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Comment by Gortal278 | Hacker News Reader

It obviously does. Still a great app though.

> It obviously does. Still a great app though.

What is so great about it? It's algo, infinite scrolling, monetization models?

These are generally time sinks and engagement is what it's optimized for, but as a platform how is any different than what Vine or any other similar platform made before?

People uploading hours of their skits/rants/dancing etc... and calling it content has never appealed to me, hence why I never bothered with Social Media. But I'm genuinely curious, what makes it a 'great app' amongst technologists?

It is extremely entertaining. The content and algorithm to get you content is better than anything i've ever seen.

Definitely a threat though to US and west etc.

How you can so nonchalantly say it's extremely entertaining and the best thing ever while considering it a threat to half of the world? One thing should completely negate the other right?

The internet is still new in the grand scheme of society and people haven't adjusted. They haven't learned that these short videos are programming them to not think and taking advantage of them for marketing purposes. They still find them "extremely entertaining" because they haven't considered the second order effects. There are people with genetic predisposition to alcoholism for various reasons, this is kinda like that.

I have ADHD and so I am very defensive of my focus and so I will not participate in TikTok or YouTube Shorts or any of that abusive stuff because for me it deprives me significantly of my agency. For some people (most?) dissociating into TikTok (and losing agency in the process) is the point.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive at all. It‘s very possible for the algorithm to get content to be amazing while still posing massive national security concerns.

I'm not talking about the algorithm quality. I'm talking about considering something so threatening "extremely entertaining". It has to be some domain (moral maybe) where those concepts are mutually exclusive.

> One thing should completely negate the other right?

Make your case? I don't think so. I don't see why entertaining / not - entertaining and danger to society / not-danger to society are have a correlation.

Never used it for obvious reasons. compared to reddit or imgur what is better about it? Just UX or does it appeal to your personality in that it is more socially engaging?

I don't care for social engagement much, it's just more entertaining than anything else. The content and algorithm are outstanding.

Cheap, unimaginative, repetitive trite media of short content. More pathetic than the low quality general guilty pleasure one would generally think of. So if that’s your thing, then that’s your thing.

Nope, the content is extremely high in quality. And it super personalized to your taste. It's outstanding.

Still a problem we use it though.

If you're comparing it to reddit or imgur I'd argue you probably don't use social media enough for the differences to matter tbh. It's optimized for a different kind of content and browsing experience after all. It's much more similar to youtube but with shorter video lengths and a much more effective recommendation algorithm.

> If you're comparing it to reddit or imgur I'd argue you probably don't use social media enough

On the scale of 1 ( social media) to 10 (watching TV), reddit/imgur are to the left of YouTube/tiktok.

Your scale seems designed according to a philosophy that penalizes user experiences tailored towards fast consumption and prioritizing video content. Speaking as someone with a younger half-sibling in middle school, I would argue that one of the strongest social skills you could have is a strong awareness of YouTube/Tiktok culture. I realize not everyone uses the comments in YouTube/TikTok but if you acknowledge their crossover effects in spaces like Discord then I don't see how you can argue with a straight face that Reddit/Imgur are superior to either YouTube or TikTok. At best, I could see an argument that they prioritize different types of media and user experiences which would be true.

I didn't say they had better algorithms, just that they were better examples of social networks, emphasis on the word social.

It's my search engine for places to visit, things to do :) I usually just search for a destination, and scroll through the videos. TikTok videos IMO have much better quality than Google search results for travel topic.

Wait, TikTok has search? I never used it, but I thought it was endless scroll + swiping. I figured it would be miserable until it learned about you.

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