
Mark Zuckerberg misunderstands the threat of TikTok - ryan_j_naughton
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/instagram-vs-tiktok/
======
underwater
I doubt Zuck is underestimating TikTok. He has spent a 13 years living and
breathing social media, has surrounded himself by smart people, has access to
masses of data others don't, and has shown a willingness to admit making
mistakes.

Taking his Q&A responses at face value is a mistake. There is a huge element
of PR in his response. He is undoubtedly very aware that anything he says has
a decent chance of being leaked to the press.

~~~
nickthegreek
His concerns should be that he cant buy TikTok and the facebook brand name is
toxic to the youth. TikTok is mostly youth.

~~~
cptskippy
Facebook is toxic to adults to, it's like AT&T or Comcast. Everyone who uses
it hates it and can't find a suitable replacement.

~~~
onethought
A phone with a contact list, and messaging is a suitable replacement to
Facebook... and 99.99% of people using Facebook have that.

~~~
bluGill
No it is not. Facebook is a way to quickly call all my classmates when Ed died
- I never was friends with Ed but I knew him and it was important to find out.
Facebook ensures that the grandparents see pictures of the grand kids sure I
could mail them, but hitting "upload to facebook" on my camera (read phone) is
vastly more convenient and cheaper so it gets done.

Did you not the convenient word there? That is the key, nothing else is as
convenient as facebook, so much as I don't like facebook I remain.

~~~
ramblerman
Perhaps we are realizing that both those use cases are not really solving
anything real though.

The people that knew Ed well enough to care will find out. And the
grandparents would probably prefer an extra visit a month than a never ending
photo reel.

It appears convenient but adds nothing of substance to our lives.

~~~
cptskippy
I really detest the "if you find value in x you're living your life wrong"
argument.

~~~
infinitezest
I think you may be misapprehending the argument. The value propositions that
people cite when talking about why they use Facebook are certainly
understandable. However, there is a cost incurred here (ex. questionable usage
of private data, externalities imposed on elections, loss of understanding and
control over what shows up in your feed, etc.)

So yes, there is certainly value there. And it's made even more attractive by
the fact that the actual cost is effectively hidden to users since they aren't
actually the customers. The argument here is more about whether the cost
incurred is actually worth the minor convenience.

Tangentially, I've often thought that the added convenience necessarily
cheapens the interactions. Things like the automatic birthday reminders have
basically outmoded the old "it's the thought that counts" adage.

~~~
cptskippy
I'm not. You're arguing about whether or not the losses of using Facebook are
worth the gains. The other comment wasn't, it was asserting that Facebook is
not worth it under any circumstance.

They are both depriving the user of freedom to choose to compromise their
privacy for convenience and asserting that the user is inherently flawed
because they even thought they had such a choice. They aren't just arguing
that the individual should reconsider their decision to use Facebook, they're
arguing that they need to reevaluate their life.

------
eclipsetheworld
My personal Instagram vs TikTok experience can be summarized in three points.

(i) TikTok's content is more engaging (ii) Instagram's content could be easily
recreated on TikTok (iii) TikTok's explore feed is addictive

(i) TikTok videos are high-definition, fluid videos with catchy music.
TikTok's compression algorithm almost seems lossless since videos are much
more crisp than on Instagram/Facebook. I even believe they are upsampling
videos from 30fps to 60fps (although this is just a personal observation and
may be wrong). The catchy music is probably self-explanatory.

(ii) Think of typical Instagram content: an influencer posing or a travel
snapshot. Now imagine the same content as short, crisp, and fluid videos with
engaging music. Instagram content creators could easily recreate their content
on TikTok in a more engaging way.

(iii) Upon opening the app you are shown the explore feed. You are shown a
single TikTok video in fullscreen and you can swipe up to load the next video.
The TikTok app seems to preload the next 5 videos which in practice means that
content is always instantly available. The algorithm is quite quick in
learning what content you like to see.

I think this quote sums up my thoughts quite nicely: "When I was a product
manager at Facebook and Instagram, building a true content-first social
network was the holy grail. We never figured it out. Yet somehow TikTok has
cracked the nut and leapfrogged everyone else." — Eric Bahn, General Partner
at Hustle Fund & Ex Instagram Product Manager

~~~
giancarlostoro
> (i) TikTok videos are high-definition, fluid videos with catchy music.
> TikTok's compression algorithm almost seems lossless since videos are much
> more crisp than on Instagram/Facebook. I even believe they are upsampling
> videos from 30fps to 60fps (although this is just a personal observation and
> may be wrong). The catchy music is probably self-explanatory.

This is something I didn't think about: do they play video by itself and sync
the audio to the video? They could then cache the audio once, and replay for
all similar videos.

~~~
parliament32
There are definitely videos with the exact same soundtrack so it makes sense
for them to cache the audio stream.

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mrtksn
I'm not sure that anyone understands it, really.

In Turkey TikTok people and Instagram/Twitter people cater to completely
separate demographics[from all ages]. People in Instagram/Twitter world would
be exposed to funny TikTok videos quite often through Instagram/Twitter
celebrities but TikTok is viewed as the place where "rednecks do cringy things
that are sometimes funny but I don't want to be associated with".

BBC Turkish did a short documentary[0] on Turkish TikTok celebrities, they
were talking about their desire(but a failure) to migrate their fanbase to
YouTube since the monetisation was not good enough on TikTok. They portrayed
TikTok as a place for everyday people, unlike other places like Instagram
where apparently everyone lives a glamorous life.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FURmgQJYHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FURmgQJYHY)

~~~
erdemozg
If one told me beforehand that those people from conservative background would
do such things on a video and share it with the rest of the world, I'd say you
have no idea about Turkish culture. But now I say I had no idea about Turkish
culture and what those people are capable of. I literally get shocked every
time I watch a tiktok compilation video. I wonder if those are the same people
I see in the street everyday.

~~~
ethbro
As the saying goes, 'everyone has a little red under their collar.'

(In the abstracted, skin-tone neutral sense)

------
CPLX
Every social network ends up having somewhat of an emotional tone as well that
springs up out of its users as an emergent property.

Like clearly Tumblr and Blogger and Twitter, despite being structurally not
that different from each other, have different cultures.

What I’ve found interesting about TikTok is that the culture seems so joyful.
Lots of really happy people sharing in a way that actually makes you feel some
cohesion with other people.

People checking in from the South, or Georgia or Wisconsin, or the city or
country, etc. it’s sort of the opposite of the constant divisiveness you feel
browsing Twitter or Reddit. Or the opposite the little cultural bubble
Facebook puts you in.

I wasn’t aware the internet could still do that. I think that might prove to
have interesting implications.

~~~
ghaff
Emergent properties is a good way of putting things. A lot of these things
seems to play out in an at least somewhat chaotic and difficult to predict
way. Remember Orcut, which effectively ended up as Google's Brazilian social
network.

Sometimes rules and other deliberate structures guide the evolution but it's
often small things that aren't obvious up front.

And, of course, very different things can evolve within the same social
network. Lots of people don't care about monetization on YouTube. For others,
it's what YouTube exists for from their personal perspective.

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katzgrau
IMO, Facebook's greatest achievement was getting my parent's and grandparent's
generation on social media. You know, the people with disposable income that
attract a wide range of advertisers.

Ten years ago I thought it was impossible. Any social media network that can't
achieve that, including Snap, is probably counting its days. Facebook also has
an absurd amount of user and interest data.

I always thought those who considered Snap to be a real threat (and now
TikTok) to be ignoring the underlying revenue growth vehicles of those
companies.

~~~
dilyevsky
Sounds more like apple’s and google’s (android) achievement.

~~~
djohnston
yes, the success story that is google+

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puranjay
The "millennial" social networks were all about sharing

The Gen-Z social networks will be all about creation

Zuckerberg does not have a finger in this pie and that should be an alarming
sign for any Facebook share holders.

~~~
mschuster91
> Zuckerberg does not have a finger in this pie and that should be an alarming
> sign for any Facebook share holders.

Why? Facebook can wait until one proves to be the winner and buy them out. Or,
in case the target is unwilling to be taken over (like Snapchat was), Facebook
simply integrates their model into FB/Instagram, exposes it to billions of
people at once and crushes the target.

~~~
michaelt
_> Facebook can wait until one proves to be the winner and buy them out._

Isn't it Chinese government policy not to block such transactions?

Google didn't buy Baidu, and Ebay didn't buy AliExpress, and Paypal didn't buy
WeChat Pay.

~~~
ospider
It's funny to say PayPal didn't buy WeChat Pay.

------
Udo
_" TikTok isn’t about you or what you’re doing. It’s about entertaining your
audience. It’s not spontaneous chronicling of your real life. It’s about
inventing characters, dressing up as someone else, and acting out jokes. It’s
not about privacy and friends, but strutting on the world stage. And it’s not
about originality — the heart of Instagram. TikTok is about remixing culture"_

This does not fit in with FB's goals and strategy. Zuckerberg _may_ not grasp
it, but even if he does, it's unclear how this could be implemented inside a
framework that is 100% centered on a user's profile and real-life persona.

------
qasimzafar
Tik Tok is almost the new Vine, but less restrictive and more engaging. The
biggest assumption the article makes is that even in case Facebook were to try
to buy out creators for Lasso, making new content is hard work and Tik Tok
creators have spend hours and hours putting together the followings that they
have.

It's not easy to convince such passionate and fan-driven folk with built
audiences to switch, it's almost as if Vimeo started trying to pay YouTubers
to switch to Vimeo.

~~~
mschuster91
> Tik Tok is almost the new Vine, but less restrictive and more engaging.

Less restrictive? Just look at what they do to LGBT content:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-
local-moderation-guidelines-ban-pro-lgbt-content)

Additionally, it's Chinese and thus likely to be in the target list of
economic sanctions. For once, something good could result out of the
cringefest that is the US-China trade war.

~~~
pysxul
How is that any different from twitter enforcing it the other way around?

~~~
simias
The parent were comparing Tik Tok to Vine, what does Twitter have to do with
anything?

~~~
armenarmen
Twitter bought then killed vine...

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mindgam3
From the conclusion:

> If Zuckerberg... doesn’t decisively move to challenge TikTok soon... we
> could see our interest data, faces, and attention forfeited to an app that
> while delightful to use, heralds Chinese political values at odds with our
> own.

I'm usually a fan of Josh Constine's analysis of Facebook, but positioning
Facebook as a defender of American political values is a bit much. If the
growth-at-all-costs company that led us to social media dystopia is our best
defense against Chinese political values, we are well and truly fucked.

------
tyingq
I'm curious how well he understands the trend with Facebook. Anecdotal, but
all the young people I know via my kids either don't use FB at all, or only
maintain an account to share things with their "old" relatives.

His other platforms don't seem to have the same level of deep data collection
and manipulation capability FB does.

------
Abishek_Muthian
That's the thing with limited attention, instant gratification economy.

Anyone who can minimize the attention span further, turn blind eye to abuse of
children in their platform (at-least initially till uproar) by targeting Asian
countries where enforcement of laws are questionable and 60% of world
population live; can grow at exponential rate i.e. till another platform which
reduces attention span further.

This is a plague, these limited attention gratification is not limited to
these platforms themselves and are being exploited successfully for pushing
misinformation by various nefarious elements including but not limited to
political parties.

------
api
TikTok seems controlled by a company controlled by the Chinese government
(Bytedance), so China's intelligence agencies can now vacuum up infinite
cringey videos of people doing silly things. Quick someone tell the DOD
there's a database of silly videos gap between the US and China!

As I've said many times: just move all those old cyberpunk novels to the
nonfiction section.

------
peteretep
I mean, reading his comments, it sounds like he has a pretty good handle on
it? I'm not sure the article makes the point its headline is promising here.

~~~
sergioj97
I personally found that the things the article's author argues that Zuckerberg
doesn't understand are being acknowledged and discussed by Zuckerberg itself
in the leaked comments.

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flywithdolp
TikTok is the best worst social media out there

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remeq
doh, never heard of TikTok, just googled it and their logo is giving me a
serious headache

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mattmaroon
TikTok will be gone in like 3 years right?

~~~
thrower123
Almost certainly. It happens like clockwork that there's a new hip social
media thingy for the 13-22 set, almost every year. A lot of them fizzle out at
die with barely a whisper. A lot of them get acquihired for piles of money
beyond their value, and then stagnate.

Almost none of them cross the divide and become more widely popular.

~~~
Fjolsvith
I disagree. I'm not a social media user, and yet I love TikTok, and have even
posted a video there. I like to view it for about 15 minutes right before
falling asleep. My wife and I get a lot of laughs out of the videos together.

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AFascistWorld
UGC platforms seem to inevitablly ditch grassroots in the end, how many
grassroots do you see on youtube now?

I think the fast nature of Tiktok is driving it much faster to that same end,
I've seen plenty of widespread Tiktok fake videos that were created with the
sole purpose of getting the most views, like those fix things with ramen pack
and glue.

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camillomiller
Right, to counter that they should allow self-made child pornography on
Facebook. (If you’ve ever seen popular TikTok videos, you know what I mean)

~~~
swiley
I was on tiktok for a couple months and never saw anything like that! Lots of
memes and some really creative stuff with music and sketching but absolutely
nothing pornographic.

~~~
changoplatanero
tiktok feed will show you what it thinks you want to see more of based on your
past behavior. It looks like you and the parent commenter have different
viewing habits!

~~~
paggle
This does highlight a major issue in technology+policy+society -- there's no
way to "point fingers" and say "Look at what this company is doing!". You can
say "Facebook is doing bad thing X" but when I open Facebook I don't see it.

Contrast to something like a coal company strip mining, and everyone can see
the same thing with their own eyes.

~~~
sergioj97
> there's no way to "point fingers" and say "Look at what this company is
> doing!"

What do you mean? The fact that different people may see different things in
their feeds doesn't mean you can't point out differences in (for example)
social network's policies (sometimes this is more of an unwritten policy) on
media that depicts children's bodies.

I personally don't have TikTok but I have never found a single video of half
naked children dancing on YouTube, Facebook or IG that wasn't a reposted
TikTok video (I have read about videos like that being on YouTube, though).
And I don't think it has much to do with the fact that I don't like to see
this kind of videos in my feed. It also makes sense given the demographics of
TikTok app.

I don't have any serious citations to give, this is of course anectodical as
it's my personal experience and I don't even have TikTok, but anyway I don't
think one can dismiss worries like this just by blaming the algorithm. Most of
the time that content shouldn't be there for the algorithm to recommend it in
the first place.

