
Facebook readies global launch of its TikTok competitor - uptown
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-readies-global-launch-its-tiktok-competitor-n1234013
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siruncledrew
Facebook seems to prefer to let others do the first-mover work to carve out a
social market, and then come in a bit later and use their existing scale (with
FB, IG, Whatsapp) to copy the same features into their apps.

It’s basically what they did with Instagram Stories after Snapchat existed.

There’s the whole China aspect with TikTok, but regardless this is just how
Facebook competes with whatever is popular.

~~~
nickthegreek
Except facebook's base is aging and many of the youth are not interested in
jumping on the next facebook offering. They had to purchase instagram to get a
younger audience but their insta story pivot was successful. Gotta be honest,
the last thing tiktok needs is a bunch of 40+ yr olds opening up accounts and
creating content, as they are much more inflammatory than the fun content
creators filling up my For You Page on tiktok. Tiktok is still very different
than most other social media because its not really about following people you
know as discovering interesting content nooks thru the For Your Page.

~~~
xnx
I share your enthusiasm for TikTok. It's the first social media app that felt
like fun instead of an obligation. I have no doubt something will come along
and ruin it (olds, monetization, acquisition). For now, it's really magical.
It genuinely gives me hope for the next generation. They are impressively
clever short-form story-tellers and continuously innovating techniques.

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marsrover
I personally would much rather Facebook succeed in this space. I’m extremely
apprehensive about TikTok and how China is using the data.

I’m fully aware that Facebook will collect data (possible the same data), but
I believe the motives and outcomes are more in my favor when it’s my country
doing it.

~~~
m0xte
I'd rather the whole idea fucked off out of existence.

~~~
harshitaneja
What is wrong with the idea? I don't use it because i don't enjoy the content
but I don't find anything wrong with the idea. Genuine question.

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m0xte
52 minutes a day is average engagement. 800M users. 32,000 man years or 400
human lifetimes of attention wasted every day (if I got my mathematics right).

We could be colonising mars or something instead of watching short videos of
something totally ephemeral. And I’m sure in time it will be used much like
Facebook to polarise people.

Then again I’m shitposting on HN so perhaps I’m just a hypocrite :)

Edit: the colonising mars thing was facetious and I probably should outline
that. The issue is that our attention and mental health is more valuable than
wasting on these shitty platforms.

~~~
scrollaway
Must produce. Must create value. Life worthless if no create value.

Seriously, let people have their free time why don't you. A lot of the western
world is already half stuck in deadass jobs they hate, getting barely enough
money to get through life so they can have the privilege of working more. It's
quite something to read, on HN, in a place that has a majority of people lucky
enough to not be stuck in that kind of life, judgement on how other people
spend their free time instead of "colonizing Mars".

~~~
m0xte
Yeah you're right but staring at 30 second clips of better lives than your
selected by algorithm to bias your mind in some way to perpetuate either the
existence of the platform or the product being sold is part of the downward
spiral. At some point it becomes compulsion rather than choice. That's mental
slavery by shitting in your head and I will judge that with extreme prejudice.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Yeah you're right but staring at 30 second clips of better lives

That's instagram. TikTok is about average people having normal lives doing
funny skits, often making fun of their own hardship rather than bragging about
how they're living the high life as in other social medias.

~~~
m0xte
That's your bubble. I've seen other people's and it's not. Instagram is worse
I agree.

~~~
patrickaljord
There are people flexing indeed and it shows up in my bubble too but I would
say average people doing funny skits is what defines TikTok and what made it
so appealing to many and still makes up the biggest part of TikTok content.

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fatjokes
The problem I have with FB and to a lesser extent, IG is that you can't get
away from politics. The issue with that is that in addition to data scraping,
it opens users up to political manipulation (i.e., vote hacking).

How is it on TikTok? I'm not an avid user and never got hooked. My impression
is that it's just dumb dance videos.

~~~
unexpected
Tik Tok is INSANELY good at figuring out what you want to watch. At first it
shows you a random selection of videos, but it pays very good attention to
what you're lingering at, and starts showing you more and more of those types
of videos.

My wife and I downloaded Tik Tok at the same time, were shown the same videos
in the beginning. Now, I basically see only Call of Duty: Warzone clips along
with a few prank videos. My wife (far more political than I) sees a lot of
videos of the protests, BLM activists, and other stuff.

Tik Tok does not try to force you to watch videos that you're not going to
watch. It's crazy good (and scary).

~~~
chvid
Sadly there is a completely lack of appreciation of TikTok here on HN.

TikTok is really the next generation of social media. The way the algorithm
adapts to the user is unlike anything out there plus the integrated
videographic tools are incredible. Plus it is cheerful and playful, and not
full of conflict or self promotion.

However the only thing we can focus on is that it is Chinese.

~~~
xnx
Agreed. It's hard for me not to suspect that there's some strong motivation by
interested parties to make TikTok a boogeyman. I'm much more concerned about
unintentional harm caused by incompetence (Facebook) or deliberate messaging
for a purpose (Fox News, or pick whoever your personal least favorite media
source is).

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patrickaljord
What are the odds of it launching just after TikTok gets banned? I wonder if
Facebook has turned into the social media version of the US dollar to the US
government, it is just too valuable, all this information. They have a defacto
monopoly on social media around the world and they're not going to let it go,
even if force needs to be used (in this case banning the competition).

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basicsbeauty
There was no new original product from FB in the last 15 years.

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zug_zug
Lol. The only thing I want less than China spying on the cat videos I watch is
Zuck spying on them, and reselling it to a 3rd party to hack my voting
decisions....

~~~
ciarannolan
Sure, but in the case of TikTok, there's one less intermediary in the chain
trying to hack your voting decisions.

~~~
nickthegreek
Are people using the same TikTok that I am? There is currently a single
skippable ad when I open the app (that appears maybe 75% of the time). Other
than that, its a bunch of people under the age of 35 doing skits.. What am I
supposed to be worried about when it comes to election engineering here?

~~~
Frost1x
I suspect if I were TikTok, I could keep track of the skits you watch and
start directing similar skits with subtle political messages towards you in
their place. If I were really nefarious, I might be able to professionally
produce skits that look amature that are essentially well designed propoganda.

I've never used the app but I'm sure they also request location information
and a lot of people agree, so I can make a reasonable guess for most people
where their home location and corresponding voting districts are.

Also, over time, the type of media delivered may subtly shift anyways. When I
started using Facebook, it required a .edu domain to register and focused on
listing your courses, finding peers in your courses, campus events, and so
forth. Now, it looks absolutely nothing like that, yet I still have a Facebook
account (which I rarely check but thats another story, many of my peers appear
to still actively use it). For now it's a bunch of silly videos, maybe it
won't always be that way.

You may be lured into a platform, grow accustomed to it and the convenience of
a user base, then slowly go along for the ride as the platform shifts
direction. Perhaps you may be vigilant of this (the reason I stopped using
Facebook many years ago), however, a large portion of people may not.

Now, whoever manages TikTok has a direct route of information to a wide group
of people providing they don't upset them or a competitor doesn't lure them
away.

~~~
nickthegreek
What young pretty American is making that subtle political content that china
will start to slowly move me towards? I gotta be honest, the potential for
abuse so much less than facebook as it is a video medium. Their best attack
vector is to use that information outside of tiktok by trying to target ads on
other American owned platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Google.

