TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone | Hacker News Reader

TikTok’s greatest asset isn’t its algorithm, it’s your phone

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183 pointsbookofjoe268 comments

I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations. I am deeply concerned when I see kids hooked on that crack, because they are burning their potential. It's scary, and if I had one far fetched easy theory to make, I'd say TikTok is a way for China to mitigate the threat coming from the west's upcoming generations, by ensuring their collective capabilities are as limited as possible. That theory doesn't stand though, as TikTok (Douyin) also operates in China. No kid is spared.

But, two things:

- What they collect is literally nothing special. Worse things happen, and have happened in mobile apps/mobile SDKs. (remember Onavo, acquired by Facebook? Way worse). What do we think Google and Apple know about our devices (Check Apple terms, it's good fun [0])? Isn't this again about the recurring fear/shock that a Chinese company should not hold data about western citizens?

- the article isn't about how much TikTok can know by being in our phones, despite what most comments here imply. Instead, it's about how deeply TikTok taps in users minds by leveraging the unhealthy and addictive relationship we have with phones, acting as "prosthetic extension of our [my] corporeal being".

> What matters is that we rely on these external tools in the way we rely on our brain; if those objects are similarly accessible, endorsed, and integrated into cognition, we should simply consider them part of the mind.

[0] https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1589239911219331072

> TikTok (Douyin) also operates in China. No kid is spared.

Can’t vouch for the following observation, since I’ve never used either one, but:

"In their version of TikTok, if you're under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos," said Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

"And they also limit it to only 40 minutes per day. Now they don't ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world. So it's almost like they recognize that technology's influencing kids' development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,"

https://thepostmillennial.com/tiktoks-chinese-platform-enric...

So 1. The Chinese govt makes laws restricting these apps for young children which are only valid in China, 2. Tiktok obeys local laws in China and local laws in the US, 3. the US and other Western govts don't force social media companies to make the apps safer for children, and you are blaming the Chinese govt for making American kids stupid and addicted?

How does the behavior of Instagram, Pinterest and others fit into this theory?

Very valid points until, "and you are blaming the Chinese". It was a quote of someone else.

They may as well take advantage of the enemy’s weakness.

Any kind of amusing content for kids is time restricted in china. If a western game company wants to get into the market, they need to implement time limits & age checks.

Are they linked at all? Otherwise if you add up all the time limits they must exceed a day...

Yes, they're linked by some form of government ID. Of course, it's probably very easy to get around that in some manner by just playing offline games or using a parent's ID.

The question is asking about multiple apps coordinating.

Wouldn’t this require a central database and an API for querying/updating time spent in an app per ID? Where is that API?

Yes that's what I meant, the apps coordinate by being linked to some government ID. At least that's what I've heard.

I am quite skeptical of this. There would have to be an API. There would have to be documentation for that. There would likely be keys assigned to individual apps.

Couldn't they just send the government 'ID #11111 has played our game for 30 minutes' and 'ID#11111 is requesting a login how much time do they have left' and let the gov track the specifics

Of course they could. It would obviously be an enormous security problem. Apps would have to know the government ID of children. Nefarious entities could stage denial-of-service attacks against individuals.

Obviously China could do this. I am skeptical of the claim presented as hearsay without evidence.

If such a system exists, there should be easily found documentation for it.

"In addition, minors were required to use their real names and national identification numbers when they logged on to play and companies like Tencent and NetEase (9999.HK), set up systems to identify minors.

In July, Tencent rolled out a facial recognition function dubbed "midnight patrol" that parents can switch on to prevent children from using adult logins to get around the government curfew."

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/why-how-china-is-drastic...

That does not support the claim that apps are coordinating to restrict usage.

"in 2019, it passed laws limiting minors to less than 1.5 hours of online games on weekdays and three hours on weekends, with no game playing allowed between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. It also limited how much minors could spend on virtual gaming items each month, with maximum amounts ranging from $28 to $57, depending on the age."

How could this be done without coordination?

In addition: "One of the first systems required by the government was launched in 2005 to regulate adolescents' Internet use, including limiting daily gaming time to 3 hours and requiring users' identification in online video games.[134] In 2007, an "Online Game Anti-Addiction System" was implemented for minors, restricting their use to 3 hours or less per day. " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China

Yes, coordination between apps would be the hard part and I see no evidence that it exists. There is a lot of writing in English that does not point to anything canonical from China. It does not make clear exactly what obligations are placed on app developers. I remain skeptical that coordination between applications is happening.

I would love to see any evidence of this. It should be easy if it exists as there would be documentation telling app developers how to use the central database. I would imagine an ecosystem of libraries would exist to make it easier for app developers to satisfy these obligations.

They do this. Basically everything runs straight through wechat, as if the facebook appstore hadn't lost relevance. Wechat is the api in most cases. You can even go to court on it.

Every app is using WeChat? TikTok coordinates with WeChat? Or uses the same API? Is this documented somewhere?

I've dug into this more out of curiosity:

They're called "mini programs" (小程序): You can see the dev pages etc. here: https://developers.weixin.qq.com/miniprogram/en/introduction...

These days, the vast majority of mobile development happens on this platform. They can have 100 million daily users in some cases.

Otherwise, you have to get an approval license from the government, per game. This had been blocked for a long time until recently: https://www.thegamer.com/china-approving-game-licenses-again...

These government pages discuss the process (but only in Chinese): https://www.nppa.gov.cn/nppa/channels/301.shtml or http://web.archive.org/web/20200605135934/www.sapprft.gov.cn... Note, only Chinese companies can go through the process. Apparently the process includes interfacing with the API, which isn't public. But some guys I pmed on reddit said they can interact with government ID servers or wechat auth. The 2nd api is public: https://developers.weixin.qq.com/doc/oplatform/en/Mobile_App...

I appreciate you digging this up.

It is still unclear to me how a Weixin ID corresponds to a government issued ID and how an app would know that a user is a minor.

The Chinese mandate you linked to describes the same rules as elsewhere, but there is no indication of how they would be implemented. Does a "real name" policy mean that an login is tied to a government ID? Or does it just mean what Facebook does to make users more valuable to advertisers?

I'm astounded that there is so much gossip about this and so little evidence.

> I'm astounded that there is so much gossip about this and so little evidence.

Welcome to discussion of China in Western media.

You're right though, I've never seen anything official about what I originally said, only reports about it.

> Welcome to discussion of China in Western media.

Yes, as someone who lived through the Cold War and has been studying Mandarin for a few years, I cannot help but see parallels in how everything about China is being muddled.

Oh nice, I'm at university right now with Mandarin as part of my degree. The politics around China is certainly interesting.

This is a country that has "great firewall", social credit system for all citizens with centralized API etc. It's not a problem for them to create an API for this.

I agree it would be no problem. It would obviously be an enormous security problem. Apps would have to know the government ID of children. Nefarious entities could stage denial-of-service attacks against individuals.

Obviously China could do this. I am skeptical of the claim presented as hearsay without evidence.

If such a system exists, there should be easily found documentation for it.

I keep hearing about a "social credit system for all citizens" but have never seen evidence of its existence.

When have we ever expected companies to do the right thing? Governments are needed to come up with regulations for that, but restricting which content or how much someone can consume, even kids, would be touted as deeply authoritarian in our societies. So the otus is then on parents...

> restricting which content or how much someone can consume, even kids, would be touted as deeply authoritarian in our societies

No. We have industry-voluntary schemes such as PEGI ratings, and most products have kid-friendly modes. Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime all have kid-specific modes, for example. They're selling to parents, and that's what parents want, so that's what they get.

You're right that governments are needed to make regulations, but not that regulations are needed.

Parents also want cheap gas and big engines that make them feel macho, and to be able to use hand me down car seats of dubious safety.

Sometimes what's good for society takes precedence over what people want.

Sometimes, as you say. Even the car seats fall into the not-society category more than the society category.

And happily your examples are nothing to do with the call for regulations on the topic of having kid-safe versions of content production, so I feel encouraged.

Won't someone think of the child-car-seat manufacturers?! The second hand market is driving them to ~bankruptcy~ [buying fewer yachts]! /s

Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids? All I see is a selection of content that is appropriate for children. It is much easier to set a limit on a device that is cold and inhuman and can't be pleaded with for more screen time than it is to try and manually enforce such a limit.

It is easier, I agree. We solved the problem a different way entirely, so I don't know, but perhaps putting the TV power itself on a timer could work? Timer on Netflix doesn't mean they can't switch to D+ or other.

> Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids?

It's called parenting

> It is much easier to set a limit on a device that is cold and inhuman and can't be pleaded with for more screen time than it is to try and manually enforce such a limit.

If you don't want to do parenting, then you can also block access to netflix (or from the tv or whatever) at your router.

While I mostly agree with you there’s an interesting discussion to be had that China also has parents, and they’ve decided that it’s not enough to rely on parenting to address childhood addiction to things like social media. You can argue it’s a good or a bad thing but clearly they’ve taken a different approach, and whether that leads to empirically better outcomes is worth exploring.

A cynic could say China's culture is to cede far more to state control. US culture is to cede it to corporate control.

Either way it's a symptom of parents outsourcing parenting, because the culture in both countries is for parents to work 120 hours a week.

TBH Chinese are still very hands on helicopter parents, even when they work ass off. The issue is you can be strict and controlling and still lose to corporations who spend billions to engineer addictive products. Which at minimum takes disproportionate resources / attention to mitigate. Hypothetically this is where parents complain to state to regulation since ostensibly corporations are suppose to cede control to state. Plus don't have to be the badcop trying to enforce screentime when state takes that choice away. Also plenty of parents who cede control to corporations and allow products to baby sit their kids by giving kids access to adult ID to circuvent restrictions. I feel like US voters are pessimistic their gov can shape corporations in some realms. Like loot box regulations for youth feels like it shouldn't be that difficult to pass.

Thanks for the parent shaming.

Yeah, no, I do not want the government rearing children, thanks.

You probably just meant you don't want a nanny state but as stated it can be interpreted as abolish public schools.

For all their other sins, at least China seems aware of the dangers of unfettered access to all that "tech" has to offer. I've long been of the opinion that it's insane for a country to allow any agent (in the broadest sense of the word) anywhere in the world, direct and unlimited access to their citizens' life, thoughts, and desires through the internet.

I'd love to have someone verify this. If you type Douyin into YouTube you see the platform contains the same nonsense videos that TikTok has. So we know the content is similar. The question is the experience really different for users under 14. And if so, how is this enforced? If it's a matter of stating your birth date when you sign up then I don't think the restriction means much.

Might be problematic if they enforce identity verification. With social passports and other nonsense it might be impossible to just register new anonymous account.

Who would have thought that WW3 is fought via social media apps.

WW3 started years ago, and we have only just started to realise. The objective of this war is to turn the citizens of your enemies' countries into useless, self-absorbed, self-hating nobodies.

For those of you who have read The Hobbit, I see the "Culture War" as something more akin to the scene in that book where the trolls were turned to stone. That is - while we may think we are involved in some great "culture war", fighting the (online) forces of anti-democracy, bigotry, racism, etc etc - actually all that is intended is that we are arguing amongst ourselves.

I have come to a similar conclusion. The intelligence services seem to be completely oblivious to any of it and are still staring at the horizon for some enemy plane to enter their territorial space when at home their daughters and at college their sons get run over by algorithmically enhanced fine-tuned propaganda: to either weaken their bodies, drug up their minds or cannibalize their culture. That’s taking the second front of the late Cold War to an entirely new level of warfare.

But maybe I am mistaken.

Are they doing that voluntarily? Or is that something that is forced on them by the government?

Regulation. That basically sums up American and Chinese political differences.

When is regulation ever voluntarily?

From what i heard Chinese parents complained to their government about their children losing time on social media and their government reacted by regulating that space in their society.

opium wars?

> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations.

I have lots of concerns about TikTok and refuse to use it myself. But this is ridiculous - and that upsets me quite a bit because is delegitimizes the actual problems with TikTok. TikTok will not lower anyone's IQ. This is straight up just old man yelling at cloud. And that does us all a disservice.

Agreed.

They said that about radio. They said that about TV. They said that about computers. They said that about dumbphones. They said that about smartphones. They're now saying that about apps.

They said it about huffing paint thinner too, to be fair.

I think most of these statements are actually far more true than we give them credit for. Not necessarily because of what they do but because what they displace.

I was in senior year of high school when World of Warcraft dropped. Half my class went from high performing bright eyed students to zombies barely passing classes because they stayed up until 3 AM doing raids every day.

It's largely the same sort of problem as with weed and alcohol. It's not that you'll go stark raving mad or your arms fall off, but you sort of just stop doing other things. There is no time for it, and you have no will to make time for it. You become so sedated you're essentially fine doing nothing in particular all your life.

This was a problem with most of the things you listed. Each got progressively better at it.

Why were "they" wrong? Is it because the issues of each successive development in mass media made those of the previous iteration look quaint? It's easy to look back on (for example) TV as a harmless diversion, but it was a radical development in the dissemination of visual information.

Also this is a funny argument. If these things are truly making people dumber but the change is happening on a generational level, then a dumber generation would not realize that it is dumber than the previous one.

It's also further muddied by other changes - like changes in education in the past 50 years - which makes the phenomenon harder to isolate and to judge.

I don't know about IQ but it does reduces people's attention span and that's the reason to limit the video length to few seconds.

Previous generations spouted the same strawman about TV, and in general, all previous forms of media

I am pretty damn sure if I didn't waste tons of time as a kid in front of TV and even more in front of computer playing highly addictive games my IQ score would be higher, I would have much wider breadth of knowledge and would be a more complete person.

I caught up on that later on life, but no thanx to this addictive media, but rather by cutting them off and spending time better, much better.

Let's not normalize addictions, human brains for some evolutionary reason we don't grok completely yet have this weakness, which was probably a strength in distant past.

Have you seen many kids these days where parents don't curate their access to internet? My friend there is no big difference between rock-bottom heroin addict and them. Trying all kinds of mind tricks, extortion, fists, lying, stealing (devices) just to get more tiktok time, watch more streams, play more online games. It is a sad view, and normalizing it hurt those victims badly.

My kiddos are too small for this (1 i almost and another a bit more than a year) but I can already see how addictive screens are to those, even if we play them old bedtime tales from youtube that we used to watch as kids. Now active screens are on completely different levels and kids have no way to defend themselves. Heck look at how many adults are addicted to that. Many even refuse to admit it, like word "addict" means failure, rock-bottom, needle sticking out of forehand instead of spectrum of impairments, ie higher restlessness, being more nervous etc. Just like sugar of nicotine withdrawals.

I interviewed for a data science product manager role (I am one) at a games company. They were doing very interesting things with generative models however the person running it’s speciality was a Phd in addiction (and plenty of work in the field)

Was so interesting from an intellectual stand point but so very very evil.

A 2016 talk by Tribeflame CEO Torulf Jernström about the monetization of mobile games called "Let's Go Whaling!" also caused a bit of a ruffle a while ago.

Ominously delivered with smug smirk, met by smug laughter: "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk. We can discuss it, if we have time, later."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

Turns out they would have had time later but for some reason opted not to.

It’s like the wonderfully pretty, comfortable offices of Phillip Morris. Help everyone forget where their salaries come from.

Sounds like EA but I'm not sure if you can even speak about that right now :D

I am in no way interested in not letting people know about this. It is outrageous.

How to give the gift of dopamine no matter where you are in your gaming journey.

Introduce ‘gifts’, monitor effect and then mass deploy. All using ML tools.

Clever but oh so awful.

What was the company name?

Playtika

I made an account to reply to this. I don't think this is a China/TikTok issue but more an issue of how the west is treating its people.

Sure, social media/TikTok shows impressionable people that you can earn a (good) living by making content (as does YouTube, Twitch, and OnlyFans). Still, western civilizations aren't offering an attractive alternative.

Look at all the layoffs in tech and all the outsourcing that has happened with companies that earn record profits.

If I were a young kid growing up now, seeing my parents getting laid off for no reason and switching jobs every few years/months, I'd think this might not be how I want to live my life.

As a result, young people grow up chasing careers in content rather than science, infrastructure, tech, or health care because they now know that going down that path opens them up to massive vulnerabilities and possibly a low quality of life. After a couple of generations, there might not be enough people working in those necessary fields, which can hurt.

> What they collect is literally nothing special

I added my local pharmacist on WhatsApp once when I was waiting for an order to come in. Instagram is very keen for me to be his friend and frequently suggests him. He hasn’t posted anything, but I did look at who he follows, and it’s a collection of glamour models in skimpy clothing, which given the amount of Jesus paraphernalia in his store I’m not sure is something he particularly wants me to know.

TikTok, which attempts to divine your interests by noticing how long you spend looking at certain videos, probably knows the sexuality of its users, and niche interests that may not be public knowledge — there is for sure a family-first politician somewhere who spends a little bit longer than they’d like you to know looking at young-looking topless guys.

This information strikes me as “special”

> probably knows the sexuality of its users

Nope, they think I prefer brunettes, while actually I’m an equal opportunity uhm.. watcher.

And I burned my potential hooked on Club Penguin and rottendotcom. Why else would I continue to argue with people online?

> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations. I am deeply concerned when I see kids hooked on that crack, because they are burning their potential

People in 1991 were complaining about the same with regards to newspapers (https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/why-the-news-mak...) and you can probably find the same sentiment around the time that the first magazines were published around the 1740s (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-tra...).

> What they collect is literally nothing special.

For the most part I agree, but it depends on the owner of the phone. Danish politicians have increasingly been using TikTok. It doesn't take a Chinese genius to correlate the location of two or more MPs during the current talks, regarding how to form the next government, to gain insights into how that could possibly pan out. They've basically stuffed a tracking device into the pockets of the most important politicians in the country and are now able to know when they meet.

Isn't this one of the reasons why phone permissions (at least on Android) have the option to share location data with an app only when it's in use?

I don't know for sure but sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation etc. Few of these doesn't give them the exact location but still if you're a person of interest thar may be enough to connect the dots.

> sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation

All of those are also gated behind permissions like location, at least on Android.

Yes, true. I didn't think about that, but again, this isn't something new, relying on a more agressive than average tracking tech. West is just concerned about how it may be used.

Strava was similarly dangerous at times [0]. The difference is that the west has a strong grasp on western companies and what they do with the data, but what prevents the US to use the location data from, say, key Twitter users in other countries? From my understanding, it's legally possible for the govt to access that data. No one (really) budges.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072.amp

> I'd say TikTok is a way for China to mitigate the threat coming from the west's upcoming generations, by ensuring their collective capabilities are as limited as possible.

I wonder how much the flavour of commentary would change if you swapped "China" with "Israel"...here comes the deep water.

Even if TikTok were suddenly wiped off every phone on the planet, a competitor would take its place. TikTok simply takes advantage of people's desire to be entertained and apathy over privacy issues.

Most people don't care about privacy issues not because of apathy, but because they have a different sense of privacy than privacy advocates.

I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not. Many people would not care a lick of you could figure out they ate at subway earlier in the day, whereas this is worrying to privacy advocates.

This claim is regularly repeated, but strongly and directly contradicted by literally every study on the topic. Here [1] is one from Pew in late 2019.

81% of Americans believe the potential risks of companies collecting about them outweighs and benefits. 79% are very/somewhat concerned about how the data collected on them is used. The big issue 81% also believe that little or no control over the data collection. Interestingly not only do people also feel that the government will do nothing to hold companies accountable, they are also concerned about how the government is using their data.

Such results are demonstrated in every single survey. People are overwhelmingly concerned about how companies are using their data, but feel completely helpless.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...

I hear you. It’s just that the rise of TikTok contradicts all the survey results. I.e. I don’t see their sentiments reflect in their actions.

I mean if you’re concerned about your data and feel helpless, simply don’t use the app. But TikTok keeps rising doesn’t it.

It really doesn't.

Nearly every single major site is tracking you alongside enabling tracking by third parties. Something as innocuous as a call to Google fonts works as a sufficient tracking source. Your phone, regardless of who you pick, is not only tracking you but also readily forwarding everything on over to various government agencies with effectively 0 accountability. "Smart" cameras and other server connected street view cameras are even gradually destroying real life privacy - even being able to create effective real life tracking thanks to those handy OCR friendly license plates we all have.

Trying to preserve your privacy by not using TikTok is like trying to combat climate change by not barbequing. It will have a non-zero impact, but even if literally every single person did this to the point that TikTok went out of business - absolutely nothing would meaningfully change.

Take it with a grain of salt, but Alphabet has long maintained that they do not track from Googl Fonts:

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq/privacy

It seens like an odd thing to lie about, given how nefarious they are with other things.

In other words: "if you're concerned about your weight, simply stop eating choco"

The problem is "simply stop" is actually not that simple

This assumes an implausible view of rationality, knowledge and intent.

People who intend action-X do not also intend all the consequences of X, nor are even plausibly aware of what those are. And even when they are, those are often so numerous that a time-bound agent (a person) isnt going to enumerate and weigh each for most actions.

One common case is collective action problems, eg., the tragedy of the commons: by each fishing to their intended amount they harm their ability to fish in the future, which was not intended.

Social media is a very plausible case: by each posting to their intended amount, their create the unintended result of the "gamification & publication of social life as such", and thus harm their future ability to socialise as intended.

I don't think my statements and those poll results are at odds. If you look at the phrasing, the personal data in question is never specified. People may be imagining their identity/social security number being the data they are concerned about and not, say, that they were geolocated outside of a kohls.

Page 3. The top two concerns are social media sites (85%) and advertisers (84%). This isn't about social security numbers. The paper also gets into data profiling, which surprisingly and encouragingly, the vast majority of Americans are aware of and also concerned by. Tracking your location in real life is something extremely few people would be okay with.

It's interesting because this issue is also completely bipartisan. 75% of Americans believe there should be more government regulation on what companies are allowed to do with data, including 70% of republicans.

Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. Saying that you care about privacy makes you appear smart but in practice most people only care about privacy in embarrassing situations

people vote with their feet. Instead of looking at studies just look at how people behave, words are cheap. These studies are just evidence of one thing, that people like to appear security conscious in public. People are entirely in control over their data collection and they know it, they can just remove any app they don't like from their phone. The reason they don't is because they get value out of it.

> I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not.

Most people aren't making informed, nuanced decisions about their privacy. Most people think online privacy doesn't impact anything more than what ads they see and so they don't care out of ignorance.

If people were aware of when and how the data they gave up is used against them they'd probably reconsider their views. The trouble is that people aren't allowed to know, so it's never in their face enough to register for them. People generally aren't great about evaluating consequences that aren't immediate or dangers that are at all abstract. That's what's enabled a multi-billion dollar a year industry to spring up around the buying and selling of data that "doesn't matter" and that "no one cares about".

That kind of thinking lets people get taken advantage of over and over again, get manipulated, lose opportunities, and have their money siphoned from their pockets without even realizing it had anything to do with the data that was taken from them.

Unless things change people will be trying to reassure each other that it doesn't matter who knows what they ate for breakfast even while they're being sorted into digital caste systems that will define and limit their options across many areas of their life.

Most people don't know the extent of data collection on them and its usage. If they knew, they would be against it.

I don't understand the point. Every social media's goal is to take advantage of people's desire to be entertained. Youtube, Instagram, etc. Yet TikTik has managed to come from behind and overtake all the other apps. People are so quick to dismiss its algorithm, yet no other app comes close to recreating the experience.

That's not because of the algorithm. That's because everybody's already on TikTok.

If you make a new Facebook, you better make something about it different because otherwise people would just stay on Facebook.

it's because of the algorithm, good UX and few, skippable ads

How did Tiktok start? Everyone was already on youtube.

I started using TikTok long before everyone was in it, pre-pandemic, and even then it was already much better than most other apps, and quite immediately too.

Very much this. Once the method has been proven then all you can change is flavor.

It is very much clear that this kind of entertainment is very addictive and if done well it can get people to sink hours and hours into it.

The problem isn't just social media, it's all kinds of entertainment. It seems like everything today is designed to give as much as a adrenine and dopamine hit as possible.

Take a look at the style of the filmmaking from a movie today and a similar movie from 20 years ago. Each scene has many more abrupt cuts, and everything feels much more fast paced.

https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/agents-of-chaos

Unfortunately true.

Even when presented with TikTok's data harvesting or algorithm tweaking to make divisive issues trend more popularly -- no users want to give it up.

Really does anyone have any better rationale that could be used to convince people not to use it? I have older relatives (60s) and younger (teens) that are obsessed with it.

Thinking the market is always split into discrete niches based on current landscape you will never come up with an actual innovation. There could be product(s) that address the desire to be entertained in various ways without being like TikTok or taking its exact niche.

help me understand please. i am not from USA so i don't see of things as us vs them thing when it comes to china, for me, its all "them" anyway so be it china or usa.

what tangible privacy issues are with tiktok? in india the govt banned it last time over some bs reasons helping instagram but that is unrelated to "privacy"...

tiktok sells ads, instagram/fb sells ads. if i am using both, how is one better and another really bad?

its not like the US based companies aren't in for the money for the highest bidder and even harmful for their own citizens like the recent case of fb snitching on a girl who wanted an abortion?

After hearing so much about TikTok's addictiveness, I decided to give it a whirl. I spent a good few hours trying to get a feed that was interesting to me by searching for various keywords. I was mostly looking for weird, abstract, absurdist videos, but also anything else that interested me. Unfortunately it was quite difficult to find anything I actually liked. Most of "weird tiktok" seemed to be a teenager's idea of "weird"―too fauxdark, edgy, memelordic. I did manage to find a few videos and creators I actually liked, but not enough to make my feed much better. I eventually gave up and deleted the app.

Just one small anecdotal data point to counter the idea that the app is addicting for everyone. If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.

> If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.

I do. Don't waste time by trying to find the stuff you want by explicitly searching for specific tags (aside from maybe for the purpose of the initial seeding, but that's not a must at all). That would indeed bring up just tons of kinda trashy content that seems like it is tailored to either teenagers or the lowest common denominator. Instead, try using the main feed.

Simply scroll past videos you don't find interesting/appealing to you, hit "like" (double tap) on the kind of videos you like, etc. You've mentioned you've already found some creators you like, that's great. Hit "like" on some of their videos that you actually like . Don't try to trick the algorithm by forcing some unnatural behaviors, just use the feed normally. To clarify, when I say "feed", I mean "For You" feed aka the main feed, not "Following" feed.

First 30 mins or so of that will be meh. But the more you use it that way (doesn't need to be in one sitting at all, that part doesn't matter), the better the content will be tailored to your tastes.

I can almost guarantee that you will not only find what you wanted that way, but also discover things that you didn't realize you liked/wanted to see. I checked out feeds on my friends' phones before, and it is kinda wild how different our feeds are. A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos. Another friend of mine who is into building/fixing cars gets a lot of great build project videos. I get a solid mix of a particular type of dark comedy that appeals to me, sound synthesis videos, and some cool electronics projects that I would actually want to attempt myself.

Just don't rush it, don't expect some instant magic to happen, and let it naturally adapt to your tastes.

While you're at it, some tips for getting hooked on heroin?

Don't reuse needles, be hygienic about it, buy good quality. Enjoy!

Just give it a try! Works wonders, I've heard.

>A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos.

yeah, getting "non-mainstream" fitness advice from freaking short form videos is just about the dumbest thing I've heard this month

tell your friend to read a book sometimes, there's a reason why they exist and it's not to sell more ads unlike some other media ...

Technique videos are actually far more useful than a book, you can actually see the exercise being performed and copy that action.

He read plenty of books on the topic, and doesn't take TikTok fitness advice as some bible. I have already prefaced that he was seriously into bodybuilding, and I legitimately don't see how one can be serious about it if all they do is just watch TikToks and gain all their knowledge from it.

It is more for stuff like "oh, this is an interesting routine, let me look into it on my own later" or "damn, i didn't realize the nutritional benefits of XYZ, let's read up on it and see" or "oh, so this is how you can work lats more efficiently". TikTok isn't the end-all be-all, it is a starting point.

The medium doesn’t taint the message. I follow a bunch of non-mainstream professional chefs on TikTok who have taught me so much more than I’ve ever learned from culinary textbooks.

> I spent a good few hours trying to get a feed that was interesting to me by searching for various keywords... If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.

The whole magic sauce is that you don't/can't shape your FYP ("for you page": feed) by searching or otherwise sending deliberate signals to the algorithm. Instead you just flip through the videos it sends you and it reads into how long you watch, which videos you skip, where you like/comment, who you follow etc. If you don't consciously try to influence it and just mindlessly, organically consume you'll end up with a very accurate FYP of videos remarkably quickly. I'm not surprised that trying to drive your FYP in a specific direction backfired; I suspect they make search deliberately bad and don't take it into account in a meaningful way when constructing the FYP for a user.

It is, of course, up to you whether that sounds like a media experience that you want to participate in. I installed it skeptically but in literally less than an hour my FYP was nothing but videos I found engaging or fun, and several years later it's my most used phone app by a significant margin. Some of it is obviously low calorie entertainment but there's a lot of depth as well, and I continue to be struck by how accurately the FYP can identify what content I want to see and what I don't.

Tried it over the past week. Even about the subjects that interest me, all the vids I could find were too shallow (as in old info, badly researched etc even for such a short video), sensationalist click bait, way too short etc.

I filled in my profile honestly and somehow it took me a lot of effort to teach the algo that I don't want to see videos of (mostly) naked teens dancing or doing (other) suggestive sex things (the first hour after installing, I got 4 young girls simulating taking a boob & vag pic and then looking at them with faked interest while giggling called pause game or something; is it supposed to be funny or?).

I followed 0 teens and because I didn't think I wouldn't find anything interesting about programming, I thought I would follow some true crime stuff; still got naked young girls mostly. After a while of following enough other stuff I got less of it.

I guess most guys (even old as myself) normally want to see this crap so the algo defaults to that? I don't know.

But the content I am supposed to like really sucks too; the 100k view video authors often don't even get the names of victims/perps right, many facts are just debunked rehashes of sensationalist takes etc. It's horrible so far. And the comments... the comments. Youtube comments are great compared and that's saying something. Maybe it'll improve?

The app is collecting tons of metrics of actual watching behaviour to adapt the feed. So maybe you don't want to advertise that "after using the app extensively I'm still getting only half naked young girls dancing". I'm not getting any half naked girls dancing in my feed despite quite enjoying young people dancing mindlessly as a counterweight to the state of the fucking world. Eg. the top notch editing/dancing by Cale Brown.

I'm sorry to say that your comment is the type of comment I'd typically downvote, but there's something about it that I think is worth discussing.

The user is complaining that he cannot get rid of the half-naked young girls dancing no matter how hard he tries. And yet, your reply is to accuse them of it being somehow their fault? If this is not Thoughtcrime, I don't know what it is.

For the record, I have heard this complaint before. I assume it's the default algorithm response when it can't figure you out.

I don't think I was saying that it was their fault, I'm just saying that _if_ tiktok eg analyses something subtle, like how hesitantly the user is swiping away a video, the algorithm might expose the subconscious desire to look at scantily clad ladies.

Edit: I have absolutely no insight on what metrics are being used, I'm just making it up.

It's very easy to not get these on TikTok by simply skipping past them a few times.

It's also very easy for them to become your whole feed if you happen to watch all of them.

I did not say extensively; I used it for a week now to see what the fuss is about and got, at first time opening this app, these videos. Not sure how that analysed my behaviour of ‘opening the app’.

Then I followed a bunch of guys in true crime and made sure to swipe other videos away as fast as I could and it got less but i still get them. Probably if you use it for a long time; it might be more tailored to me but the content, even the good content according to like minded, so far is so bad that I don’t think I will give it that much time.

Well I don't know how it is nowadays because so many creators have flocked there and I could absolutely imagine that thirst traps are so numerous and popular that the algorithm cant do a good job anymore. To be fair I joined more than 3 years ago "to check what my kids was raving about" and remember how I regularly was amazed on what the algorithm dug up for me, funny interesting content from people that seemed genuine. I still get that feeling but maybe not as much. And I never had any issues of watching too much either. It's just my kind of social media.

But I also have a couple of times where I fucked up the algo by liking the wrong video and having to mindfully steer it back on track again. So it's not magic, ofc.

I had the same experience. I've given TikTok several chances, each time it ends with me deleting the app after "the algo" and I disagree about what I actually want to watch. Yes, I paused for longer on the weird videos, but that doesn't mean I liked them. Yet the algo took this as strong signal to give me more of them.

I tried the same about a month back - opened an account, logged in and tried searching on a few technical terms to see what I could find and train the search algorithm. Like yourself though, every time I log in afresh I end up with some weird video, usually someone pulling a duck face into the camera or dancing or something.

Is it possible that the angle TikTok strives for simply lacks substance?

I'm working on making something called The Laugh Track where you send your friend (singular) the type of laugh you just did (from a select list of types of laughs). If it's worth it, they'll hit you up personally to know wtf happened :D If that takes off and becomes a national security threat, I will not say oh yeah this is great content, totally makes sense people are addicted to this nonsense!

I found my way into YouTube shorts since I already use YT a lot and it knew what I liked. Realizing it’s a TK ripoff, and seeing funny TKs shared, I figure TikTok must be way better, so I tried it. But I had the same experience as you: it didn’t click. Maybe if I had replicated my YouTube subscriptions (some are on both) it would have worked better, but I tried telling it my interests and hoping “the algorithm” would figure it out. But it didn’t.

I've now collected several different creators who are one both platforms, and without exception I prefer their content on YouTube over TikTok. You just can't compare the quality level expected for youtube to tiktok. On Youtube, if you want any views at all, you pretty much MUST have a high quality HD camera (some modern phones now count), a good microphone, good presentation, there was most likely a script written out and edited, there will often be diagrams or explanations or rationalizations for many parts, there will be digging into details basically.

Physically speaking, TikTok videos CANNOT do anything but be extremely shallow "Fast Fact" videos that just make a claim, with no evidence, no reasoning, no verification, just a "Hey I'm me and I say I'm someone and this is a factoid and either believe me or don't". These videos are great for addiction, because if you are gullible for those kinds of factoids you will love an endless barrage of dopamine inducing "Facts" that you can repeat at the next party you attend.

Youtube has similar "Factoid" videos but you will also find 20 minute short form essays rebutting those factoids with demonstrations, evidence, citations, etc. You simply can't rebut a 1 minute claim in a 1 minute video in a way that laypeople should be convinced by. It's weaponization of "It's harder to debunk that spout nonsense"

A bit of a tangent, but YouTube had sucked me into hours of economic doomscrolling a day. I even purchased the premium tier to avoid ads. Then suddenly two months ago they changed some algo and all the good videos are gone, along with most of my engagement.

The lesson I learned: Even if I find magic, magic can quickly disappear with a new production release.

Interesting. I haven’t experienced that. I have premium too. But mostly I have my subscriptions which the algorithm doesn’t impact; it just riffs on what’s already there: education/cooking/exercise/comedy.

I'll agree here, the algo has changed, but maybe not for the worse. I am doomscrolling less, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can't be healthy to constantly be doomscrolling.

Similar experience, although I didn't even search actively but wanted to let the famed algorithm work its magic. I think I made it to maybe 30mins before I meh'd out. I might have given it another try now, but I just saw that I already uninstalled it.

Just keep scrolling naturally. Don't try to "teach" the algorithm. It never works.

Unless you're looking for a specific video or trend, don't search. Just scroll.

exactly the same for me. What I would love to see is someone screenrecording their phone while scrolling one of these miracle algo feeds.

I don't know why, but I hate the tiktok trends and it's spread all over other platforms (eg. "shorts" on youtube).

Cooking channel? What was once a 10 minute video with a recipe and all the details is now a reddit-gif style recipe, 30 seconds without any details (eg. how cooked the first ingredient is, when s/he throws in the second, etc.).

Tech channel? Yeah, 30 seconds can only be a teaser (=ad) for a full video.

Music? another teaser (=ad)

I know i'm a different generation from the current teenagers, and I prefer videos without many fillers, but those <1min things are way too short to be of any value to me personally.

I've seen Tiktok described as "what happens when you give the illiterate a platform"

I'm sure hoping this short attention span, no time to think sort of content doesn't become common

I really really hate how common it is for someone on tiktok to claim they have relevant credentials and then repeat a blatant lie about the industry that's been a lie forever.

There was a person who posted a video saying "I'm a flight attendant and airline seats are designed to kill you to pay less for the lawsuit" even though that's been debunked IN POPULAR MEDIA for about twenty years (mythbusters) and "Flight attendant" should not be considered a reputable source for information on the engineering, legal, and liability of an airline. And yet, she had millions of views.

It's just utterly FULL of assholes claiming they are reputable and spouting the dumbest, oldest, most asinine conspiracy theories for views.

It depends on the content. YouTube rewards long watch times, which is why the people creating content stretch the video's duration regardless of whether it's needed or not.

Much of the content in the past was largely devoid of actual content with the focus being to build up suspense to get the person to keep watching. Take those slow-mo videos, for example. There's a few seconds or a minute of actual content - the rest is just filler. Myth Busters was the same years ago.

I'll watch a longer video if the amount of content in it justifies this. That's rarely the case for me, though.

I'm in a different generation from you and I prefer my recipes and tech information in text form. Horses for courses.

I chuckled at - "There is no time to think about what you just saw because as soon as the clip ends, you’re on to the next one. The spectator is rendered a consummate consumer,"

I still haven't installed/registered for tiktok, I have no more bandwidth for another social network. I'm still fighting IG and Twitter addiction, what happens when I add another one. Just throw your phones away haha.

> There is no time to think about what you just saw because as soon as the clip ends, you’re on to the next one

Did the author of the article actually...use TikTok? That's not at all how the app works; it loops the videos by default and you have to manually scroll. Sure, you can just swipe as soon as it's over, but my impression is that this is explicitly _not_ the "happy path" for the user. My girlfriend enjoys TikTok a lot (and I often will watch with her using our TV app, which interestingly is a better experience in a few ways, like not showing any ads, although it is missing some functionality), and generally if we like a video we'll start talking a bit about it as it loops, and we only move on once we're ready. Skipping immediately after it's over (or even earlier, if it's not interesting) is more of a failure mode in my opinion (although it does vary a bit; I don't think looping on the longer form videos is as common, but I'd argue that engagement with the longer videos is if anything a counter argument to what the author is saying). If there's a social issue with the way TikTok works, I'm not convinced that it's due to the actual mechanics or network of the app. If anything, despite the fact that I don't use any of them myself, Facebook and Twitter seem like a strictly worse experience for the user. It seems much less about directly following a large number people and more about just generally watching what comes up, which means that while you have a unlimited amount of content to view for all practical purposes, there's no illusion of "missing out" by not watching absolutely everything on your feed. Because of the compositional features (reusing the same audio from other videos, "stitching" your video onto the end of another one, "dueting" yourself side by side with another video), a lot of times there isn't even really one specific video to watch for a given "thing"; anything that's sufficiently popular will be reused in enough other videos that you'll end up finding it one way or another.

Is TikTok a social network? Fundamentally, in order for TikTok to work you don't need to be connected to anyone. Doesn't it make it anti-social? Does it matter if the content is UGC or not for the app to be social?

If you ever do want to see how addicting it is, you need to prime it first so that it doesnt just show you teenager cringe.

All you got to do is look at the tiktok videos already shared to your instagram feed, and follow the accounts watermarked in those videos

basically recreating your inferior instagram algorithm with only tiktok content your friends and explore page already show you

now you’ve upgraded from a consumable dopamine inducing system from last decade, to an intravenous dopamine hit directly connected to the source

Sounds right. One day I decided to try TitTok. Next thing I knew it was late into the night and I hadn't even eaten dinner. That was the first and last time I used that service.

yeah I don’t open it anymore and its behind a category’s screentime limits

the few times I am searching for something there, first I close my eyes when opening the app and hit the search button in the UI

Add a time limit to each app, start of generous, then week by week cut it down by a bit. Worked pretty well for me.

It is the new digital crack / cocaine for the kids these days, just like Facebook was a decade ago, but even worse. It is also hardly as some of its most addicted fans have said "The best thing to have happened to the Internet" [0], It is completely the opposite; [1] especially for yet another algorithm optimizing for 98% of your attention and relaying more content based on your viewing habits.

The solution is to delete all your accounts off of these platforms and just don't look back. [2] You're not missing a thing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484

[1] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162

Delete them from your phone and only access them via desktop. OR use them enough that you get banned for some benign thing.

The problem is not the application, it's the people. We've gotten to the point where people are willing to spend endless hours for entertainment (long, or short content).

Social (and non-social) media is able to capture peoples' attentions for far too long. Instead of being bored, and having their minds wonder and attempt other tasks, they are endlessly entertained.

People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda. I don't follow tiktok, but I'm influenced by it every day due to my friends who try or follow new trends based on what they see.

The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly. Even going on Reddit, I only see negative posts about the United States, and people arguing how bad it is to live here. Yet, while traveling outside the US, I barely see 5-10% of those posts, but no other posts about how bad it is to live in those countries (granted the US has a far higher population). It just seems like people on social media are shitting on the US these days for reasons that they dont even understand, or know how to compare to anywhere else.

> People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda.

> The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly.

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight”.

- Joseph Campbell

I’m not sure if Tik tok drastically changed their algorithm or if the people generating content changed from the height of the pandemic into this phase but I really can’t think of another app that I found so great and useful becoming so fundamentally boring to me that I deleted it. When I started using it the content it served up was so weirdly specific to my needs and when I lost interest earlier this year it was like half text to speech nonsense over found tv footage that was occasionally salacious

Big agree. I downloaded it in 2020 and was mildly amused by the videos, but I didn't see the supposedly addictive qualities that everyone (including on here) was talking about. Since then, the algorithm has gotten much worse and I don't even bother watching it anymore. For example yes I'm approaching middle age, but endless Middle America lowbrow humor videos of other middle aged guys complaining about their wives is boring? Why does TikTok serve me a hundred of these in a row? It's like a Walmart comedy special

Did you install this app on your phone and give it all access? Well, that's on you, good luck. Wouldn't want to be ya.

China is taking revenge for getting them addicted to Opium during the century of shame from rest of the world.

Chinese aren't any less addicted to it. Entertainment part of panem et circenses is beneficial for CCP.

I was an early creator on TikTok. Had a few viral videos, reached a modest sized audience before quitting cold turkey after feeling "wrong" about hijacking people's attention.

I wrote a very similar piece about TikTok in a book where I felt so fed up with the state of technology addiction (especially my own with smartphone & apps like TikTok). This article covers one component that I find especially interesting:

> This narrow focus enables a “flow state” to open up between the platform and spectator, as attention is entirely channeled to the content at hand.

Using similar theory from Csikszentmihalyi's flow state, TikTok is the middle path between anxiety and boredom. Thus users feel like they're in a constant state of flow because if they see anything that is "boring" or "anxiety" inducing, they can "easily" and in a "capable" fashion scroll to a new video or search for something that does interest them. The personalized infinite scrolling feed concept emphasizes staying in the center by tuning your content preferences for what might be too much of one of these extremes.

This isn't different from previous social media tactics. This explore and exploit technique is used everywhere by say showing you a cute baby video vs. someone violently being attacked. The dopamine or adrenaline you produce keeps you engaged while algorithms are being personalized when you disengage.

"The medium is the message." - McLuhan, Understanding Media 1964

What is this wall of text supposed to convince any one of?

If tiktok is not deserving of its success, why doesn't the complainant create their own app with billions of users since they seem to have cracked "the asset"...

Now i must acknowledge, rich does more harm than good to society (as well as for the individual).

What's the point of become "money" rich ? Life is too short to earn only money at all cost.

I'm flabbergasted by the appeal Tiktok apparently has over the average Joe. I can't stand it. Vertical videos, combined with the exact duration of a short term memory loss affected person's attention span, make me want to throw my eyes into a furnace. I block Youtube shorts for this same stupid reason, even great channels can't resist Google's whip "incentivizing" them to make these AMAZING short vertical pieces of stupidity.

90% of content is some scene that draws out 20-25 seconds of boringness in a suggested ascent to some expected climax or resolution at the end, screaming "watch it, wait, it's coming!" at you the whole time, with that resolution then being just even more boring and trivial than the 25 seconds before.

I don't get why anyone with an IQ above that of bread would fall for this lame trick more than a few times.

I am also really surprised by its popularity. I understand entertainment, don't mind watching something fun. But don't get the appeal of very short videos - it's just annoying. No real story, no characters, no (deeper) meaning. It's like reading a collection of jokes instead of a novel. It's ok for 5 minutes I suppose, but for several hours every day? Hm.

Tiktok in India had some of the most fun and entertaining short clips. Unlike instagram tiktok feed broke through class barrier.

The popularity does not surprise me considering the popularity of reality tv shows.

It seems completely alien to me to watch a scripted show that pretends to be real, and enjoy it. But people eat it up.

And people eat up all the fake stuff in TikTok.

I am wholly amused by the fact that you write your disappointment in a comment that is consumable faster than a TikTok video.

The same goes for the person replying to your comment sharing in your flabbergast.

Agreed. Furthermore the content is vapid, shallow, and the creators are overwhelmingly devoid of taste. It's all very low quality content. You won't find anything truly educational or with a good story there because the format simply doesn't support that.

It's crap for fiction, and crap for nonfiction. The only thing it could be good for is meme shit and dancing videos, but the creators have no taste so in practice it's not good for that either.

Tiktok isn't yet peak engagement.

They should add eye tracking so that they know which part of the video you're looking at combined with facial reading to detect your emotional response. This saves users from the enormous effort of having to swipe or like. Fully effortless auto learning.

Holding a phone is also kind of tiring so let's project it into your eye balls using AR, plus you can't really look away.

You'll now have the ultimate human reprogramming machine. You can now change their opinion, culture, perspective, shopping behavior, or any behavior.

Pretty much any conspiracy theory you could think of would not be crazy, actually attainable. Technically, we're about 5 minutes away from it.

Given Facebook and Youtube's panicky response to this success, you can be sure that the model will be rolled out across tech. You'll be doing music and reading in a similar way soon. And that doesn't even take into account AI content generation, which is another revolution on top of AI recommendation.

I'll end with my final prediction. Some 10 years from now, when society is pretty much wrecked beyond recognition, there will be a hearing in congress: "so uhm...what is Tiktok? Is it like a website? Does it work with a mouse?".

It is your attention and potential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP5uH7TWiUs

Really enjoyed that video thanks. The irony of finding it while procrastinating here on HN makes a satisfying dissonance.

I feel like such an outlier that I like it and have benefited from it.

I’ve learned all kinds of useful info about everything from nutrition to history in entertaining bit sized chunks.

And the humorous clips are really funny too.

I don’t feel addicted either. Some days I’ll scroll for 45 minutes. Other days I have zero interest.

Lots of old men yell at clouds every time a new media company takes over the people's attention. Here are some criticisms of the first books ever printed. Note the familiar plea to think of the children:

https://uh.edu/engines/indiana.htm

Those things you learned, what evidence do you have that they are true, or accurate, or aren't just repetitions of common folk wisdom or Pop Factoids that always make the rounds? Where are the citations?

Isn’t that true of any source of information?

Longer form content like books and video essays have lots of room for ample citations and demonstrations.

Same holds true for Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Youtube is different imho. Lots of quality content, long form, carefully crafted. Many popular creators post infrequently. Not free of trash obviously, but qualitatively different to tiktok’s mind hacking. YT also pays creators better AFAIK.

Youtube also recommends you videos but at least it gives you time to stop and consider what you want to watch next out of the 10 or so recommendations

Tiktok is bam straight onto the next video

Depends, if you visit YouTube Shorts it's almost 1:1 the same as Instagram Reels or TikTok.

Bingo. Every argument made against it applies to the rest of them, it’s just beating them at their own game.

Except for one: it comes from China. Some people will admit that this is their problem with it, many pretend the app itself is somehow especially evil. Which is silly of course.

The most predatory thing TikTok does is constantly ask you for access to your contacts. Even when you hit no every time they count on you making a mistake and hitting yes that one time.

As someone who was born and grew up in a so-called 3rd world country, I was used to hearing this narrative from official media that the west is poisoning our children with their movies, fast food and so on. Interesting that now the west is complaining with same narrative

I think it's genius that they allow people to download the videos to their phone - spreading the video on discord etc and other mediums drawing people to tiktok if they want to see more

I use a TikTok proxy website, scrap it, make an RSS/Atom feed with embedded videos and watch them without undue influence from an algorithm, only the accounts, searches and tags I care about.

Albeit this is not for privacy reasons, but because it is just better, as my feed reader has killfiles and is optimized for my liking.

TikTok's (and all of Big Tech) surveillance is electromagnetic, not really tied to phones (data collected from phones are just a way to give the impression they don't have other means of surveillance).

Privacy never existed and I look forward to proving this in court with a repeatable experiment that can be done by anyone.

Nope. Tiktok’s greatest asset is big tech monopolies and their inability/unwillingness to innovate.

They do innovate, but not to better humanity or make a product better. They innovate to make more money for the share holder.

It's about time we made some social network legislation akin to tobacco/gambling restrictions.

Yes because the War on Drugs has worked wonders. Any law that is passed to restrict people from doing something that only harms themselves ends up being applied unevenly and usually only affects the poor/minorities.

See “the War on Drugs”

Heavy taxes, plain packaging and other measures helped halve tobacco consumption over some 16 years in Australia. I have no issue with poor people having better mental and lung health.

Win?

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/15/regul...

> Regular cannabis use has become more accepted than smoking tobacco, the latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) has found.

I'd take that with a grain of salt. If cannabis was allowed to be smoked in the open, subjecting others to the smoke, I can imagine people would be not as accepting.

Prevalence of for monthly or more often weed consumption is still lower than prevalence of daily tobacco smoking, so yes I'd still call it a win.

These are the trends in the US

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/28/politics/marijuana-tobacco-ci...

What are you going to do, grow a social media network with hydroponics in your closet? Drug/alcohol prohibition doesn't work because production is inherently decentralized. Other forms of prohibition do frequently work. Conflating any form of prohibition with drug/alcohol prohibition specifically is a common libertarian trick, one they trick themselves with. What about prohibition of asbestos? That seems to be working pretty well, as far as I'm aware there's no black market for kitchen mittens stuffed with asbestos. Working in a factory that made such mittens killed one of my grandfathers, but that doesn't happen anymore. Prohibitions frequently work, the cases where they don't are the unusual exception.

Use a VPN and download the british / european version of the app? US legislation will probably not be enforced in the rest of the world, in the case of TikTok.

Using a VPN is a HUGE barrier for the general public, esp. considering that TikToks biggest selling point is quick and easy tailored videos. Having to pay for a VPN and activating it just to watch a few TikToks means barely any non-tech people use it. Ergo, the network effect dies down dramatically.

The general public, sure, but young adults and teenagers? Aren't they already getting sponsors for e.g. NordVPN pushed down their throats regularly?

"This video is sponsored by NordVPN! NordVPN can help you stay secure and get back access to the social media content you love - when you want, how long you want. Check out the link in the description to get 10% off using code INFLUENCERNAME" doesn't seem very outlandish, IMO.

Those VPNs are also more or less fire and forget - download the app from the app store, pay, accept the OS modal, done.

I agree that fewer people will use those apps after such regulation, but I also think that a very substantial part of the (young) userbase will do their best to circumvent the regulations, because they like social media and TikTok very much. Not the best comparison, I know, but: When Epic Games only provided the game Fortnite as a direct APK download for Android, it also didn't stop kids and young adults from downloading it en masse, even though most probably never sideloaded an app before.

Unless you plan on sideloading it, the two major app-stores are both controlled by American companies. Either way, whether you're sideloading or using a VPN, requiring users to jump through such hoops will easily kill the mainstream use of any social media company.

> Conflating any form of prohibition with drug/alcohol prohibition specifically is a common libertarian trick

The parent poster

>> It's about time we made some social network legislation akin to tobacco/gambling restrictions.

But more to the point, how are you going to “ban” social media?

Snarfing the clipboards, reverse proxies, sensor inputs, images. PRC gold!

Now dub that over the guy from the 90s movie Hackers, and you've got yourself a TikTok! Or "Freedom Short" as they might be rebranded soon once they get banned

Recommendations algorithms are definitely out of control, and need regulation urgently.

I don't use TikTok, so my personal anecdote will concern Youtube, which with its shorts definitely try to become TikTok.

I don't use it logged-in, but I had kept the same cookie for a few years, and I was getting great recommendations, mostly science and youtubers that I watch regularly would be suggested. It was working too well to the point I was sinking at least two hours a day and becoming problematic. The content was interesting and relevant, but not very in depth.

About three months ago, everything took a dive for the worst. YT kept pushing shorts, although I never clicked them, one line out of 4 was shorts. So I added a filter in my ublock origin list so they don't appear anymore. It kept working great, until one day for unrelated reasons my Firefox crashed and needed to be factory reset, and my beloved cookie was lost.

The YT experience instantly changed and hasn't recovered after three months. It is total garbage now.

I am located in France but used to watch almost exclusively English content. The content now look like a generic mix-up of popular french youtuber, news, and religious content (for some reason YT has decided to show me Surat in Arab everyday even though I don't speak Arab and I am not Muslim).

I am quite privacy conscious so I only accept necessary cookies anywhere I browse. But YT is still trying to learn as some of the content it recommends stuff related to some things I watched, or browsed about.

I tried to explicitly search for the previous english speaking youtuber I used to watch, and watch their content. Like for example every night I watch Anton Petrov before going to sleep. It used to recommend it automatically, but now I have to search for it every night, and it still hasn't learn after 3 months.

My YT consumption was drastically reduced to one or two video a day as a consequence of this.

Even though I work in machine learning, I don't understand what sources it is using to update its recommendations, I don't understand how YT can provide such different experiences to different people. Or maybe I'm just in some bad beta test bucket like a lab rat. No way to know from my side.

In the best case, it feels like being under the whim of an algorithm no one has control over, and in the worst case feels like being the subject in some sort of sick psychological experiment.

And it's not even TikTok.

I'm finally in a place where the only website I religiously check is HN. Because of it's nature, for me, it never takes up more than a few minutes every couple of hours.

It took hard work to get there. I use Nextdns to block domains of websites and apps when I realize I spend too much time on them. Could I just allowlist domains, sure, and sometimes I do that when I need to look at something on Reddit for instance. But it's easy to just not cheat.

I stopped checking news sites at all and it's been an absolute blessing. Very little that's in the news actually matters to me or my family. Even the publicly funded media is full of clickbait and sensationalism, just not worth it.

I use local public radio to stay somewhat informed about things I should know, legislation for example that's relevant to us. Radio works because it's a limited resource so at least in my case, the signal to noise ratio is acceptable there, at least every now and then.

I've been doing that for a little while now and I feel much happier. I use my phone much less frequently and for less time now. I love it.

Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone. I just check HackerNews and painstakingly slowly type comments in on here at 20 WPM. I can get a tiny glance at the world news through news.google, but that site gets worse every time I load it up. I tried paying for Apple News, but it was all low-quality clickbait.

What were some of the things you had to wean yourself off?

I can occasionally find an OK game to play for a little while, but the quality is really awful on phone games. Very frustrating considering my phone is probably 4x as powerful as a Nintendo Switch.

I love to read books, but can't find enough good ones to keep it up. I'm not a big TV guy and especially hate YouTube.

> Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone.

I feel your pain. As I've grown older I've found it more difficult to enjoy video games no matter what the medium is, and likewise the news seems to all read the same these days except for the "who" in the story.

I used to think that no video game or movie could scare me, and I craved to find that, but then I played Friday Nights at Freddy's on VR and quickly found my limits. I know now that video games can scare me - to the point of involuntarily crying out in a high-pitched girly voice (for reference, I'm a middle-aged grey bearded man). So that wasn't my thing either.

The games I enjoy these days (far and few in between - i.e. a weekend every blue moon) are pretty much the kind of games I made fun of fifteen years ago - Farmville type games. I don't want to examine a table and read the description of all of the worse-than-worthless items upon it (looking at you, heavy brass candlestick). I just want to water my plants and come back later. Maybe I'll come back fifteen minutes later while I'm still on my elliptical and get another round of harvesting in, or maybe I wont return for another month. These days I don't play games often, but when I do, I play very slow games. At this point I wouldn't put it past myself to play a game that revolves around paint drying.

Haha, yeah, VR horror is way too much for me too. Wow, it's like I'm actually being ripped apart by zombies!

I still have a blast playing games on my consoles/PC FWIW, I just don't like any of the ones I've found on phones lately

Most of the stories I read these days aren't technically books but web serials. It can be tricky sifting good stuff from meh, but royalroad's reviews are much better than Amazon's, and Topwebfiction is a pretty good ranking board (as long as the serial is still being updated. Although Worm's been finished for almost a decade now, and as of right now it's #10 on the weekly leaderboard)

I'm still in the phase where I pick up my phone and then don't really know what to do with it. Mobile games are mostly garbage I found. Hopefully sometime soon my brain will internalize the fact that the phone doesn't provide a torrent of hormones anymore and let me not pick it up in the first place.

One thing I'm trying is to put books in places I would previously do my doomscrolling in, coffee table by the couch for instance. Sometimes I pick up the book instead of the phone, read a page or 5 and then go do something else. Small win, yay me.

The thing I have to learn is that the phone is a tool, not a way to spend time because I don't know what else to do, at least not the default way.

To anyone working on maximizing user engagement, think about what you're doing to all of us, please.

Regarding books, most of the books I read recently came from Reddit on /r/suggestmeabook - I am lazy, I just search for “page turner” on the sub, but I also like browsing and seeing people asking for subjects I wouldn’t have thought of.

For games, I recommend small puzzle games. Microsoft freecell/solitaire. Match 3 games. There's some good ones, but you want the ones that really lean into being a mobile game and is not just a poor version of a full game (e.g. diablo immortal)

For mobile games, I would suggest Amanita Design studio.

Machinarium, Samorost 3, Creaks, Pilgrims, Botanicula.

They are available on PC, gog.com, Steam, Apple Appstore.

They are hand crafted point & click games.

Just count yourself lucky you don't have many phone habits to kick. Don't try acquire more habits, you're already winning.

You could run emulators on your phone if you want better games.

Amen. One easy step anyone can take towards this direction of intentful filtering is to refrain from pulling the phone out of the pocket when standing in line. Just stand there. Look around. Watch other people. Think. Listen. The world exposed via your pocket device will not miss you. And after a while, you will learn to not miss it.

This really is a feature I seem to lack. Standing in a line without at least listening to music makes me really uncomfortable. I don't know where to look, what to do etc.

It is tough. I feel you. Your hands suddenly, are very large; where do they go, or what do they do? But turn the music off. Take a breath. No one is talking about you, nor do you even exist; except as another human body cohabiting, briefly, space with others. Your identity consists of your instantiation in space; you can relax, allow your body-vessel to idle, and crunch through non-present problems. Or just relish the ambient hum. Maybe someone else who is unplugged has made fleeting eye contact, and asked you about the weather.

Haha, exactly :D And the required "Oh no that person looked at me, did I do something weird?"

I'm trying to get off of hackernews during the day. I'm thinking about just having some other reading material by my side, like an academic paper or a book to work through when I need to take a break.

We'll see how it goes. I just don't need to be checking hackernews as often as I do.

I killed off Facebook and Twitter years ago, but opted out of the news for the most part when the pandemic kicked off.

I don't really intend to go back.

I skim enough to get a grasp of what's going on about once or twice a day (a la reading the evening paper of yore) but tend to stick to aggregated/curated sources and investigate personal curiosity rather than succumbing to salaciousness and surface-deep echo chambered "news" content about some dumb tweet from some misguided soul.

I am a lighter man, but part of me began to wonder what the cost was: will society pass me by? The longer I have spent operating in this fashion, the less I care.

I find I have so much more empathy, especially for my kids & wife. It has truly given me a fresh outlook, and allowed me to focus on spending my time in ways I actually value.

Looking forward to the day when it's easy for me to not cheat! Until then, I also find blocking websites on your hosts file (on Mac) a good solution https://masonsklut.com/how-to-block-websites-on-your-mac-usi...

After realizing that HN can be a rather challenging place (highlighted in the shocking moderation of the Queen E death announcement thread), I actually took a substantial break from HN. And it made me quite a bit happier. I recommend you make your own HN with RSS. It is substantially better that way. You won't be at the mercy of one moderators personal belief system and your 'main page' will hopefully better reflect your interests.

Dang’s explanation of the moderation of that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32773299

I appear to have been rate limited for my comment. Looks like maybe not much has changed since that day.

> recommend you make your own HN with RSS

How? Please…

You need a reader. There are many. Then you just add the website feeds that you follow to it. You can even add HN, specific subreddits, and YouTube channels!

I feel completely the opposite. HN has become quite an echo-chamber. Diverse views are not celebrated and encouraged. I usually and deliberately poke popular opinions to get a good discussion out of it and it has been disappointing.

>> I usually and deliberately poke popular opinions to get a good discussion out of it and it has been disappointing.

Perhaps it's apparent on some level to your audience that you're doing this to raise some sort response, not because you have a strong affinity for a particular position? The last thing I want to do is gorge on the junkfood emotion of false outrage.

We can use above comment as an example. I disagree with GP, my experience has been totally opposite lately on HN. That's genuine and not trying to evoke rage or what-have-you. Sometimes, I poke to see what the opposing views are. X is all the rage right now. So, if there is a thread about it, I'll ask or point to all the ways you can shoot yourself in the foot with X.

I get it. I wasn't really advocating for spending more time on HN. For me it's just the one piece of "social media" that I can consume responsibly. Most things go way over my head anyway so I don't get drawn into lengthy discussions. Other things are just interesting little bits of information that usually don't devolve into a rabbit hole of any kind. Occasionally I do get lost in a thread but that's an ok price to pay for me. It works for me because I'm not the kind of person smart enough to waste too much time on HN :)

> Diverse views are not celebrated and encouraged.

Can you elaborate? Are they downvoted, or just not presented in the first place?

He's full of beans, man. This site loves contrarian views, so long as they're even slightly supported by facts or anecdata.

The main thing that gets downvoted is angry tirades without evidence, and it happens to most political views/religious views no matter what side they're on.

You’re assuming everyone in HN downvotes just like you. How do you know that?

You can see which comments get downvoted, read them and thus learn others preferences.

How do you downvote ?

I only have an up arrow.

You need 500 karma to do it

Do you know how the flag-function works? Sometimes I'm able to flag comments, other times the button isn't present.

It looks like I can only flag comments once I tap reply?

You apparently also need 31 karma to do so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437

I'm just going by the posts I've seen dead and grayed out

Usually it's flame wars and nonsensical rants where the commenter appears to be off their medication

Meanwhile people are happy to have all sorts of conversations that will get you canceled elsewhere about gender, race, and vaccines (so long as the conversations are analytical anyway)

Yea sure. I won't give specific examples, otherwise the discussion will get derailed into bickering about extreme specifics to overthrow overall argument.

Try to see which comments are flagged and analyze why should they be flagged because of politics, spam, rudeness, ideology, not-factual, bigotry, etc. I'd say a significant portion of them are completely legitimate or interesting, just doesn't fit the ideology/politics here.

It's also possible to that I've changed, may be taken a red pill, I try to have a super sensitive self-introspection and try to objectively analyze what went wrong in flagged or downvoted comments.

Anyways, it's been mostly nice and to be honest, addicting. I still continue to visit HN, but will probably dial it back way down and just read weekly newsletters and avoid exposing myself to extreme-ideological positions here.

> I won't give specific examples

That's too bad! I usually find honing in on specific examples as the most effective way to explore a topic. But I understand the possibility that it could take the conversation down a rabbit hole.

> I'd say a significant portion of them are completely legitimate or interesting, just doesn't fit the ideology/politics here

I've yet to come across many flagged comments (or had any of my own flagged) but this feels like a strange motivation on its own. I feel like flagging should be reserved for comments that break the site guidelines?

What topics in particular do you find are insufficently diverse of opinions here? Let's discuss them here and now.

I've come to believe that quality of discourse declines as communities grow in size and scope regardless of medium.

If your position is rational and well presented and curious conversation (e.g. no hoaxes or 2nd hand information) than just post it. That it is not celebrated seems an emotional response -why should people celebrate any position here?- Unless you feel upvotes/downvotes are the measure of a comment.

It's easy to get lots of upvotes. Just post praise and self-reinforcing comments and you'll get boatload upvotes. Don't care, ultimately, it is the information that goes into the brain matter that I want to benefit from.

TikTok Android data collected: https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.zhiliao...

- Location

- Personal info: Name, Email, User IDs, Address, Phone Number

- Financial info: User payment info, purchase history, other financial info

- Messages: Other in-app messages

- Photos & Videos

- Audio voice & sound recordings

- Contacts

- App activity: App interactions, in-app search history, other user generated content

- Web browsing history

- App info and performance: Crash logs, diagnostics, other performance data

- Device or other IDs

TikTok iOS data collected: https://apps.apple.com/ug/app/tiktok-videos-music-live/id835...

- Purchases: Purchase History

- Financial Info: Payment Info, Other Financial Info

- Location

- Contact Info: Physical Address, Email Address, Name, Phone Number, Other User Contact Info

- Contacts

- User Content: Photos or Videos, Audio Data, Customer Support, Other User Content

- Search History

- Browsing History

- Identifiers

- Usage Data

- Diagnostics

What purchases, from what source? Same with financial information.

Contact info and contacts, only if you allow it?

User content, what does that even mean?

Search and browsing history is likely just from within the app, I don't see how they would get it from elsewhere.

Purchases probably meaning the in-app purchase for things you can send to people on TikTok lives. I have seen app dev advice that if you store purchase info on your server in any way, instead of it being a local only purchase, then you must check the box that you collect purchase info.

Which is exactly what they have done, considering this list is literally from the App Store page. This was only explained after the comment was edited and provides quite a lot of context to the list.

Updated with more context and source links. The real question is, why does it need all this data to show you videos?

Most of that data is needed to allow you to create videos and pay creators. The app does more than just show videos.

We all know the answer to that. It’s a free product, so you are the product.

I'm not an Android dev but I wonder if its ALL PURCHASE history or just access to purchase history and info in regards to the app like if you buy stuff in-app. Likely the latter if I had to guess.

I think without the context, it sounds extremely nefarious. But just as you, I think most of this data is things simply from within the app itself. Or data you explicitly grant access to.

And here's Twitter...

https://twitter.com/stevekrenzel/status/1589700721121058817

A lot of the Android ones are marked as Optional.

search and browsing history, like from Safari and not from whatever dodgy embedded browser tt has?

Of course its from their in-app browser and the stuff you type while inside it.

They cannot obtain all your history from Safari/Chrome/FF on your phone.

I have to say that I've never used tiktok on the phone and even on the desktop it's quite engaging. But the only reason why it even exists is because vine was killed by twitter in probably the worst business decision this millennium. So it's neither new, nor unique, nor inevitable. It is just the first non-us social media site and Americans are deeply worried about suffering what they subjected the rest of the world for the last 20 years.

TikTok and Vine are both "short video platforms" but there really are meaningful differences. TikTok's creation tools really are important to the culture it has developed. Making it trivial to stitch another video has led to a remixing and reframing culture that is completely novel to the platform - especially regarding audio. The ML curated feed and creator funding model also encourage different kinds of engagement and video creation than Vine. These things really really matter and people who look at a content platform as just the content format without considering the creation tools it provides will miss critical elements.

Consider an extreme analogy - the printing press. If you just understood books as "letters in ink on parchment or whatever" and you ignored the completely new tools for creation of that content you'd be completely baffled about why the sort of things available in books changed so wildly over time.

So would it have been better if it's Vine instead of TikTok?

I think the argument thrown_22 is making is that Americans would be less worried if it was Vine instead of TikTok because Vine is made in America. Tiktok is a globally relevant social network not only not from America but from what is increasingly seen as America's rival.

The argument isn't inputting on the value/harm done by the social network but rather the perception of that value/harm which is influenced by the sense that TikTok is foreign in a way Vine was not.

There are two types of people: Those who have used TikTok, and those who haven't (but are nevertheless engaged in a full-on satanic panic / red scare over it).

You seem to imply that those who have used TikTok know for a fact it's harmless. It's not, on many levels. At the very least, it encourages harmful behaviours both while using the app (aka mindlessly hollow crap TV couldn't dream of) and off-app (by showing you stupid shit that gets promoted to the top, therefore implicitly approved by society).

Curiously, the kind of activities that the "TikTok algorithm" promotes in Mainland China are is different from dances, beer basketball or tooth filing.

>it encourages harmful behaviours both while using the app (aka mindlessly hollow crap TV couldn't dream of) and off-app (by showing you stupid shit that gets promoted to the top, therefore implicitly approved by society).

I don't see how TikTok is any different than YouTube, Twitter and Instagram in this regard. The Cinnamon Challenge is almost 10 years old at this point.

>he kind of activities that the "TikTok algorithm" promotes in Mainland China are is different from dances, beer basketball or tooth filing.

Because the Chinese government has regulations against it. If they didn't exist, Bytedance would be happy to shove whatever crap down the throats of Chinese netizens granted it made them money. Gaming companies in China also limit the amount of time teenagers can play games, but that didn't come from the goodness of their hearts.

However try implying that the US Government should take similar steps and see how far you get.

Most of the content on youtube is trash, but some of it isn't. On youtube you can find lectures and talks, historic films, documentaries and instructional videos. Tiktok's short-video format does not support any of that. The videos purporting to be educational are vapid shallow trash, necessarily, because of the short-video format.

> Because the Chinese government has regulations against it.

The same government, convinced such content is harmful, happily allows Bytedance to export it. They view it as revenge for the Opium Wars; they're deliberately exporting poison.

> They view it as revenge for the Opium Wars; they're deliberately exporting poison.

First, do you have any evidence that the Chinese view it this way? Do you have, for example, any statement from a ByteDance executive or a Chinese government official to this effect?

Second, the reason why TikTok and Douyin (TikTok in China) are different is that there's regulation in China about what digital media children can consume. Nothing is stopping the US from passing such legislation, other than its own lack of desire to do so. During the Opium Wars, the British and French forced China to accept opium at gunpoint. China isn't forcing the US to do anything.

> Most of the content on youtube is trash, but some of it isn't. On youtube you can find lectures and talks, historic films, documentaries and instructional videos. Tiktok's short-video format does not support any of that. The videos purporting to be educational are vapid shallow trash, necessarily, because of the short-video format.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9DcwA/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9LQeu/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9fa8X/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9rKh5/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9KY6c/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9QHH5/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9tfvk/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9XNau/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFf9VJGb/

>lectures and talks, historic films, documentaries and instructional videos

Please point to such content on Instagram. Instagram has the same qualities you ascribe to TikTok but the only difference is you cannot point to a chinese boogeyman.

>happily allows Bytedance to export it.

This is nonsense. TikTok produced crap is produced locally. It's not Chinese influencers generating "vapid shallow trash"; and if Tiktok were banned Instagram would happily vacuum up those creators onto Reels. Revenge for the opium wars? My friend, we are doing this to ourselves. It's not the CCP's fault that America has resigned itself to algorithmic ad-driven content. We invented those algorithms.

Instagram is not going to be any less vapid just because it's run by Americans.

You are insinuating that I have defended Instagram, but Instagram and the entirety of Facebook can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned. Fuck off with the strawmen; my comment above is a defense of youtube, not instagram. You're trying to change the subject because you have no rebuttal to what I actually said.

You are implicitly defending instagram when you say something like They view it as revenge for the Opium Wars; they're deliberately exporting poison.

And again, just because you can point to a small amount of educational content of youtube doesn't change the fact that a large majority of it is "vapid", and that YouTube is also trying to cash in on that trend (via YouTube Shorts).

Nonetheless you can find educational channel on TikTok as another commenter shows which makes your defense of YouTube quite flimsy.

Userbase dynamics is weird. Instagram is somehow dominated by women seeking attention and has an appropriate audience, facebook doesn't seem to be bent on changing that and dumbing their users down.

Tiktok seems to deliberately promote degenerate behaviour, nothing organic about that.

The phone is somewhat overkill. Because TikTok's core functionality is simply swipe and watch, it would be an ideal app for a brain wave operated device with minimal inputs.

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