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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

It's not even just how they promote/mute political topics. Watch Tik Tok videos in China and it's all young people helping the elderly, learning job skills, and doing other socially virtuous things. Watch Tik Tok videos outside of China and it's all videos of kids stealing cars, eating Tide pods, and pranking people in Home Depot.

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You can blame the first amendment for that. The first amendment doesn't apply to China, so the Chinese government tells Douyin what content is undesirable and it gets filtered/censored. Is that what you want to happen in the US? Or did you think Douyin was intentionally leaving money on the table due to patriotic fervor?

I'm just speculating, but my guess is it serves both purposes. Filling US youth with destructive stuff is also excellent for engagement. Two birds one stone

Is it the United States' policy to fill middle-eastern youth with lascivious/wanton content, or do social media thirst-trap pictures just have excellent engagement?

In both cases, the operators don't have to actively boost that content, and it also is profitable, so they won't voluntarily remove it until forced to do so (by the government or public).

One could also appeal to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other such sites here. These sites are absolutely filled with 'less than socially valuable' content. Yet when degenerate content also shows up on TikTok it's somehow because of some convoluted Chinese conspiracy. And this conspiracy is presented with absolutely no evidence of merit, instead relying primarily on appeals to prejudice and bias - 'Come on man, don't be stupid - it's China!' The same sort of logic that could be used to make essentially any claim, regardless of its basis in reality.

as Chinese, it is no political, no drug, less gang style music, less sexual video, but not all as you say

I hear this a lot but I'm pretty sure China has mindless social media apps like we do. I think it's called Douyin or something, if you go to https://www.douyin.com/discover you'll even see the tiktok logo. I'm pretty sure you can only watch people help the elderly cross the street so many times before you start looking for something more entertaining.

For example do an internet search for Chinese people live streaming under a bridge. I'm pretty sure these people are not all demonstrating job skills.

Douyin is TikTok but for China. Operated by the same company but with different servers (https://www.bytedance.com/en/products). And i am pretty sure they are effectively telling bytedance to get rid of things that would corrupt the youth (in the governments opinion).

Like they banned effeminate man on TV: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effemina...

Douyin _is_ the Chinese TikTok.

>Douyin vs TikTok also differs in terms of popular content. The most popular on Douyin is definitely educational content, with videos helping to improve skills and grow personally, while on Tik Tok the most popular is narrating videos, which is a great opportunity for artists, singers, and music producers.

https://marketingtochina.com/differences-between-tiktok-and-...

Douyin is Tik Tok in China. And no they don't, authoritarian governments have quite a bit of leeway in shutting those sorts of things down. While it can be bypassed, the average person isn't going to do it (or get away with it).

You're missing the point. It's not about what content users in a country are uploading to the platform or wanting to consume on the platform, it's which content the algorithm promotes/mutes in a given country based on the wishes of the Chinese government.

If you go to https://www.douyin.com/discover it looks like the same mindless entertainment we see but Chinese people. Maybe they're trying to promote more virtuous content but I'm not seeing it on Chinese TikTok's front page. I scrolled through a few pages and I didn't see anything that would be similar to helping the elderly or job skills. It's certainly not "all" virtuous content like originally claimed.

Are you viewing this from China? The obvious answer seems to be they're just running different filters and scoring based on the location of the device.

No. Are you? Can you screenshot it for me?

No. I don't know whether or not the difference in content is real. All I'm saying that if it were, it would obviously be done by geolocation, and in that case you would still see west-targeted content when visiting Douyin or TikTok; this invalidates the counterpoint I responded to.

This would be an interesting test, although I don't think even a VPN exit node in China is good enough unless your device also feeds bogus GPS coords that show you are in China. I used to do with the Xposed all the time (because apps have no business knowing where I am) but now that Android is so hostile toward root and power users, I don't know how doable it is anymore (though I'd love to hear if someone does).

Your "obvious" claim seems more like a strong assumption, that you know the not only the behavior but the mechanism of douyin based on... Obviousness?

I agree GP should have been a lot more humble in their claim and is not acknowledging the level to which they are speculating, but aside from the untactful approach, location does seem an important point especially for a company as data hungry and adept at mining/using that data as bytedance.

Except that the Douyin operates only in China, you even need a Chinese phone number to register in the page. The Douyin do not aim for consumers outside China. Therefore, why would a website care to create a customized "discover" page for different countries when it have users only from a single country?

Frankly, nowadays it seems like we're just reviving McCarthyism when we talk about China.

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