it was active, my feed was filled with content from daily wage labourers, farmers, and people living in small towns and villages. It was unpolished stuff but delightfully sincere and fun.

Reels just feels way too urbane and polished. Just not the same vibe.

I think there's something profoundly beautiful about teenagers living in tin roof shacks on the other side of the world from kids living in million dollar houses doing the same dances/memes/etc, as if they are equal peers. Maybe there's something for us adults to learn here?

The problem with asking "actual users" in this way, is that it fundamentally ties the user's pre-existing conception of these apps to their responses. If a user had been served the same content on Reels that they were on TikTok, it's difficult to see them having the same reaction.

An actual scientific experiment would have like recently fallen away Amish teens compare these apps having never used them.

or present them with the videos through some kind of neutral UI

the UI itself can be tested separately

But they weren't? You can't just discount Reels having worse content.

> My theory has been that people have been conditioned out of posting to Instagram (if you don't have a literally perfect life, then why post) and as a result Instagram just has less content to draw upon. I think this effort to chase TikTok isn't going to pan out because "regular" people aren't posting to Instagram.

This is a good observation. From my IG acquaintances too, it seems that only those with instagrammable lives are the ones still posting. The guy who does scenic hikes, the girl who goes to the exciting parties, those with perfect bodies. The occasional wedding or graduation photo. Many others have stopped posting pictures completely or sporadically post photos.

Maybe TikTok trains on product data and validates on expert human rater data? This is a strategy that search engines used to use. Maybe they still do, but they used to too.

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