Imo, tiktoks and facebooks work by destabilizing emotions: they take users on a wild ride thru disgusting and pleasant emotions in an unpredictable manner. This unpredictability of the ride turns off the mind: the user learns that engaging the mind makes no difference and turns it off, leaving more room for the raw emotions. It's not a stretch to say that algorithmic media feed works by muting the human in the users and engaging the animal in them.
The fact that Tiktok wholesale bought the user base for musical.ly, largely preteen children, and converted them to an entirely different app meant to addict them and harvest their data seems pretty unconscionable.
Can’t answer your question directly, but I found this 2022 episode of a16z podcast insightful about the niche/innovations of the product: Tiktok’s Algorithm and Creativity Network Effects
Eugene Wei and Sonal Chokshi
Add sexy content, and you have formula for addiction. Heck, I’m struggling with fly fishing shorts and tv show clips on Instagram and YouTube. 30-60 minutes 3-4 times per week. Meanwhile my Stackoverflow, EDx, and smart people podcast consumption has gone to zero. I feel like a nerd bum.
it’s just the most popular. they are all the same. it’s less about the technology and more about why so many humans feel the need to spend so much time using it
No, well at least not anymore since they have all implemented the infinite scrolling portrait mode feed; YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix
Even if we grant that US-based apps give similar access to the USG (I don't know, I just know it's a likely claim that I don't care to dispute), it's ludicrous to say that it's just as acceptable to give that access to the Chinese government. If you think those are equivalent you have not been paying attention.
Is there adequate content in my short comment that substantiates the full model you've formed of my stance in your mind?
Ironically, if you tune your TikTok feed carefully, it can offer plenty of great learning material on human psychology and cultural cognition, I highly recommend it.
I also recommend the YouTube channel Asian Boss, I enjoy watching how frequently Asian people pause to think before answering questions posed to them, they seem unable to immediately know the correct answer like most westerners.
You quote "evidence is worse than" for emphasis, suggesting that you don't find that standard to be met by evidence that TikTok gives major inside access to an actively repressive and genocidal government. That suggests you think other social platforms are equal or worse, somehow, but you don't give any basis for that idea. Indeed your commentary consists entirely of snarky side tangents, rather than actual arguments. If you mean something other than the obvious interpretation, you best be explicit.
> Indeed your commentary consists entirely of snarky side tangents
I informed you that you are describing a model. And asked you a question about it, which you did not answer.
You are presenting your uncharitable take as representative of my stance, and then knocking it down with ease.
Might the same be happening with China in discussions in Western media (mainstream, social, etc)?
How could "worseness" of various platforms and these two countries even be calculated in a reasonably objective, unbiased manner? Is such a thing even possible?
I explained the part of my model that actually exists quite explicitly. Perhaps you are making unwarranted assumptions about my assumptions? (Two can play the snarky pseudo-Socratic question game)
Making a counter-assertion of fact is not a requirement. In fact, making claims of fact when one lacks the expertise is generally a poor idea, though it is extremely popular.
If you are so smart, why can you not answer simple questions about your facts?
I already tried answering your initial question about my reasoning, and you responded with meandering snark. Now you pretend I'm the unreasonable one for not treating any of your other "questions" seriously. If you wanted a real discussion, you could have said something of interest at that point, maybe made an actual claim about cultural influence or prioritizing problems in the social media landscape or somesuch, even just a hypothetical idea. But you've shown you don't actually want to exchange ideas, you just want to feel clever and righteous.
Here is an idea: your thinking is to some degree based on heuristic predictions, which are a consequence of millions of years of biological and cultural evolution, and it is possible to notice when a human is engaging in such behavior.
More speculatively: I think there may be a way to get someone to transcend their cultural conditioning and admit when they slipped up in this manner, something that inevitably happens to all of us.
I think it's great that the Chinese government, known for welding people inside their house, forcing citizens to continue paying into unfinished apartment building, taking passports away from teachers, transferring organs from young bodies into CCP leaders, amongst other things, have a massive tool to brainwash Americans.
More great[1] material for the one side, but to prove out more, someone is going to have to produce material on other apps & nations to compare it to.
[1] the misinformative rhetorical nature of it is going to lose people like me, but I suspect I am an outlier in this regard, misinformation aligned with culturally conditioned subconscious bias appeals to almost everyone in my experience.
I'd imagine teens with smartphones making poor decisions is perennial and any UGC site needs to have a strategy for dealing with it.
Strangely, you'll find many people, specifically on HN that want to attribute a separate maniacal agency to tiktok as if it's some cold war brainwave voodoo project sabotaging America. As if twitter, reddit, tumblr, youtube and instagram don't have similar problems.
Yours is really the worst type of post that anyone can make here. Just because it's an election year doesn't mean we have to turn every damned topic into a red/blue culture war dripping with hostile political rhetoric. Embrace the better part of your nature or take it out of here and back to Reddit please.
How do you read that from my comment? This thread is full of speculative conspiracy theories because TikTok is Chinese owned. Almost all social media site have a content-creator monetization platform. Facebook has had it since 2017. X does. YouTube does. You think Instagram doesn't have a CSAM problem?
This is about a long history of the west attributing secret conspiracies to Asian people. We acknowledge this when it's about things like Cholera conspiracies in the 1800s but somehow cannot see it when it happens in our own time.
Social Media is inherently exploitative regardless of the nationality doing it. This problem is not platform exclusive and pretending like it is makes solving it impossible just like how the Chinese exclusion act didn't cure Cholera. (https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Chinese_as_Medical_S...)
