I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations. I am deeply concerned when I see kids hooked on that crack, because they are burning their potential. It's scary, and if I had one far fetched easy theory to make, I'd say TikTok is a way for China to mitigate the threat coming from the west's upcoming generations, by ensuring their collective capabilities are as limited as possible. That theory doesn't stand though, as TikTok (Douyin) also operates in China. No kid is spared.
But, two things:
- What they collect is literally nothing special. Worse things happen, and have happened in mobile apps/mobile SDKs. (remember Onavo, acquired by Facebook? Way worse). What do we think Google and Apple know about our devices (Check Apple terms, it's good fun [0])? Isn't this again about the recurring fear/shock that a Chinese company should not hold data about western citizens?
- the article isn't about how much TikTok can know by being in our phones, despite what most comments here imply. Instead, it's about how deeply TikTok taps in users minds by leveraging the unhealthy and addictive relationship we have with phones, acting as "prosthetic extension of our [my] corporeal being".
> What matters is that we rely on these external tools in the way we rely on our brain; if those objects are similarly accessible, endorsed, and integrated into cognition, we should simply consider them part of the mind.
> TikTok (Douyin) also operates in China. No kid is spared.
Can’t vouch for the following observation, since I’ve never used either one, but:
"In their version of TikTok, if you're under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos," said Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
"And they also limit it to only 40 minutes per day. Now they don't ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world. So it's almost like they recognize that technology's influencing kids' development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,"
So 1. The Chinese govt makes laws restricting these apps for young children which are only valid in China, 2. Tiktok obeys local laws in China and local laws in the US, 3. the US and other Western govts don't force social media companies to make the apps safer for children, and you are blaming the Chinese govt for making American kids stupid and addicted?
How does the behavior of Instagram, Pinterest and others fit into this theory?
Any kind of amusing content for kids is time restricted in china. If a western game company wants to get into the market, they need to implement time limits & age checks.
When have we ever expected companies to do the right thing? Governments are needed to come up with regulations for that, but restricting which content or how much someone can consume, even kids, would be touted as deeply authoritarian in our societies. So the otus is then on parents...
For all their other sins, at least China seems aware of the dangers of unfettered access to all that "tech" has to offer. I've long been of the opinion that it's insane for a country to allow any agent (in the broadest sense of the word) anywhere in the world, direct and unlimited access to their citizens' life, thoughts, and desires through the internet.
I'd love to have someone verify this. If you type Douyin into YouTube you see the platform contains the same nonsense videos that TikTok has. So we know the content is similar. The question is the experience really different for users under 14. And if so, how is this enforced? If it's a matter of stating your birth date when you sign up then I don't think the restriction means much.
> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations.
I have lots of concerns about TikTok and refuse to use it myself. But this is ridiculous - and that upsets me quite a bit because is delegitimizes the actual problems with TikTok. TikTok will not lower anyone's IQ. This is straight up just old man yelling at cloud. And that does us all a disservice.
They said that about radio. They said that about TV. They said that about computers. They said that about dumbphones. They said that about smartphones. They're now saying that about apps.
I interviewed for a data science product manager role (I am one) at a games company.
They were doing very interesting things with generative models however the person running it’s speciality was a Phd in addiction (and plenty of work in the field)
Was so interesting from an intellectual stand point but so very very evil.
A 2016 talk by Tribeflame CEO Torulf Jernström about the monetization of mobile games called "Let's Go Whaling!" also caused a bit of a ruffle a while ago.
Ominously delivered with smug smirk, met by smug laughter: "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk. We can discuss it, if we have time, later."
I made an account to reply to this. I don't think this is a China/TikTok issue but more an issue of how the west is treating its people.
Sure, social media/TikTok shows impressionable people that you can earn a (good) living by making content (as does YouTube, Twitch, and OnlyFans). Still, western civilizations aren't offering an attractive alternative.
Look at all the layoffs in tech and all the outsourcing that has happened with companies that earn record profits.
If I were a young kid growing up now, seeing my parents getting laid off for no reason and switching jobs every few years/months, I'd think this might not be how I want to live my life.
As a result, young people grow up chasing careers in content rather than science, infrastructure, tech, or health care because they now know that going down that path opens them up to massive vulnerabilities and possibly a low quality of life. After a couple of generations, there might not be enough people working in those necessary fields, which can hurt.
I added my local pharmacist on WhatsApp once when I was waiting for an order to come in. Instagram is very keen for me to be his friend and frequently suggests him. He hasn’t posted anything, but I did look at who he follows, and it’s a collection of glamour models in skimpy clothing, which given the amount of Jesus paraphernalia in his store I’m not sure is something he particularly wants me to know.
TikTok, which attempts to divine your interests by noticing how long you spend looking at certain videos, probably knows the sexuality of its users, and niche interests that may not be public knowledge — there is for sure a family-first politician somewhere who spends a little bit longer than they’d like you to know looking at young-looking topless guys.
> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations. I am deeply concerned when I see kids hooked on that crack, because they are burning their potential
For the most part I agree, but it depends on the owner of the phone. Danish politicians have increasingly been using TikTok. It doesn't take a Chinese genius to correlate the location of two or more MPs during the current talks, regarding how to form the next government, to gain insights into how that could possibly pan out. They've basically stuffed a tracking device into the pockets of the most important politicians in the country and are now able to know when they meet.
Yes, true. I didn't think about that, but again, this isn't something new, relying on a more agressive than average tracking tech. West is just concerned about how it may be used.
Strava was similarly dangerous at times [0]. The difference is that the west has a strong grasp on western companies and what they do with the data, but what prevents the US to use the location data from, say, key Twitter users in other countries? From my understanding, it's legally possible for the govt to access that data. No one (really) budges.
> I'd say TikTok is a way for China to mitigate the threat coming from the west's upcoming generations, by ensuring their collective capabilities are as limited as possible.
I wonder how much the flavour of commentary would change if you swapped "China" with "Israel"...here comes the deep water.
Even if TikTok were suddenly wiped off every phone on the planet, a competitor would take its place. TikTok simply takes advantage of people's desire to be entertained and apathy over privacy issues.
Most people don't care about privacy issues not because of apathy, but because they have a different sense of privacy than privacy advocates.
I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not. Many people would not care a lick of you could figure out they ate at subway earlier in the day, whereas this is worrying to privacy advocates.
This claim is regularly repeated, but strongly and directly contradicted by literally every study on the topic. Here [1] is one from Pew in late 2019.
81% of Americans believe the potential risks of companies collecting about them outweighs and benefits. 79% are very/somewhat concerned about how the data collected on them is used. The big issue 81% also believe that little or no control over the data collection. Interestingly not only do people also feel that the government will do nothing to hold companies accountable, they are also concerned about how the government is using their data.
Such results are demonstrated in every single survey. People are overwhelmingly concerned about how companies are using their data, but feel completely helpless.
> I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not.
Most people aren't making informed, nuanced decisions about their privacy. Most people think online privacy doesn't impact anything more than what ads they see and so they don't care out of ignorance.
If people were aware of when and how the data they gave up is used against them they'd probably reconsider their views. The trouble is that people aren't allowed to know, so it's never in their face enough to register for them. People generally aren't great about evaluating consequences that aren't immediate or dangers that are at all abstract. That's what's enabled a multi-billion dollar a year industry to spring up around the buying and selling of data that "doesn't matter" and that "no one cares about".
That kind of thinking lets people get taken advantage of over and over again, get manipulated, lose opportunities, and have their money siphoned from their pockets without even realizing it had anything to do with the data that was taken from them.
Unless things change people will be trying to reassure each other that it doesn't matter who knows what they ate for breakfast even while they're being sorted into digital caste systems that will define and limit their options across many areas of their life.
I don't understand the point. Every social media's goal is to take advantage of people's desire to be entertained. Youtube, Instagram, etc. Yet TikTik has managed to come from behind and overtake all the other apps. People are so quick to dismiss its algorithm, yet no other app comes close to recreating the experience.
The problem isn't just social media, it's all kinds of entertainment. It seems like everything today is designed to give as much as a adrenine and dopamine hit as possible.
Take a look at the style of the filmmaking from a movie today and a similar movie from 20 years ago. Each scene has many more abrupt cuts, and everything feels much more fast paced.
Even when presented with TikTok's data harvesting or algorithm tweaking to make divisive issues trend more popularly -- no users want to give it up.
Really does anyone have any better rationale that could be used to convince people not to use it? I have older relatives (60s) and younger (teens) that are obsessed with it.
Thinking the market is always split into discrete niches based on current landscape you will never come up with an actual innovation. There could be product(s) that address the desire to be entertained in various ways without being like TikTok or taking its exact niche.
help me understand please. i am not from USA so i don't see of things as us vs them thing when it comes to china, for me, its all "them" anyway so be it china or usa.
what tangible privacy issues are with tiktok? in india the govt banned it last time over some bs reasons helping instagram but that is unrelated to "privacy"...
tiktok sells ads, instagram/fb sells ads. if i am using both, how is one better and another really bad?
its not like the US based companies aren't in for the money for the highest bidder and even harmful for their own citizens like the recent case of fb snitching on a girl who wanted an abortion?
After hearing so much about TikTok's addictiveness, I decided to give it a whirl. I spent a good few hours trying to get a feed that was interesting to me by searching for various keywords. I was mostly looking for weird, abstract, absurdist videos, but also anything else that interested me. Unfortunately it was quite difficult to find anything I actually liked. Most of "weird tiktok" seemed to be a teenager's idea of "weird"―too fauxdark, edgy, memelordic. I did manage to find a few videos and creators I actually liked, but not enough to make my feed much better. I eventually gave up and deleted the app.
Just one small anecdotal data point to counter the idea that the app is addicting for everyone. If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.
> If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.
I do. Don't waste time by trying to find the stuff you want by explicitly searching for specific tags (aside from maybe for the purpose of the initial seeding, but that's not a must at all). That would indeed bring up just tons of kinda trashy content that seems like it is tailored to either teenagers or the lowest common denominator. Instead, try using the main feed.
Simply scroll past videos you don't find interesting/appealing to you, hit "like" (double tap) on the kind of videos you like, etc. You've mentioned you've already found some creators you like, that's great. Hit "like" on some of their videos that you actually like . Don't try to trick the algorithm by forcing some unnatural behaviors, just use the feed normally. To clarify, when I say "feed", I mean "For You" feed aka the main feed, not "Following" feed.
First 30 mins or so of that will be meh. But the more you use it that way (doesn't need to be in one sitting at all, that part doesn't matter), the better the content will be tailored to your tastes.
I can almost guarantee that you will not only find what you wanted that way, but also discover things that you didn't realize you liked/wanted to see. I checked out feeds on my friends' phones before, and it is kinda wild how different our feeds are. A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos. Another friend of mine who is into building/fixing cars gets a lot of great build project videos. I get a solid mix of a particular type of dark comedy that appeals to me, sound synthesis videos, and some cool electronics projects that I would actually want to attempt myself.
Just don't rush it, don't expect some instant magic to happen, and let it naturally adapt to your tastes.
>A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos.
yeah, getting "non-mainstream" fitness advice from freaking short form videos is just about the dumbest thing I've heard this month
tell your friend to read a book sometimes, there's a reason why they exist and it's not to sell more ads unlike some other media ...
> I spent a good few hours trying to get a feed that was interesting to me by searching for various keywords... If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.
The whole magic sauce is that you don't/can't shape your FYP ("for you page": feed) by searching or otherwise sending deliberate signals to the algorithm. Instead you just flip through the videos it sends you and it reads into how long you watch, which videos you skip, where you like/comment, who you follow etc. If you don't consciously try to influence it and just mindlessly, organically consume you'll end up with a very accurate FYP of videos remarkably quickly. I'm not surprised that trying to drive your FYP in a specific direction backfired; I suspect they make search deliberately bad and don't take it into account in a meaningful way when constructing the FYP for a user.
It is, of course, up to you whether that sounds like a media experience that you want to participate in. I installed it skeptically but in literally less than an hour my FYP was nothing but videos I found engaging or fun, and several years later it's my most used phone app by a significant margin. Some of it is obviously low calorie entertainment but there's a lot of depth as well, and I continue to be struck by how accurately the FYP can identify what content I want to see and what I don't.
Tried it over the past week. Even about the subjects that interest me, all the vids I could find were too shallow (as in old info, badly researched etc even for such a short video), sensationalist click bait, way too short etc.
I filled in my profile honestly and somehow it took me a lot of effort to teach the algo that I don't want to see videos of (mostly) naked teens dancing or doing (other) suggestive sex things (the first hour after installing, I got 4 young girls simulating taking a boob & vag pic and then looking at them with faked interest while giggling called pause game or something; is it supposed to be funny or?).
I followed 0 teens and because I didn't think I wouldn't find anything interesting about programming, I thought I would follow some true crime stuff; still got naked young girls mostly. After a while of following enough other stuff I got less of it.
I guess most guys (even old as myself) normally want to see this crap so the algo defaults to that? I don't know.
But the content I am supposed to like really sucks too; the 100k view video authors often don't even get the names of victims/perps right, many facts are just debunked rehashes of sensationalist takes etc. It's horrible so far. And the comments... the comments. Youtube comments are great compared and that's saying something. Maybe it'll improve?
The app is collecting tons of metrics of actual watching behaviour to adapt the feed. So maybe you don't want to advertise that "after using the app extensively I'm still getting only half naked young girls dancing". I'm not getting any half naked girls dancing in my feed despite quite enjoying young people dancing mindlessly as a counterweight to the state of the fucking world. Eg. the top notch editing/dancing by Cale Brown.
I had the same experience. I've given TikTok several chances, each time it ends with me deleting the app after "the algo" and I disagree about what I actually want to watch. Yes, I paused for longer on the weird videos, but that doesn't mean I liked them. Yet the algo took this as strong signal to give me more of them.
I tried the same about a month back - opened an account, logged in and tried searching on a few technical terms to see what I could find and train the search algorithm. Like yourself though, every time I log in afresh I end up with some weird video, usually someone pulling a duck face into the camera or dancing or something.
Is it possible that the angle TikTok strives for simply lacks substance?
I'm working on making something called The Laugh Track where you send your friend (singular) the type of laugh you just did (from a select list of types of laughs). If it's worth it, they'll hit you up personally to know wtf happened :D If that takes off and becomes a national security threat, I will not say oh yeah this is great content, totally makes sense people are addicted to this nonsense!
I found my way into YouTube shorts since I already use YT a lot and it knew what I liked. Realizing it’s a TK ripoff, and seeing funny TKs shared, I figure TikTok must be way better, so I tried it. But I had the same experience as you: it didn’t click. Maybe if I had replicated my YouTube subscriptions (some are on both) it would have worked better, but I tried telling it my interests and hoping “the algorithm” would figure it out. But it didn’t.
I've now collected several different creators who are one both platforms, and without exception I prefer their content on YouTube over TikTok. You just can't compare the quality level expected for youtube to tiktok. On Youtube, if you want any views at all, you pretty much MUST have a high quality HD camera (some modern phones now count), a good microphone, good presentation, there was most likely a script written out and edited, there will often be diagrams or explanations or rationalizations for many parts, there will be digging into details basically.
Physically speaking, TikTok videos CANNOT do anything but be extremely shallow "Fast Fact" videos that just make a claim, with no evidence, no reasoning, no verification, just a "Hey I'm me and I say I'm someone and this is a factoid and either believe me or don't". These videos are great for addiction, because if you are gullible for those kinds of factoids you will love an endless barrage of dopamine inducing "Facts" that you can repeat at the next party you attend.
Youtube has similar "Factoid" videos but you will also find 20 minute short form essays rebutting those factoids with demonstrations, evidence, citations, etc. You simply can't rebut a 1 minute claim in a 1 minute video in a way that laypeople should be convinced by. It's weaponization of "It's harder to debunk that spout nonsense"
A bit of a tangent, but YouTube had sucked me into hours of economic doomscrolling a day. I even purchased the premium tier to avoid ads. Then suddenly two months ago they changed some algo and all the good videos are gone, along with most of my engagement.
The lesson I learned: Even if I find magic, magic can quickly disappear with a new production release.
Similar experience, although I didn't even search actively but wanted to let the famed algorithm work its magic. I think I made it to maybe 30mins before I meh'd out. I might have given it another try now, but I just saw that I already uninstalled it.
I don't know why, but I hate the tiktok trends and it's spread all over other platforms (eg. "shorts" on youtube).
Cooking channel? What was once a 10 minute video with a recipe and all the details is now a reddit-gif style recipe, 30 seconds without any details (eg. how cooked the first ingredient is, when s/he throws in the second, etc.).
Tech channel? Yeah, 30 seconds can only be a teaser (=ad) for a full video.
Music? another teaser (=ad)
I know i'm a different generation from the current teenagers, and I prefer videos without many fillers, but those <1min things are way too short to be of any value to me personally.
I really really hate how common it is for someone on tiktok to claim they have relevant credentials and then repeat a blatant lie about the industry that's been a lie forever.
There was a person who posted a video saying "I'm a flight attendant and airline seats are designed to kill you to pay less for the lawsuit" even though that's been debunked IN POPULAR MEDIA for about twenty years (mythbusters) and "Flight attendant" should not be considered a reputable source for information on the engineering, legal, and liability of an airline. And yet, she had millions of views.
It's just utterly FULL of assholes claiming they are reputable and spouting the dumbest, oldest, most asinine conspiracy theories for views.
It depends on the content. YouTube rewards long watch times, which is why the people creating content stretch the video's duration regardless of whether it's needed or not.
Much of the content in the past was largely devoid of actual content with the focus being to build up suspense to get the person to keep watching. Take those slow-mo videos, for example. There's a few seconds or a minute of actual content - the rest is just filler. Myth Busters was the same years ago.
I'll watch a longer video if the amount of content in it justifies this. That's rarely the case for me, though.
I chuckled at - "There is no time to think about what you just saw because as soon as the clip ends, you’re on to the next one. The spectator is rendered a consummate consumer,"
I still haven't installed/registered for tiktok, I have no more bandwidth for another social network. I'm still fighting IG and Twitter addiction, what happens when I add another one. Just throw your phones away haha.
> There is no time to think about what you just saw because as soon as the clip ends, you’re on to the next one
Did the author of the article actually...use TikTok? That's not at all how the app works; it loops the videos by default and you have to manually scroll. Sure, you can just swipe as soon as it's over, but my impression is that this is explicitly _not_ the "happy path" for the user. My girlfriend enjoys TikTok a lot (and I often will watch with her using our TV app, which interestingly is a better experience in a few ways, like not showing any ads, although it is missing some functionality), and generally if we like a video we'll start talking a bit about it as it loops, and we only move on once we're ready. Skipping immediately after it's over (or even earlier, if it's not interesting) is more of a failure mode in my opinion (although it does vary a bit; I don't think looping on the longer form videos is as common, but I'd argue that engagement with the longer videos is if anything a counter argument to what the author is saying). If there's a social issue with the way TikTok works, I'm not convinced that it's due to the actual mechanics or network of the app. If anything, despite the fact that I don't use any of them myself, Facebook and Twitter seem like a strictly worse experience for the user. It seems much less about directly following a large number people and more about just generally watching what comes up, which means that while you have a unlimited amount of content to view for all practical purposes, there's no illusion of "missing out" by not watching absolutely everything on your feed. Because of the compositional features (reusing the same audio from other videos, "stitching" your video onto the end of another one, "dueting" yourself side by side with another video), a lot of times there isn't even really one specific video to watch for a given "thing"; anything that's sufficiently popular will be reused in enough other videos that you'll end up finding it one way or another.
Is TikTok a social network? Fundamentally, in order for TikTok to work you don't need to be connected to anyone. Doesn't it make it anti-social? Does it matter if the content is UGC or not for the app to be social?
Sounds right. One day I decided to try TitTok. Next thing I knew it was late into the night and I hadn't even eaten dinner. That was the first and last time I used that service.
It is the new digital crack / cocaine for the kids these days, just like Facebook was a decade ago, but even worse. It is also hardly as some of its most addicted fans have said "The best thing to have happened to the Internet" [0], It is completely the opposite; [1] especially for yet another algorithm optimizing for 98% of your attention and relaying more content based on your viewing habits.
The solution is to delete all your accounts off of these platforms and just don't look back. [2] You're not missing a thing.
The problem is not the application, it's the people. We've gotten to the point where people are willing to spend endless hours for entertainment (long, or short content).
Social (and non-social) media is able to capture peoples' attentions for far too long. Instead of being bored, and having their minds wonder and attempt other tasks, they are endlessly entertained.
People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda. I don't follow tiktok, but I'm influenced by it every day due to my friends who try or follow new trends based on what they see.
The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly. Even going on Reddit, I only see negative posts about the United States, and people arguing how bad it is to live here. Yet, while traveling outside the US, I barely see 5-10% of those posts, but no other posts about how bad it is to live in those countries (granted the US has a far higher population). It just seems like people on social media are shitting on the US these days for reasons that they dont even understand, or know how to compare to anywhere else.
> People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda.
> The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly.
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight”.
I’m not sure if Tik tok drastically changed their algorithm or if the people generating content changed from the height of the pandemic into this phase but I really can’t think of another app that I found so great and useful becoming so fundamentally boring to me that I deleted it. When I started using it the content it served up was so weirdly specific to my needs and when I lost interest earlier this year it was like half text to speech nonsense over found tv footage that was occasionally salacious
Big agree. I downloaded it in 2020 and was mildly amused by the videos, but I didn't see the supposedly addictive qualities that everyone (including on here) was talking about. Since then, the algorithm has gotten much worse and I don't even bother watching it anymore. For example yes I'm approaching middle age, but endless Middle America lowbrow humor videos of other middle aged guys complaining about their wives is boring? Why does TikTok serve me a hundred of these in a row? It's like a Walmart comedy special
Readit News
But, two things:
- What they collect is literally nothing special. Worse things happen, and have happened in mobile apps/mobile SDKs. (remember Onavo, acquired by Facebook? Way worse). What do we think Google and Apple know about our devices (Check Apple terms, it's good fun [0])? Isn't this again about the recurring fear/shock that a Chinese company should not hold data about western citizens?
- the article isn't about how much TikTok can know by being in our phones, despite what most comments here imply. Instead, it's about how deeply TikTok taps in users minds by leveraging the unhealthy and addictive relationship we have with phones, acting as "prosthetic extension of our [my] corporeal being".
> What matters is that we rely on these external tools in the way we rely on our brain; if those objects are similarly accessible, endorsed, and integrated into cognition, we should simply consider them part of the mind.
[0] https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1589239911219331072
Can’t vouch for the following observation, since I’ve never used either one, but:
"In their version of TikTok, if you're under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos," said Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
"And they also limit it to only 40 minutes per day. Now they don't ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world. So it's almost like they recognize that technology's influencing kids' development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,"
https://thepostmillennial.com/tiktoks-chinese-platform-enric...
How does the behavior of Instagram, Pinterest and others fit into this theory?
I have lots of concerns about TikTok and refuse to use it myself. But this is ridiculous - and that upsets me quite a bit because is delegitimizes the actual problems with TikTok. TikTok will not lower anyone's IQ. This is straight up just old man yelling at cloud. And that does us all a disservice.
They said that about radio. They said that about TV. They said that about computers. They said that about dumbphones. They said that about smartphones. They're now saying that about apps.
Was so interesting from an intellectual stand point but so very very evil.
Ominously delivered with smug smirk, met by smug laughter: "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk. We can discuss it, if we have time, later."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4
Turns out they would have had time later but for some reason opted not to.
Sure, social media/TikTok shows impressionable people that you can earn a (good) living by making content (as does YouTube, Twitch, and OnlyFans). Still, western civilizations aren't offering an attractive alternative.
Look at all the layoffs in tech and all the outsourcing that has happened with companies that earn record profits.
If I were a young kid growing up now, seeing my parents getting laid off for no reason and switching jobs every few years/months, I'd think this might not be how I want to live my life.
As a result, young people grow up chasing careers in content rather than science, infrastructure, tech, or health care because they now know that going down that path opens them up to massive vulnerabilities and possibly a low quality of life. After a couple of generations, there might not be enough people working in those necessary fields, which can hurt.
I added my local pharmacist on WhatsApp once when I was waiting for an order to come in. Instagram is very keen for me to be his friend and frequently suggests him. He hasn’t posted anything, but I did look at who he follows, and it’s a collection of glamour models in skimpy clothing, which given the amount of Jesus paraphernalia in his store I’m not sure is something he particularly wants me to know.
TikTok, which attempts to divine your interests by noticing how long you spend looking at certain videos, probably knows the sexuality of its users, and niche interests that may not be public knowledge — there is for sure a family-first politician somewhere who spends a little bit longer than they’d like you to know looking at young-looking topless guys.
This information strikes me as “special”
Nope, they think I prefer brunettes, while actually I’m an equal opportunity uhm.. watcher.
People in 1991 were complaining about the same with regards to newspapers (https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/why-the-news-mak...) and you can probably find the same sentiment around the time that the first magazines were published around the 1740s (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-tra...).
For the most part I agree, but it depends on the owner of the phone. Danish politicians have increasingly been using TikTok. It doesn't take a Chinese genius to correlate the location of two or more MPs during the current talks, regarding how to form the next government, to gain insights into how that could possibly pan out. They've basically stuffed a tracking device into the pockets of the most important politicians in the country and are now able to know when they meet.
Strava was similarly dangerous at times [0]. The difference is that the west has a strong grasp on western companies and what they do with the data, but what prevents the US to use the location data from, say, key Twitter users in other countries? From my understanding, it's legally possible for the govt to access that data. No one (really) budges.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072.amp
I wonder how much the flavour of commentary would change if you swapped "China" with "Israel"...here comes the deep water.
I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not. Many people would not care a lick of you could figure out they ate at subway earlier in the day, whereas this is worrying to privacy advocates.
81% of Americans believe the potential risks of companies collecting about them outweighs and benefits. 79% are very/somewhat concerned about how the data collected on them is used. The big issue 81% also believe that little or no control over the data collection. Interestingly not only do people also feel that the government will do nothing to hold companies accountable, they are also concerned about how the government is using their data.
Such results are demonstrated in every single survey. People are overwhelmingly concerned about how companies are using their data, but feel completely helpless.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...
Most people aren't making informed, nuanced decisions about their privacy. Most people think online privacy doesn't impact anything more than what ads they see and so they don't care out of ignorance.
If people were aware of when and how the data they gave up is used against them they'd probably reconsider their views. The trouble is that people aren't allowed to know, so it's never in their face enough to register for them. People generally aren't great about evaluating consequences that aren't immediate or dangers that are at all abstract. That's what's enabled a multi-billion dollar a year industry to spring up around the buying and selling of data that "doesn't matter" and that "no one cares about".
That kind of thinking lets people get taken advantage of over and over again, get manipulated, lose opportunities, and have their money siphoned from their pockets without even realizing it had anything to do with the data that was taken from them.
Unless things change people will be trying to reassure each other that it doesn't matter who knows what they ate for breakfast even while they're being sorted into digital caste systems that will define and limit their options across many areas of their life.
If you make a new Facebook, you better make something about it different because otherwise people would just stay on Facebook.
It is very much clear that this kind of entertainment is very addictive and if done well it can get people to sink hours and hours into it.
Take a look at the style of the filmmaking from a movie today and a similar movie from 20 years ago. Each scene has many more abrupt cuts, and everything feels much more fast paced.
https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/agents-of-chaos
Even when presented with TikTok's data harvesting or algorithm tweaking to make divisive issues trend more popularly -- no users want to give it up.
Really does anyone have any better rationale that could be used to convince people not to use it? I have older relatives (60s) and younger (teens) that are obsessed with it.
what tangible privacy issues are with tiktok? in india the govt banned it last time over some bs reasons helping instagram but that is unrelated to "privacy"...
tiktok sells ads, instagram/fb sells ads. if i am using both, how is one better and another really bad?
its not like the US based companies aren't in for the money for the highest bidder and even harmful for their own citizens like the recent case of fb snitching on a girl who wanted an abortion?
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Just one small anecdotal data point to counter the idea that the app is addicting for everyone. If anybody has any tips about how to get a better feed, I'm willing to give it another go.
I do. Don't waste time by trying to find the stuff you want by explicitly searching for specific tags (aside from maybe for the purpose of the initial seeding, but that's not a must at all). That would indeed bring up just tons of kinda trashy content that seems like it is tailored to either teenagers or the lowest common denominator. Instead, try using the main feed.
Simply scroll past videos you don't find interesting/appealing to you, hit "like" (double tap) on the kind of videos you like, etc. You've mentioned you've already found some creators you like, that's great. Hit "like" on some of their videos that you actually like . Don't try to trick the algorithm by forcing some unnatural behaviors, just use the feed normally. To clarify, when I say "feed", I mean "For You" feed aka the main feed, not "Following" feed.
First 30 mins or so of that will be meh. But the more you use it that way (doesn't need to be in one sitting at all, that part doesn't matter), the better the content will be tailored to your tastes.
I can almost guarantee that you will not only find what you wanted that way, but also discover things that you didn't realize you liked/wanted to see. I checked out feeds on my friends' phones before, and it is kinda wild how different our feeds are. A friend of mine who is very seriously into bodybuilding gets some crazy useful (according to him) exercise technique/regimen videos that are very far from the mainstream "exercise routine/fitness advice" videos. Another friend of mine who is into building/fixing cars gets a lot of great build project videos. I get a solid mix of a particular type of dark comedy that appeals to me, sound synthesis videos, and some cool electronics projects that I would actually want to attempt myself.
Just don't rush it, don't expect some instant magic to happen, and let it naturally adapt to your tastes.
yeah, getting "non-mainstream" fitness advice from freaking short form videos is just about the dumbest thing I've heard this month
tell your friend to read a book sometimes, there's a reason why they exist and it's not to sell more ads unlike some other media ...
The whole magic sauce is that you don't/can't shape your FYP ("for you page": feed) by searching or otherwise sending deliberate signals to the algorithm. Instead you just flip through the videos it sends you and it reads into how long you watch, which videos you skip, where you like/comment, who you follow etc. If you don't consciously try to influence it and just mindlessly, organically consume you'll end up with a very accurate FYP of videos remarkably quickly. I'm not surprised that trying to drive your FYP in a specific direction backfired; I suspect they make search deliberately bad and don't take it into account in a meaningful way when constructing the FYP for a user.
It is, of course, up to you whether that sounds like a media experience that you want to participate in. I installed it skeptically but in literally less than an hour my FYP was nothing but videos I found engaging or fun, and several years later it's my most used phone app by a significant margin. Some of it is obviously low calorie entertainment but there's a lot of depth as well, and I continue to be struck by how accurately the FYP can identify what content I want to see and what I don't.
I filled in my profile honestly and somehow it took me a lot of effort to teach the algo that I don't want to see videos of (mostly) naked teens dancing or doing (other) suggestive sex things (the first hour after installing, I got 4 young girls simulating taking a boob & vag pic and then looking at them with faked interest while giggling called pause game or something; is it supposed to be funny or?).
I followed 0 teens and because I didn't think I wouldn't find anything interesting about programming, I thought I would follow some true crime stuff; still got naked young girls mostly. After a while of following enough other stuff I got less of it.
I guess most guys (even old as myself) normally want to see this crap so the algo defaults to that? I don't know.
But the content I am supposed to like really sucks too; the 100k view video authors often don't even get the names of victims/perps right, many facts are just debunked rehashes of sensationalist takes etc. It's horrible so far. And the comments... the comments. Youtube comments are great compared and that's saying something. Maybe it'll improve?
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I'm working on making something called The Laugh Track where you send your friend (singular) the type of laugh you just did (from a select list of types of laughs). If it's worth it, they'll hit you up personally to know wtf happened :D If that takes off and becomes a national security threat, I will not say oh yeah this is great content, totally makes sense people are addicted to this nonsense!
Physically speaking, TikTok videos CANNOT do anything but be extremely shallow "Fast Fact" videos that just make a claim, with no evidence, no reasoning, no verification, just a "Hey I'm me and I say I'm someone and this is a factoid and either believe me or don't". These videos are great for addiction, because if you are gullible for those kinds of factoids you will love an endless barrage of dopamine inducing "Facts" that you can repeat at the next party you attend.
Youtube has similar "Factoid" videos but you will also find 20 minute short form essays rebutting those factoids with demonstrations, evidence, citations, etc. You simply can't rebut a 1 minute claim in a 1 minute video in a way that laypeople should be convinced by. It's weaponization of "It's harder to debunk that spout nonsense"
The lesson I learned: Even if I find magic, magic can quickly disappear with a new production release.
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Cooking channel? What was once a 10 minute video with a recipe and all the details is now a reddit-gif style recipe, 30 seconds without any details (eg. how cooked the first ingredient is, when s/he throws in the second, etc.).
Tech channel? Yeah, 30 seconds can only be a teaser (=ad) for a full video.
Music? another teaser (=ad)
I know i'm a different generation from the current teenagers, and I prefer videos without many fillers, but those <1min things are way too short to be of any value to me personally.
I'm sure hoping this short attention span, no time to think sort of content doesn't become common
There was a person who posted a video saying "I'm a flight attendant and airline seats are designed to kill you to pay less for the lawsuit" even though that's been debunked IN POPULAR MEDIA for about twenty years (mythbusters) and "Flight attendant" should not be considered a reputable source for information on the engineering, legal, and liability of an airline. And yet, she had millions of views.
It's just utterly FULL of assholes claiming they are reputable and spouting the dumbest, oldest, most asinine conspiracy theories for views.
Much of the content in the past was largely devoid of actual content with the focus being to build up suspense to get the person to keep watching. Take those slow-mo videos, for example. There's a few seconds or a minute of actual content - the rest is just filler. Myth Busters was the same years ago.
I'll watch a longer video if the amount of content in it justifies this. That's rarely the case for me, though.
I still haven't installed/registered for tiktok, I have no more bandwidth for another social network. I'm still fighting IG and Twitter addiction, what happens when I add another one. Just throw your phones away haha.
Did the author of the article actually...use TikTok? That's not at all how the app works; it loops the videos by default and you have to manually scroll. Sure, you can just swipe as soon as it's over, but my impression is that this is explicitly _not_ the "happy path" for the user. My girlfriend enjoys TikTok a lot (and I often will watch with her using our TV app, which interestingly is a better experience in a few ways, like not showing any ads, although it is missing some functionality), and generally if we like a video we'll start talking a bit about it as it loops, and we only move on once we're ready. Skipping immediately after it's over (or even earlier, if it's not interesting) is more of a failure mode in my opinion (although it does vary a bit; I don't think looping on the longer form videos is as common, but I'd argue that engagement with the longer videos is if anything a counter argument to what the author is saying). If there's a social issue with the way TikTok works, I'm not convinced that it's due to the actual mechanics or network of the app. If anything, despite the fact that I don't use any of them myself, Facebook and Twitter seem like a strictly worse experience for the user. It seems much less about directly following a large number people and more about just generally watching what comes up, which means that while you have a unlimited amount of content to view for all practical purposes, there's no illusion of "missing out" by not watching absolutely everything on your feed. Because of the compositional features (reusing the same audio from other videos, "stitching" your video onto the end of another one, "dueting" yourself side by side with another video), a lot of times there isn't even really one specific video to watch for a given "thing"; anything that's sufficiently popular will be reused in enough other videos that you'll end up finding it one way or another.
All you got to do is look at the tiktok videos already shared to your instagram feed, and follow the accounts watermarked in those videos
basically recreating your inferior instagram algorithm with only tiktok content your friends and explore page already show you
now you’ve upgraded from a consumable dopamine inducing system from last decade, to an intravenous dopamine hit directly connected to the source
The solution is to delete all your accounts off of these platforms and just don't look back. [2] You're not missing a thing.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484
[1] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162
Social (and non-social) media is able to capture peoples' attentions for far too long. Instead of being bored, and having their minds wonder and attempt other tasks, they are endlessly entertained.
People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda. I don't follow tiktok, but I'm influenced by it every day due to my friends who try or follow new trends based on what they see.
The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly. Even going on Reddit, I only see negative posts about the United States, and people arguing how bad it is to live here. Yet, while traveling outside the US, I barely see 5-10% of those posts, but no other posts about how bad it is to live in those countries (granted the US has a far higher population). It just seems like people on social media are shitting on the US these days for reasons that they dont even understand, or know how to compare to anywhere else.
> The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly.
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight”.
- Joseph Campbell
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