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Comment by Melting_Harps | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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.

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