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TikTok owner ByteDance sees its earnings double in 2020 (bbc.com)
121 points by shivbhatt on June 18, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 202 comments



I hate TikTok because it's so good. It's a frictionless content pump that we can open and doom-scroll for hours. I have never seen such a beautifully crafted user experience, from the recommendation algorithm that is top-notch the content that is catchy and highlights trends without overdoing it and the absence of political content if you don't engage with it (or maybe there is none at all).

I don't have it on my phone, but I truly see it as the pinnacle of the stupidly addictive social media app and it scares me because it means that Chinese companies are just as capable as us to spin the next Facebook and distribute propaganda to the next generation.


It's super interesting to compare it with Facebook's attempt at the same mechanisms with Instagram Reels:

- terribly redundant content (as in, I see multiple times the exact same content from different accounts)

- content ripped off and reposted from original creators by spam accounts

- complete destruction of the original Instagram app to try to force-feed Reels down your throat

TikTok looks so simple when you use it because everything just works. Using Reels makes you realise all the ways there are to fuck it up!


Everyone copies the core feed mechanic, but no one actually builds good video editing/creation tools into their app, which is actually why Tiktok took off.

If you don't make it easy for your users to post good content, of course you're going to make a boring app.


Exactly. This is a really under estimated part of the value proposition. Look at how many Reels just have the TikTok watermark on.


This is largely due to the fact that "Reels" is an add-on feature to the rest of the Instagram app, rather than its primary focus like it is on TikTok.

TikTok was built around this flow. Its community culture expects the content to be in a certain format and will self-moderate via metrics such as likes, comments, views. The UX of the app itself is built around this content. There are no distractions.

Instagram on the other hand has a very different community, with different culture and expectations. The content creators on Instagram may not be as familiar with the content that is conducive to the Reels format. The UX of Reels on insta is also an add-on feature. You're not opening instagram to interact with Reels, you have different intentions. Whereas when you open TikTok, you are there for one reason, so the app is built around that one flow.


You should also see the pathetic copycat feature YouTube has created called the shorts. Facebook's attempt with short videos and reels is not much better either.

Why does every company feel the urge to copy this and also fail so badly at this


YouTube shorts broke my workflow. My son likes to make short videos of himself singing songs or doing funny things and then we watch them on the TV together. YouTube retroactively made all of our videos “shorts” and then says you can’t cast shorts to the TV.


Are youtube shorts a failure? They seem to be immensely popular in terms of views/engagement.

Reminds me of how people would deride Instagram for copying Snapchat stories, yet far more people probably use Instagram stories than snapchat and are perfectly satisfied with the UX despite it being a blatant copycat.


>Are youtube shorts a failure? They seem to be immensely popular in terms of views/engagement.

I just think that's only because "the algorithm" prioritizes shorts at the moment to try and push them and make folks even bother making them. Once YouTube starts acting neutral towards them I don't think they'll hold up.

I've never come across a short intentionally and after seeing quite a few I haven't tried to find further ones (and outside of mobile it's quite difficult to do so).

That said of course, I'm probably not in the demographic shorts plays to either.


Because sometimes it works. Instagram stories being a great example of this. Though once the functionality of an app gets diluted enough, like with Instagram and Facebook, each additional feature becomes less competitive.


They are missing the core TikTok feature, content moderation.


So I installed tik tok for the first time yesterday. I don’t get how it’s supposed to show me things I like. It’s mostly hot girls doing makeup or teens running from the police and stuff. How do I get it to show me things I like? How does it discover my niche interests.


I have the same issue with medium. My coworker talk about how great it is and he learns so much from it. All I see is clcikbait garbage.


If you don't like the video, flick up to move to the video.


Here's your mistake: you're a couple of years late ;-)


How can I find all the good articles from a couple of years ago?


You do so by tapping the heart to like the video. If you want to jump-start it use the discover tab and search for something you like.


Just use it for a few days. It learns from which video you watch, skip, or interact with (comment/like/follow)

I never entered any search term and it figured out I'm into AI, startups, tennis, attack on titan...


I mean it's mostly a kids dancing app, so that's mostly what you get by default.

Follow Tom Silva, Mr Barricade, Soft Pourn, Woodshopdiaries, Scott Hanselman. This will get you a bunch of interesting content. It might not be what you want, but it's definitely not makeup tutorials.


you can click and hold on the screen to trigger a pop up menu to dislike a video that's not in your interest.


I've decided to outsource dopamine production to The Chinese Algorithm and honestly it's going great


I love how positive and fun the content on TikTok is. It really is a breath of fresh air, never fails to bring a smile to my face.


Star Trek TNG basically predicted this in 1991 in the episode The Game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28Star_Trek:_The_Nex...


They collect biometric data now, faceprints and voiceprints. [0]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-pe...


But the fun app made me look like a kitten, and all it cost me was privacy for the rest of time.

Can you say WORTH IT?

Heh.

Anxiety attack


IMO I find the platform to be mentally abusive for me. It's a whirlwind of stirring emotions, shocking content, and 'earworms' everywhere, where memes iteratively compound into their own nonsensical language at a faster rate than on other networks. I'm afraid of observing, say, misconceptions and false math tricks passively on the platform, and accidentally letting them burrow into my brain. There isn't enough time for proper critical thinking on TikTok.


I honestly think TikTok might be a ploy to dumb down/analyze the western population.

I find it fantastically stupid.

Once I saw the aggressive marketing for it in the play store I knew this was something we now have to deal with. And so we do.


It's a ploy to make money. Nothing more or less. It turns out that vapid content that you will forget about tomorrow resonates with all societies.


Why do you find it “fantastically stupid”?


Because it feeds mainly endless insubstantialities to its users and encourages others to produce the same.

Even if not, its programmers or their bosses determine what millions of users will see (and by extension think), which may change arbitrarily.

I know this may be old-school thinking but why can't we reserve the internet to utilities and non-algorithmic spoon-feeding?


Edit: should have said: "curiosity and not algo..."


You got it all wrong. You don't use TikTok for critical thinking. This product was never designed to be a critical thinking tool.


Critical thinking is a muscle. It can get weak and wither away really fast if addictive apps keep you on the dopamine hamster wheel.

It doesn't actively make you dumber, you make yourself dumber abusing it, and it's designed specifically for you to abuse it.


I mean, you're not completely wrong, but if you say "not interested" to a handful of emotion-stirring or shocking things, it's amazing how savvily the algorithm will steer you away from that content and often into more interesting fare.


Yeah I had to delete it. Something about the fullscreen autoplaying videos is really addicting. And then of course the recommendations are good too and are seamless.


your comment is contradictory - if there is no political content, what propaganda is there to distribute? per your own comment wouldn't they just be distributing the "catchy" content?


There isn't propaganda. I guess people say there is, because conspiracy theories are more fun than fact. But strong statements like "TikTok is propaganda" need to be supported with evidence.

I would say that the highly tailored experience of the TikTok algorithm would make a propaganda op quite easy to detect. The algorithm is so ridiculously good, that you would instantly spot a propaganda video, or notice when your feed begins to skew from what you like to see.


Wasn't there something about how you couldn't find TikTok videos about the Hong Kong protests?

Ahh, so the Guardian had some leaked moderation documents[1] implying there was an active moderation keeping them from being viewed. Buzzfeed said they did their own experiments and found no evidence that videos about Hong Kong were being removed[2].

I see no reason why both of those can't be true: if you control the algorithm, you don't need to delete anything, you can control with fine granularity how viral it's allowed to go. I guess that's a conspiracy theory, but for myself, I'm very skeptical that any media company operates in China with what most of us would call political neutrality and free speech.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/tiktok-us...


I think it's much more likely that such videos don't rise to the top because it's not what TikTok's audience cares to engage with.

I honestly don't know anyone that actually wants to see political content on TikTok (though, if you seek it out, you will find it.) It's simply not what the platform is for.


That's a very naive perspective, in my opinion.

I wouldn't put it past tech giants in democratic nations not to tweak their algorithms to push their own political agenda, much less tech giants in non democratic nations.

It's too powerful a tool not to abuse, I know it, and you know it too.


>The algorithm is so ridiculously good, that you would instantly spot a propaganda video, or notice when your feed begins to skew from what you like to see.

Would you notice it if they slowly ramped it up? How would you know whether it's grassroots or planted by the CCP?


Yes, I think it would be absurdly easy to notice, because nothing in most people's feeds is remotely political.

How exactly would you propagandize a stream of improv skits, or dance videos, or pet videos? Every user's feed is extremely specific and deviations, even small ones, are easy to notice.


Many months ago I saw some Toks which had 'Huge Red Flags' - basically Chinese Nationals trying to convince of some obvious CCP policy - though I couldn't tell for sure if it was propaganda, it seemed like it.

But haven't seen that in months.

But otherwise I don't think they promote propaganda actively.

But the difference between FB/Twitter and TT is the kinds of suppression they do. TT will remove anything that might remotely offend the sensibilities of the CCP.


> There isn't propaganda

There is. Tiktok China also got rid of all the political content because of the superior censorship algorithms.


If you don't interact with political content you will never see it. But if you do you'll see a lot more of it. TikTok basically has auto-subreddits that are crazy specific because of its discovery algorithm.


There is no political content right now, my point is that in case of escalating conflict or proxy-conflict with China they could absolutely run disinformation through this channel in a way that is somewhat transparent to their users to spark anti-war counter-movements in the US.


This is a far-fetched concern. Realistically speaking, the platform would just get permanently banned if it was being used to spread propaganda in a manner that harms a wartime effort.

Otherwise, I just don't see China risking one of the most promising gems to have come out of its internet technology industry in a long time.


The funny thing about TikTok/ByteDance is actually that the Chinese government didn't really care about them until Trump was against them. Like, by Chinese standards Douyin is smaller than the companies that the CCP do care about.


there is definately political content, half of my feed became radicalized living in israel during the last conflict


Silencing political content is inherently propagating the status quo.


Yeah. My understanding of Chinese internet is that it's 99% fluff or celebrity news and other inconsequential things mixed with a bit of CCP approved nationalism


One feature that amazes me about the algorithm is that it reacts to scrolling habits in what seems to be the minimum possible number of observations. Suppose half of your feed are talking head videos. Stop interacting with them abruptly by scrolling over within 2 seconds and observe how the algorithm gradually reduces their frequency.


Having people spend their attention span w/ "fun" content – as opposed to political / critical – seems perfect for a dystopian state.


Most so called political content is not useful anyways I don’t think. All I see for the most part is people convinced that their view is the right view, and almost no one seems to be trying to find common ground and work out solutions that everyone can be satisfied with. Instead it’s like they think that any inch you “give” is a loss.


https://polemix.io is a mobile platform that try to find common grounds by allowing "respect" votes that show that you disagree, but still find the idea/content/opinion relevant.

Social networks isolate people by only showing them content they agree with. It’s like french kissing yourself in the mirror.

We are 9 weeks online and growing with 2k+ users. Would appreciate your intake (invite code LV005). Cheers


Thanks I will check it out


It's highly debatable that the current twitter mobs are doing anything but alienating the wider population to their cause.

Liking or retweeting some police abuse video has about the same impact as liking a picture about famine in Somalia, the dopamine hit is just stronger.


A friend of mine was targeted by a fringe group. They were doxxed along with some stolen private family photos and their real PII circulating around in Twitter with lots of threats from the dumpster fire that are Twitter accounts. It was a traumatizing experience if you're a normal person and not used to this kind of negative attention attached to your real identity.

FB takes a lot of heat here vs Twitter perhaps because Zuck seems creepy but Jack Dorsey detoxes for one week in Africa but Instagram were quick to take down those threatening posts with PII but I was told Twitter asked for all sorts of government ID and then auto closed all the cases saying it's all within their terms and conditions. If any social media needs to disappear I think Twitter should be first in line.


Better live in Huxleyan than in Orwellian world


We're missing all the best parts of the Huxleyan sphere, though... more's the pity.


That's interesting, though. I find a lot of political and critical content on TikTok. You do have to look for it, it's not as popular, but TikTok definitely can be used for it.


Do you really think the political content of, say, Facebook is enriching?


I do not use the product (mainly because I'm too hooked on others...sadly) but one of my biggest gripes on the UX is the lack of video player controlls.

It really grinds my gears to have to watch 90% of a 60 sec video to be able to replay text at the end of something else. Other social apps fail with this as well, e.g. Snapchat, Instagram.

I'm curious how intentional the design decision is, perhaps trying to maximize time spent on the app? Interesting though how FB and Twitter do not follow the design pattern.


You are misled by the title...

ByteDance's overwhelming revenue is from non-TikTok sources, i.e., all JinRiTouTIao, DouYin, and other minor properties. The title wants you to think it related to TikTok as it was one of the most controversial news pieces in 2020.

TikTok's financial success is still very uncertain.

ByteDance is facing a weak BIDU (note Alibaba do not have much Ads business, and Tencent has a different walled garden), while here they are facing FB & Google in US.


> TikTok's financial success is still very uncertain.

I would take that bet any day of the week and twice on Fridays. TikTok has a massive, growing user base with engaging content on a platform that people generally like. I find it hard to believe they would succeed so massively in their app design and recommendation algorithms and then fail at monetization, which at this point is the trivial part.

I don't know what BIDU means.


BIDU is baidu's stock tick

For any spectacularly failed startup, there have been ardent supporters who uttered words no less enthusiasm than yours.

When I say their future are uncertain, I mean that it's more uncertain than one might expect, based on DouYin's success in China. One evidence I raised, is that competitors here are much stronger.

Plus, you might not believe it, CCP is more friendly to big tech than US government...


I think "doom scroll" is the wrong phrase. I was recommended lighthearted content.

But yes, had to delete the thing a year ago to avoid addiction ... a back-handed compliment, I know.

Fun, but a complete time-sink ...


Tiktok, at least for me, is the complete opposite of doom scrolling.


Tinder is the same. I.e beautifully crafted for addiction.


Its basically shows similar content to the people that you follow.

I started following people from India and it will only show me content from India.

I unfollowed everyone, and started following indian people in USA, and it started showing me content from that.

I started following people in America, and it started showing me similar content.

It wouldn't show any new trends or new/different content.


i uninstalled it and avoid it all cost because i ended up spending around 14 hrs in the app for the 5 days i had it installed on my phone.

Unfortunately now the copy cats like youtube shorts have me hooked and i cannot uninstall youtube because i use it for so many more things.


How are you encountering YouTube shorts? I use YouTube everyday on both my phone and TV but have never seen them. Where are they?


i have shorts tab in the bottom next to home in my android youtube app.


I actually find it less addictive than other feeds - I think it's because I feel less attached to the content (it's either people I don't know or famous people I like) and don't really engage with it beyond sometimes liking things.


> it scares me because it means that Chinese companies are just as capable as us to spin the next Facebook and distribute propaganda to the next generation.

Is there any good reason to focus on the misuse of a technology?


the feed algo is very good. I can assure you that there is loads of political content if you want to see it.


"Just as Capable?"

Facebook removes what they deem 'hate speech' and some controversial things during emergencies, like minsinformation about vaccines.

TikTok actively suppresses all sorts of information.

Go ahead and put up Toks of Hong Kong protests, Tienanmen square or Uyghurs incarceration.

Mostly - this suppression is just the natural business language of Chinese owners, but it's also direct and indirect pressure from the CCP.

That's not very comparable to what Facebook is doing.

That said, it's a decent app.


I never understood the Chinese propaganda angle but I agree the app is wonderful. It's the only app that has found a way to touch every one of my emotions.


This is spot on.


And why is that bad?


Yeah. We said this about Facebook 11 years ago didn't we? Now another one ascends to the throne of the most popular and widely 'used'.

So how long until the users get screwed (again)?


I've never found Facebook or Instagram fun, but Tiktok is an absolute delight. The serendipity they put into the recommendations is key.


Given that there are those calling these social networks highly addictive, catchy and delightful I guess it's safe to say that the drugs are still in effect.

Especially when the content and algorithms itself is or can be easily manipulated or gamed.

So how long until the users get screwed (once again)?


Who cares? If the platform goes to shit, people will stop using it. In the meantime, it's a breath of fresh air in a stagnant space.


> In the meantime, it's a breath of fresh air in a stagnant space.

Exactly. We've been here before haven't we?

How many more social networks do you need to join just to say the exact same thing? Of course. You're the one shilling it everywhere on this whole thread, when the news is for early 'investors' preparing for a gigantic IPO for massive returns. That's the news they want to hear.

As for the users; well who cares about them, they (Bytedance) don't care about you. As long as you keep generating great shareholder value for them it is another social network with a different internal flavour. Nothing has changed.

So I will ask again: How long until the users get screwed (once again)?


I'll be honest, your reply is kind of all over the place, so I don't know what you're trying to get at.

How are you expecting TikTok to "screw" its users? And what's the big deal with users just leaving the platform if this does happen? I really don't see the big issue here.


There you have it. No replies and ZERO evidence provided by any of the claims and responses in this thread; except for mine which is actually has substantiated evidence to the claims presented.

Typical of some of the HN crowd, like yourself who create illogical and baseless comments without any evidence to support it.

Thus, your claims can easily be dismissed.


> I'll be honest, your reply is kind of all over the place, so I don't know what you're trying to get at.

I'll put it in a very simple TikTok format for you: TikTok is just the same as any other social media platform which is fundamentally in the interests of the investors (they want to IPO with a massive return on investment); Not you or the users. Why do you think I quoted 'used' here? [0]

> How are you expecting TikTok to "screw" its users?

They already did [1][2], which is my point. Therefore, I do not have any confidence that they will change or how they are any different to other social media platforms. Yet you continue to deny such basic things like 'censorship' [3] even when another user pointed out a source [4] that included leaked information about TikTok's own suppression actions; completely debunking your vacuous claim.

> And what's the big deal with users just leaving the platform if this does happen?

That's not my problem. Another platform will just take its place and screw over their users over the interest of the investors (If they take capital).

So far with all your responses, you have provided ZERO evidence to your claims. I will ask one more time: 'How long until the users get screwed (once again)?'

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27550851

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56815480

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22301704/tiktok-92-millio...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27550717

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27551195


The big difference between Tik Tok and everything else to me: when I stop scrolling, I feel _good_.

On Instagram, I scroll until I hate myself. On Facebook, I used to scroll until I got frustrated. But on Tik Tok - it's a dopamine hit without the hangover.


You have no attachment to the content you see on Tik Tok. Facebook and Instagram are social network based. Tik Tok is not.


Tiktok is definitely a social network. For example you can send videos to your “friends” only and it will show up first when they open the app.

But, I get what you mean. Tiktok isn’t focused on friends, it feels more like a content stream similar to YouTube.


I'm also not attached to youtube and yet I never leave there happy either


I agree, I don't get the comparison of Facebook to like YouTube or tiktok they're all different things... While YouTube and google may try to add features similar to Facebook and Facebook may add features similar to them I feel they're not in the same category... There's almost "personal social media" with Facebook and Instagram than just "social media" like tiktok, YouTube, even this site... I guess things like Twitter fall somewhere in the middle.


Honestly, good for them. TikTok is such a breath of fresh air in the social media space -- it's bursting with raw unfiltered creativity, interactions are really genuine and I've actually met now IRL friends on TikTok. Their recommendation engine is scary good at discovery which solves the "I don't know who to follow" problem, the ads are the least intrusive of any social media platform.

If you don't "get" TikTok because your hobbies don't map well to video snippets -- stuff like makeup, art, fashion, cooking, baking, dance, inde music, cosplay, interior decorating -- don't write it off. It's basically a social media paradise for women[1]. Like the early days of Tumblr but replace gifs with videos.

[1] TikTok's format lends itself to hobbies stereotypically cultivated by women. The implication doesn't go the other way; loads of guys on TikTok. It also doesn't imply that every woman will find like it; don't @ me with logical fallacies.


I guess I still just don't get it. I'm always shocked at glowing recommendations of TikTok...from HN of all places! Every time it comes up here, I take a few minutes to browse the site, to see if anything changed to justify the praise, and it hasn't. The content may be more lighthearted, but over half of the random feed on the home page I just browsed is fundamentally the same "camera in your own face" narcissism amplifier as Instagram and the influencer portions of YouTube. I'm not even seeing a lot of hobbies there. It's just people who are not remarkably talented, but want to be in a video, making a video of themselves. It's got the same validation-seeker signals as the rest of social media (like count, comment count, share count). I browsed for about 30 minutes this morning so I could at least be informed before I comment, and literally found nothing remarkable or interesting. No unusual musical talents or athletics. Nothing really novel or even relatable. Just 20 year-old zeros making videos about themselves. Why is this a thing?


I used to have the same arguments against TikTok, too many narcissist attention-seeking influencers. But TikTok's algorithm shows you videos partly based on how much time you spend looking at a video.

So I started swiping to a new video immediately every time a selfie video showed up. The selfie videos mostly show up when you first create an account. The algorithm figured out I didn't like selfies so started showing me other random content, like travel, animals, etc. Then I started liking content I liked, so the algorithm gave me more of it.

I finally have what I like and don't see any "20 year-old zeros making videos about themselves", but it took some time to set up. It's refreshing, and much more pleasurable than Facebook or Instagram which tries to show me political shares when I'm actively unfollowing politics.


if you search for topics you're interested and like videos, the recommendation algorithm will shift fast.

I used to never get 3dprinting vids until I searched for it and watched+liked a few, and now I get lots of them.


TikTok creators are pushing out so much incredible OC. It feels like half of the Reddit front page are just TikTok reposts (with the logo censored out, because Redditors are too cool to admit they like TikTok content.)


I think how the 'human centipede' of content works is really interesting as it has evolved over time. Creators coalese in certain apps and consumers others.

4 chan greentext used to be pretty common on Reddit a decade ago, and 9gag would repost reddit content. Twitter text often gets reposted to tiktok and reddit. Tiktok videos often get reposted to Twitter or Reddit. Heck, many major 'journalism' outfits now regularly include tweets - sometimes thats even the entire content of an article. /r/AmITheAsshole or similar long-form reddit posts are regularly read to make content for youtube or podcasts.

In terms of original amateur-created content, seems the current winners of each medium are:

- short form text: twitter

- long form text: reddit

- short video: tiktok

- long video: youtube? but seems fragile


> - long form text: reddit

I would say Medium has taken over, here?


Women? I haven't seen as many diggers and backhoes in the last 10 years as I've seen in the last 10 days. There's a guy doing lives from the cockpit of heavy forestry equipment. Give the algorythm a chance, it will find your niches.


it also has really out there content. I didn't expect much because I don't care much for pop culture but I found a crew of a ship who seemed to ferry stuff around the Caspian Sea and they pretty much documented most of their trip on tiktok. That was a surprise to me.


> raw unfiltered creativity

LMAO

Those videos are literally produced by color or facial enhancement *filters*...

Not to mention the content moderation and censorship...


No idea why you are downvoted, other than annoying the TikTok fanatics on this thread with "the facts" and a dose of reality that they seem to be trying to escape from by going into their own world of dancing short videos and community memes which is governed by another "recommendation algorithm" just like the rest of the other social networks out there. Nothing has changed.

Even when there is strong evidence of this blatant censorship and suppression, they (TikTok fanatics) are unable to refute or argue against this fact and quickly downvote us because they have nothing to fight with.

For example, one user [0] in the comments of this post went with a baseless claim that "TikTok ended censorship." and was quickly debunked [1] in the same conversation.

If you believe them, you might as well also believe that Facebook and others 'respect your privacy'; whilst also using recommendation algorithms and graphs at the same time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27550717

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27551195


You know what?

I think HN passes the threshold of being a community capable of self sustaining, and now is gradually moving into more like a reddit.

In the sense, that HN now noticeably cannot accept non-conforming or non-positive statements.

I am thinking about creating a HN copy that dont hide any comments at all. The only rule is that everyone has to share his real name and basic social identity (where you work, age etc.). I think people would be more mindful if they risk their actual reputation.

Who knows, maybe I'll build it...


> blatant censorship and suppression

If you want a truly free speech social network, consider using Gab or 4chan. Oh wait, many potential users would find the content there distasteful.

There's no perfect social network out there. The other major social networks are happy to censor too (e.g. Trump, doctors discussing COVID-19 contrary to government agencies, etc) and they're just as bad with privacy too. Actually worse (I've been personally banned from Twitter for not providing a phone number, TikTok doesn't require one).

Not saying TikTok is perfect, but the more friends I add on TikTok the less I rely on Zuckerberg's empire.


I wasn't talking about or looking for "a truly free speech social network". My point is that someone made a wild baseless claim that "TikTok ended censorship" without any evidence supplied to back this claim and it was debunked immediately WITH strong counter evidence.

> If you want a truly free speech social network, consider using Gab or 4chan. Oh wait, many potential users would find the content there distasteful.

A 'true' 'free speech social network' also allows illegal content to be uploaded on there. Gab and 4chan censor content that is deemed illegal; thus they don't qualify for this.

I've tried both Twitter, and Gab and deleted both of my accounts there since the not only the content there was very distasteful, but they are both poor on protecting your privacy.

Disinformation and misleading content is still spreading around on their platforms and to some extent, it seems that Twitter doesn't censor some content that is actually illegal. [0] They seem to think that their community rules are above the law.

[0] https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/1352342668370579456?l...


At least 4chan's /pol/ isn't actually free speech, the mods will remove your content if they don't like it and think it will harm their Nazi project.


4chan will ban you or hide your posts for asking the wrong questions or writing things the "jannies" don't agree with. I don't know about Gab, but 4chan is free-speech in name only, if you make left-wing arguments that are too convincing your posts will be hidden or removed. Happened to me before.


A figure of speech


TikTok is currently only a small percentage of the revenue. ByteDance has quite a few apps in China. Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) is a big one, but they also have a very popular news app in China. They also have a separate app for longer videos than TikTok. And many other.


It’s easy to make money if you can sell addictive drugs before they are categorized as such.


Easy? I would push back on that.

TikTok has built a great app, a community of creators, an audience to consume content, and relationships with advertisers to generate revenue. They have made careful design decisions to engineer how addictive it is. This is hard work, and few companies can pull it off.


The people who decided to shut down Vine really screwed the pooch on this one.


Do you know how they got started?


He has no idea probably.

ByteDance's founder is an engineer, who happened to notice the fact that automation should come into content distribution in addition to all other aspects of social and economic activities.

So he started JinRiTouTiao, pretty much a DouYin/TikTok applied to text news. The narattive is this to give an analog. The fact is that DouYin/TikTok followed JinRiTouTIao's model.

TouTIao's content, like DouYin/TikTok, are manufactured to catch the attention. With attractive/provoking/(or whatever encourages clicking) titles, like the filtered/enhanced cover photo of any DouYin/TikTok video. The content is largely nonsensical, usually a rehash of some well-known old news. Just like DouYin/TikTok, just nonsensical videos to give you some short-term surge of satisfaction. The ads are mixed together with the manufactured content, which also has the same attractive title and content. Just like DouYin/TikTok.

The thing is that ByteDance, as a new generation of Internet company, becomes more fragile than any of its predecessors. In the sense that most of key factors of its success are based on machines, which are much easier to copy than things invovled more human activities (for example, it's easy to copy a successful anime, to make it successful, but it's much harder to copy the idea of a motion picture with actors and make it successful).

You can imagine someday, another startup, happen to invented a new AI that can generate content, whoola, ByteDance would be crumbling. If the founder would be as convicted as Mark Zuckberg, ByteDance would be killed in a few years...


The headline uses the word "earnings" incorrectly.

> "ByteDance also saw its annual gross profit rise by 93% to to $19bn, while it recorded a net loss of $45bn for the same period."


How did ByteDance lose $45b…


that too is answered in the article

"The net loss was attributed to a one-off accounting adjustment and not related to the company's operations."


They are expanding like crazy. Loss is not a problem at this stage.


TikTok is genius. I don’t have it installed, but whenever someone links me to it, it is hard to not continue looking at other related clips.

I don’t see Facebook ever building something as cool.


I must be getting old because when my younger sibling links me to it, it always falls short of delivering. Usually some amateur trying to be funny by over exaggerating something, but not something I have not already seen.


It depends on the content you are being linked to. It is hard for the platform to fix that. However, what I mean is that it is easy to get hooked consuming similar short videos and before you know it, you have spent almost half an hour on this thing you are trying to avoid. I believe it is the UI that makes it so easy to jump to the next video even on the browser.


> it is hard to not continue looking at other related clips.

I don't have it installed, but when someone links me to a specific clip, it won't let me look at other clips without installing it. What am I doing wrong?


I think it is the desktop vs mobile web UI. If they detect you are in a mobile, they will push you to download the app. I have seen it too.


I've followed 1000 new people on TikTok in the past 6 months. I don't feel any pressure because none of the people know me IRL. The content is amazing.


What I truly find remarkable is the rebranding of Musical.ly to TikTok. At first I wasn't quite sure that this really is essentially the exact same platform, just rebranded. When you look at the application ID on Android it is "com.zhiliaoapp.musically", suggesting that it is most probably based directly on Musical.ly.

Musical.ly has been around since 2014, steadily accumulating more users. So it isn't like TikTok just blew up out of nowhere either.


TikTok basically took the whole ice-bucket challenge and created a platform for it.


Alternatively, they made a far better version of Vine.


Did Oracle end up owning a part of the company or not?


Nope. Some low-balled bids during the height of the Trump regime's maximum pressure campaign did not get them anywhere.


Though I still think ByteDance have the goal of an US IPO for TikTok International.


There was a story awhile ago that TikTok's curation selected for relatively wealthy people, and I mean 'wealthy' the scale of rich countries. For example, they didn't want something shot in a home that looked impoverished, presumably because it wasn't the experience they wanted for their audience.

I don't use TikTok, but a few times I've seen compilations of TikTok on YouTube, and the above description certainly matched what I saw. Also, the compilations show people who are overwhelmingly white. Is what I saw representative? Are they representative in the US, and maybe people in other places see something different? (Edit: And I see the appeal of TikTok, nice dopamine hits without any cost.)

Those policies, if they exist, seem unhealthy for kids and for society: Lots of kids in the world have cell phones, but nly a small portion of the world would qualify for success on TikTok, and they are qualified by their money (and possibly ethnicity). It says to the vast majority who are poorer that you aren't part of society and no matter how good your video is, you can't qualify. It also would hide from the rich kids the vast reality of life, and that there is nothing threatening about poverty and poor people, and people who don't look like you.


Humans reflexively want to see beautiful, successful, high status people in rich, successful contexts. You don't need a conspiracy for this - it's the way things naturally flow.

To prevent it you want to mess with "natural" algorythms so that you can teach the people what to want, and that way lies dystopia. The better your intentions the more horrible the result.


> You don't need a conspiracy for this ...

It's not a conspiracy, but a documented fact based on interviews with TikTok employees, etc. In fact, I'm not sure TikTok really denied it, but it was awhile ago.


> TikTok's curation selected for relatively wealthy people

Was this controlled in some effective way? Seems plausible that humans like looking at wealth, and so wealthy people tend to get more likes. It's like crowdsourced tabloids.

> Also, the compilations show people who are overwhelmingly white

I think that depends a lot on what filter bubble you get sorted into. Plant/science/compsi/engineering/lefist sections where I tend to hit like feel pretty diverse. The default 'prankbro/dance/thirsttrap/wealth porn' areas do seem predominantly white though.


> Was this controlled in some effective way?

According to the article, yes. Human curators were instructed on that policy. I don't remember how/if it was implemented in algorithms, but per the article, humans controlled who succeeded.


My feed isn’t overwhelmingly white. It is very multiracial and not that US centric either. I suspect you give the algorithms cues as to what you want to see. I suspect my cues are the people I follow and I basically follow anyone who posts something I found fun or interesting.


So I've learned that TikTok allows copyrighted music to be played in videos, and just gives a cut of the revenue to the label. Why don't more social media have this arrangement?

YouTube not allowing copyrighted music is insane to me. Just give the label a large fraction of the revenue from the watch time during the time that their music was playing. How hard can it be to negotiate this arrangement?


It's up to the copyright owner if they want to take down or monetize the videos that have their IP in it.


How is YT not allowing copyrighted music? AFAIK, it is.


There are ways to get around YT's automatic strikes. There are numerous 'music reaction' channels where listeners play the music video in a small PIP window, and maybe shift the pitch a tad so it's not 100% identical to the original audio. This approach lets them play back the whole song + music video.

Some rights holders are especially aggressive, and proactively search for infringing material, so this method isn't foolproof; if they manually flag it, the audio will be stripped from the video. But for the cases where the rights holders are happy to use automatic strikes, the workaround still works.


> YouTube not allowing copyrighted music is insane to me. Just give the label a large fraction of the revenue

Youtube does exactly this. Upload music owned by labels that Youtube has a deal with and they'll get revenue.


Can someone who knows this stuff explain how TikTok actually makes money?


Senator, we run ads!


I guess they do organic ads, as I don't recall ever seeing a proper professionally produced ad. I admit I haven't spent much time on it though..


It's genuinely interesting you haven't seen any, or perhaps you haven't used the app in the past 6 months?

There's tons of them today, they've been cranking the ad load hard. I see like Nike and the like all the time. It might be they only show ads to users who use regularly.


Ads.

Like every other social network.


That is an insane amount of revenue. But I get it. My kids are addicts.


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Can you please source your claims? AFAIK TikTok ended censorship. You can even find vids with a lot of views talking about things like Tienamen Square, and I know friends whose FYPs are pretty political. It seems to me that you are confusing TikTok with Douyin (the Chinese version.)

The thing is, TikTok's audience self-censors. People go on the app to feel good, not because they want to be dragged into another political debate or negativity-inducing spiral like with literally every other social media.


TikTok employs a lot of moderators and they go much farther than facebook or twitter by hiding or removing videos that are not upbeat or fun.


I couldn't find a recent source for this. My understanding is that the audience of TikTok does not watch it for content that "is not upbeat or fun," effectively self-censoring the platform.

People download TikTok specifically for the fun and upbeat content, so negative content naturally does not rise to the top (unless it is particularly comedic.)


Here's a source: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

Of course since the news has come out:

>TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner told The Intercept that “most of” the livestream guidelines reviewed by The Intercept “are either no longer in use, or in some cases appear to never have been in place,” but would not provide specifics.

How far you believe them is up to you.


> AFAIK TikTok ended censorship.

Not GP but one of the concierges from my building left to work there on 'content moderation' not too long ago (er, just before Christmas iirc). Sounded like they have people literally sit there, scrolling (or swiping, whatever you do) watching like a user, but marking (perhaps voting 1 of N I suppose) go/no-go.


While I wouldn't be surprised by this at all, I also think the algorithm is so good that it generally just blocks out content you don't interact with. It's always pretty obvious when the algo bubbles up a new topic completely outside of my normal feed, and when I linger, I'll start seeing more.


isn't this actually the defining feature of commercial American television? You don't see a lot of incisive political commentary on Dancing with the Stars or a season of Survivor either

basically cleansing entertainment of anything that could be considered incendiary and replacing it with people doing funny dances is something the American ad industry came up with a century ago.

Like it's not as if American popular entertainment looks like German ARTE or some Scandinavian drama where politics and culture is baked into everything


What I love about tiktok is how they've managed to ban all political content. It's a social network which is fun precisely because it's not monopolised by rotten people with loads of free time.


Political content isn't banned, it just doesn't perform well with the audience on TikTok, which is generally younger and mostly less interested in politics. Usually when I see political content it is from someone dueting the original content to troll it, and the troll outperforms the original.

People try to get their political content trending on TikTok, but it seems like it usually just gets parodied and they basically get laughed off the platform.


It is not just about audience. The political content is definitely de-emphasised and made harder to appear on peoples stream. It does not just happen by itself. It is moderated.


I really don't think it is as human curated as you think. A lot of political content is very low effort. For example boring political rants that regurgitate the same tired old political lines that we've already heard a million times before. This stuff doesn't last long on For You page because it doesn't have people watching it loop multiple times, and it doesn't get likes, so the algorithm deemphasizes it.

I have seen high effort political content hit the FYP page though and get millions of views. Like there is a guy who composes his own songs with a political theme and sings and dances them. That hits FYP all the time, because it is high effort and engaging, and people enjoy the tune and watch it loop a few times.

High effort political content does succeed and does hit FYP, but it is rare to see because most people haven't figured out how to do it right for the TikTok audience. The kind of tired old outrage memes that make it on Twitter won't succeed on TikTok because they don't generate the same algorithmic signals.


> they've managed to ban all political content

Can you please source this claim? Plenty of people see highly political content on their FYP, but it is a niche within TikTok because it's not really why people use it.


> What I love about tiktok is how they've managed to ban all political content.

This is... not my experience with TikTok at all. I think what you've just described is your own little filter bubble that Tiktok presents.

My Tiktok is very gay. Not that that is political, but I get a lot of trans rights content, queer issues/advocacy, BLM content, pro-choice content, "landlords are evil" content etc etc and usually its funny and witty and I love it.


You say it is not your experience then you say you don't get political content.


Sorry for being unclear - I meant to say that just generally gay content is not political. Everything else I listed after I think is somewhat political (because politics is more than just saying “Republicans are bad!!!”)


> but I get a lot of trans rights content, queer issues/advocacy, BLM content, pro-choice content, "landlords are evil" content


I guess it depends on what you would label as political. Breitbart (sigh… I know) stated that “Politics is downstream of culture”. It’s not a new idea but I have no doubt that these non-political spaces will serve as cultural funnels into various ideological bubbles.


It's kinda unbelievable that there so much praise for their tightly controlled content and so much scorn for moderation done by Twitter or Reddit. It goes to show how much people's judgement is based on expectations and not absolutes.


I keep seeing these things about TikTok that are absolutely not true. There is definitely political content on TikTok.

Here's a few with > 100k likes from a minute of searching "Immigration": https://www.tiktok.com/@janetwthehazeleyes/video/69415659895... https://www.tiktok.com/@attorneyericprice/video/691993902413...

"Gun control" https://www.tiktok.com/@feministmama/video/69619490520616174...

I keep seeing "facts" about TikTok posted on HN threads about it that don't hold up to basic research. It's so bizarre.


Idk, I've never opened tiktok. I'm reacting to people's comments.


My point exactly.


>TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship.

Huh? Are you just going to ignore Vine? Twitter completely screwed the pooch on Vine by not paying creators which drove many high profile influencers to move to Instagram. To attribute TikTok’s success to censorship is to eagerly insert your own political bias into their story. Regardless TikTok, née Musica.ly had already started gaining steam as an American company without any major decision on whether to participate in culture wars


> Twitter completely screwed the pooch on Vine

All of the complaints about Google's shuttered apps pale in comparison to this one.

Vine had the best community of any of the major apps, back then, and arguably even now.

I understand they had trouble monitizing it, but it had a strong, vibrant community, even when they shut it down. If they hadn't neglected it for so long and iterated on the concept, they could have easily been TikTok today.


TikTok is un-american because of their complete disregard for free speech. Ehat you are talking about has nothing to so with what I said.


American companies can censor, they do it all the time. Free speech is protection of speech from prosecution by the government, not corporations.


If companies replace roles of the government, then this limitation no longer applies.


American companies booted their own head of state off their platforms. Careful you don't drown in all that freedom.


> TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship.

This is nonsense. All the social networks have things they will remove and ban your account for, from spam and CP upwards (Instagram and FB being notoriously touchy about sexuality). It seems that TikTok is heavier about politics than most, but censorship is not a boolean.


TikTok removes or makes it much harder to find content they do not want on the platform. Things that are not the right tone. There is very little political and culture war crap on it. They don't just censor for abusive, CP, spam and so on.


> There is very little political and culture war crap on it

That all depends on what kind of content you engage with. There is plenty of "political and culture war" type content on TikTok. You probably just don't see it.


Both could be true - i.e. that there is that sort of content there and you will find it if you engage with that stuff ... and that there is notably less of it that on other services.

Any individuals exposure to one of these large networks is a tiny, tiny fraction of what is there.


Huh? Major american social networks are highly censored. From the diversity of political opinions I see on TikTok, it certainly doesn't seem to be any more censored than say Twitter.

(Exception: TikTok does not allow explicitly sexual content, whereas twitter does. But facebook and instagram don't.)


They are not as censored as TikTok and they had to be strong armed into doing it.


this is a strange comment.

are US social media comments bound by free speech laws? don't they all remove content arbitrarily just like tiktok?

how is this the top comment? lol. not to mention Vine was literally the same thing as tiktok - it had terrible execution and quickly died.


Facebook content moderation is not even remotely arbitrary.


Ironic since your ex POTUS got banned from your own social media on grounds of causing civil unrest.


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Can this conspiracy stuff stop already? He lost and please move on. We are all tired of this.


Trust but verify. 40% don't trust. More reason to verify.


You know every company has to comply with regional laws: twitter got banned from that one African country, that doesn't mean twitter is against free speech. Tiktok has to comply with US laws to be able to enter the US market, and it also hires a bunch of US workers.

Your sinophobia is not welcome on this website.


I think you’re not really grasping how much TikTok “curates” the content on the platform compared to everyone else. Having posts removed seems to be a very common occurrence - I’ve never had a single post of mine removed from any social platform in two decades.


I have no idea what you are talking about or how it is sinophobia.


> I suspect any future social network much like TikTok will have exclusion as a major feature.

Do you mean like Clubhouse?


Anecdotally, clubhouse rooms were higher quality before they allowed Android users into the platform. Not saying that there's something inherently wrong with android users, there's just a higher noise to signal ratio now.


Probably because the first users were naturally more selected and targeted. Opening up to more people, regardless of their phone, inevitably leads to a noiser experience indeed.


Exclusion by driving away users for being complete dog shit is not what I had in mind. Not a recipe for success. I guess I should have put "any future successful social network".


Doesn't facebook, twitter, and other networks have a lot of censorship?


I tend to disagree, it's successful despite it's complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship. If the content is good enough people really don't care.


The content is good because they surgically remove the bad.


Then how do you explain the huge success of League of Legends and Valorant? They have some of the most intrusive anti-cheat in the planet, are Chinese based, and are HUGELY popular specifically in NA.

Again, when the features are good enough, people really don't care.


Sorry I have no idea what you mean


How is tiktok more exclusive?


Not sure if sarcastic. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are all heavily engaging in censorship. For example, they banned people last year for talking about the lab leak hypothesis, which is now acceptably mainstream(1). They are currently censoring a Youtube channel(2) run by a PhD in biology, who has been interviewing MDs and the inventor of mRNA vaccines, and whose stated purpose is to help end the pandemic(3).

1) https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=170 (Jon Stewart on Colbert earlier this week)

2) https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1405234596820643840

3) https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1404474243128037378


It’s also becoming a Chinese state owned company




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