Reddit CEO: TikTok Is ‘Fundamentally Parasitic’

Heh. This sounds like a business person that doesn't understand their competition, so they self-righteously trashed them as a way of avoiding the question. I mean, I sure as hell don't know the reason for TikTok's success, but I'm not the CEO of reddit. TikTok has a billion+ users, despite it's crappy reputation as surveillance-ware, so there must be something to learn from them.

Personally, I found TikTok to be a funny, light-hearted app, but there&#x27;s definitely an overaggressive approach when it comes to pushing content and re-engaging users.<p>Besides what he is saying, the app and platform are designed to spread content fast, with quick feedback loops of brand re-engagement through other platforms. If you use Reddit you will notice that content coming from TikTok gets shared constantly and it&#x27;s designed in a way that drives indirect traffic back to them. There are even a handful of subreddits just dedicated to TikTok videos like r&#x2F;TikTokCringe which got so popular that it is not for &quot;cringe&quot; anymore.<p>Not only the videos have a TikTok watermark, but also when they end they have a prominent display of the creator username (which presumably drives people who found the content funny to search for them).<p>This makes me think that he is actually upset about the fact that TikTok thrives on Reddit and there&#x27;s nothing they can do about it.<p>Just look at TikTok itself. Have you seen their user experience when it comes to sharing content? It&#x27;s a super highly optimized sharing experience that even remembers your preferred sharing channels, plus it has a significant number of features for soft sharing like downloading as a live photo or gif. I mean there&#x27;s zero friction between TikTok and posting a gif to Reddit or any other platform because they make it incredibly easy.<p>This seems diametrically opposed to Reddit&#x27;s sharing experience which is constantly tinkered to create a walled-garden (for example in iOS they disabled the ability to share videos directly into messages because this effectively made visiting Reddit unnecessary.)<p>The other super crazy part about TikTok is how their algorithm presumably works. It&#x27;s really an incredible engineering accomplishment but one that is definitely transgressing the &quot;creepy&quot; line. They really analyze absolutely everything about your content in order to classify it and rank it. This article gives a good explanation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veed.io&#x2F;grow&#x2F;reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algorithm-works&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veed.io&#x2F;grow&#x2F;reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algorith...</a>

&gt; <i>”Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them,” Huffman said. “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”</i><p>That’s rich coming from the guy who turned Reddit into the Dark Lord of Dark Patterns. Can’t use Reddit web on mobile anymore without 50 nags to install the app, and sometimes it simply won’t load a page until you do. Guarantee they track every last thing you do, every subreddit you visit. Hypocrisy in the extreme.

How different is the tracking that TikTok does compared to what Facebook and Google does? Except may be TikTok might be shipping this data off to the Chinese?

Not that I disagree, but for some context, this is coming from the man who said &quot;We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook - we know your dark secrets, we know everything&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=6PCnZqrJE24&amp;feature=emb_title" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=6PCnZqrJE24&amp;feature=emb_titl...</a>

While it may be true, saying that in front of Silicon Valley investors, while sitting next to a Facebook executive, is pretty rich.

TikTok: get in trouble if you criticize the Chinese president<p>Reddit: get in trouble if you praise the American president

The pot calling the kettle...

“I’m confident that Reddit could sway elections. We wouldn’t do it, of course. And I don’t know how many times we could get away with it. But, if we really wanted to, I’m sure Reddit could have swayed at least this election, this once.”<p>-Reddit CEO

Hello pot, here&#x27;s kettle. Silicon Valley tech is really gonna eat itself

if tiktok is parasitic, whats reddit then ?

&gt; “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”<p>&gt; “I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone,&#x27;” he later added.<p>Does that mean Reddit doesn&#x27;t track users? Or just that TikTok is extra good at it?

Geezus the day Reddit userbase becomes the same as TikTok is the day I&#x27;m fully migrating here.

Look at the irony. This discussion is taking place at Hacker News. Most wholesome place all over the internet.

Reddit is now banning folks for upvoting content!<p>Im on mobile, but there is a screenshot of huffman promising for life to not delete content by users.<p>Reddit is a propaganda tool 100% now.<p>(There is another post by him saying as so, they removed both)

I&#x27;ll take TikToks &#x27;parasitic&#x27; over Reddits toxic negativity any day of the week.<p>Go look at the front page of Reddit, then look at what&#x27;s trending on Tiktok... From my humble perspective tiktok is a pretty positive place. Reddit on the other hand seems to have been overrun with political fighting and cynicism about literally everything.<p>It may not be popular among the tech crowd but for where I am in my life that is far more important to me than what permissions an app needs.

don&#x27;t worry guys, I&#x27;m creating the new reddit. It&#x27;s called fuckkit