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Comment by 39896880 | Hacker News Reader

My theory is that TikTok is optimized similarly to YouTube in that it uses viewing time as a signal of interest. So, you could open TikTok, see underage people dancing, turn your phone to your spouse and say "can you believe this is what this app shows?" and the app will take the fact that you played the video as a sign you want to see more.

I don't remember if there's even a downvote button. I had the same experience you did, but in the opposite direction gender-wise, and it took a bit longer to get too young, but it got there.

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Deep within the settings, there's a "Don't show me things like this" button in TikTok. Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval.

There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough.

If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it.

Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.

> There's no need to have a dislike button. Your behavior is enough.

Literally right after you said that, you described why a dislike button is necessary:

> If you dislike something and watch it, that's engagement. They'll of course want to show you more of it.

> Rage and anger are engagement too. They're perhaps the best forms of engagement.

That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice.

Your suggestion was,

> Maybe someone should make a TikTok competitor where you swipe left or right on a video to indicate your approval.

The audience for this would be small. Social media platforms have found that users engage with content they "don't like". If showing users content they don't like resulted in less overall engagement, the platforms would rewrite their algorithms in a heartbeat.

A competitor to TikTok already faces an enormous uphill battle. If such a platform chooses to remove a proven strategy for traction and engagement, then it's doubling down on the headwinds and infirmities. I wouldn't count on it being a successful venture.

> That's not the platform's problem. It would likely make the platform less successful if they were to follow your advice.

If you're looking to start a competitor, you need to differentiate somehow. Not using "rage and anger" to drive engagement would be pretty appealing to a user.

It's also worth noting that the context of this thread was two users who deleted the app because it showed them stuff they did not want to see. And the wider context has been TikTok has been utterly clueless handling concerns from the public and regulators, so I don't think reasoning from the assumption that whatever TikTok does is necessary is the right way to go.

And if you are right, it's just more proof that modern capitalism doesn't incentivize making things people want, rather it incentivizes making the things that exploit them most effectively. The appropriate political adjustments should be made to beat those companies until their users' morale improves.

> Your suggestion was,

Wasn't my suggestion.

I think the source of your confusing is that you wandered into a conversion between users while thinking you were a platform.

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