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Comment by thrown_22 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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