TikTok's new CEO says company will reveal how its algorithms work

Sounds like a last ditch effort to prevent the app from getting banned in several countries. I have two takes, one it&#x27;s very admirable for a company to release its algorithms and drive more transparency and I think it will help the public trust ByteDance more.<p>The other take is much more cynical. When they finally release the algorithm how will we know that&#x27;s the whole story? I&#x27;m sure researchers will have to formally verify it somehow (not an expert here so I&#x27;m speculating). Also this does nothing to actually prevent them from further abusing user data. Seems like this release is just a red herring that diverts attention from the other shady stuff they are doing.

As something of an outsider (being from West Africa), the extent of the panic over TikTok is more than a little amusing to me. I understand how it might be different for an American citizen, but to me much of it frankly sounds like one third party trying to paint another as the devil incarnate over much the same practices. Plus unlike many American data farms masquerading as services, TikTok does actually provide me with a measurably positive experience as a content consumer; a feed that contains fresh, relatively non-gamified content that I actually want to see.<p>I just treat the platform like I treat the likes of Facebook. Accessed only through the web in a sandbox, etc.

Hacker News is for technical people. They know this is bullshit. Its not their algo that means anything. Its the data collection and sending it to China&#x2F;Singapore that is the problem.

Prediction:<p>Color me pessimistic, but it&#x27;s obviously not going to be the entire picture. This explanation is going to live that sort of vague truth&#x2F;lie land that the majority of news today exists.<p>It will instill confidence amongst less tech-savvy people, by &quot;putting it out there&quot; that TikTok is actually magnanimous in releasing it&#x27;s secret sauce.<p>If by some magic they do release the real thing, it will be gamed so quickly that it will be rendered moot.<p>If I were them, I would do the second. That way you&#x27;ll release the truth (at that time) and reap the benefits of good PR.<p>edit: grammar.

Will he also accept that TikTok instructed moderators to &quot;suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform&quot;[1]?<p>There are already enough forces at play which feeds on inequality, hate, scarcity etc. making life miserable for the majority of human population, forces which we may have already lost the battle with; let&#x27;s not give in to new ones just for the sake of entertainment.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;16&#x2F;tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theintercept.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;16&#x2F;tiktok-app-moderators-us...</a>

This seems like a smokescreen for the actual problem, which isn&#x27;t the algorithms(I don&#x27;t think anyone has said the algorithms are the problem), but the fact that their app is effectively spyware.

Assuming their recommendation system is structured in the same manner as the feed ranking system at FB [1], I&#x27;m assuming this means they will be publishing their value models (easily interpretable by anyone), and not their probability models (black boxes, even to them). In other words, we&#x27;d be able to see that they value P(click) 2.5 times more than P(comment), but won&#x27;t tell you how they actually predict clicks or comments.<p>This feels pretty meaningless to me, since knowing that they are ranking something highly because you are likely to click on it seems fine until you find out that the reason you are likely to click on it is that it is a viral hoax.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.commons.georgetown.edu&#x2F;cctp-607-spring2019&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;05&#x2F;deblackbox-facebook-news-feed-algorithm-as-a-system-for-attention-manipulation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.commons.georgetown.edu&#x2F;cctp-607-spring2019&#x2F;201...</a>

This instantly reminded me of the classic magician misdirection engine. Get people looking at the fake algo&#x27;s while the real damaging stuff stays hidden from view.

This could be the right step towards algorithm transparency. It is critical in the information age we&#x27;re in, while Facebook is promoting alt-right conspiracies, and YouTube is feeding flat-earthers.<p>Yes. There are more technical issues to resolve. (e.g., How do we verify the algorithm they present is the actual algorithm they use?) Perhaps third party audit, APIs for third parties to test the algorithm? We need constructive criticism than cynicism.

I wonder what revealing how the algorithm works will impact content creators? We have entire industries built on poking at Google Search and Instagram to build exposure.<p>My prediction is that this levels the playing field, but doesn&#x27;t solve the problem of people gaming algorithms to do what they want. The less shrouded the algorithm, the less snake oil that can be sold which is probably for the best.

To me, drawing a diagram saying how it works isn’t really gonna do it. How can anyone know you are telling the truth?

I was an elected 2008 Hillary Clinton DNC delegate and have ran numerous campaigns for the Democrats. I also work in tech.<p>Twitter supports Democrats.<p>If you study the trending tweets, those that tend to easily trend favor Democrat issues, ideas and movements. Comments on object news articles promote Democratic comments over conservative commenters.<p>Looking deeper, if you study campaign contributions by the staff of Twitter, its at North Korean levels (95% Democratic Party vs 5% All others) of popular support. How is this level of political support different than TikTok&#x27;s support for the CCP?<p>How are the design patterns and motivations of TikTok worse than twitter?

Will they tell us how they share data with the CCP?

Maybe Google can learn a thing or two about how to do a recommendation engine that actually works for YouTube.

Can we trust TikTok to explain in detail how the surveillance part works? Or to remove it entirely?

Can anyone enlighten me the main difference between surveillance from China vs. the NSA exposed by Snowden?<p>I was under the impression that both countries (if not most countries) collect data one way or another. It&#x27;s just that China does it more explicitly.

Now can we trust what the diagrams say?

All the TikTok people are gonna move to Triller

Revealing how an algorithm works only provides a false sense of understanding&#x2F;security. At any time, the algorithm can be modified. Further, mechanisms will be needed to ensure that the published algorithms are actually the deployed algorithms. There is such a thing as lying and deception. It’s naive to believe that billion dollar companies are honest.

I&#x27;ve met Kevin Mayer and have two friends (one a roommate) who worked closely with him. There are some people who operate in life like an automaton or an NPC. They&#x27;re completely ambivalent to principles so everything is relative. It&#x27;s easy to justify leaving Disney as their COO to go work for a Chinese controlled company -- all you have to do is -want- to rationalize it.

We are at war and data collection and social media influence serves as the ammunition and propaganda. If Bytedance is a truly innocent third party, then they completely misread the situation when they spent billions of dollars to expand outside of China and this amounts to a business failing.<p>The more likely situation is that the CCP is intimately involved in Bytedance&#x27;s data collection, what becomes trending, what videos get promoted, etc. They crossed the proverbial line and now they are punished for it a la ZTE, Huawei, etc.<p>You can say goodbye to any Chinese, Russian, etc. app ever taking off in the &quot;West&quot; in the future. Scrutiny will be ever more stringent as the war continues.

Inb4 the press release says &quot;Machine learning&quot;.<p>Honestly, do we really need to consider TikTok&#x27;s rebuttals about them basically being spyware? Sure, they spy for the CCP, but Facebook spies for the highest bidder. Not sure what&#x27;s worse at this point to be honest.<p>And I&#x27;m not leaving Facebook, Google, Instagram, or these other services out of this either. You can tout &quot;AI&quot; and &quot;Machine Learning&quot; all you want, &quot;We want to give you the best content&quot;, etc., it&#x27;s all BS. Stop it.<p>Unfortunately, they won&#x27;t stop it, because most folks simply _do_ _not_ _care_ about TikTok being spyware, including _most_ if not _all_ the people that I know (and yes, including developers, scientists, semi-high-ranking government employees, etc.)

I have a nuclear take, as someone who still uses TikTok: Your data and life are not special in any way. The government will never be interested in finding out about you, and if they really wanted to they could do it with ease, and definitely don&#x27;t need an app to do it. This is serious in terms of larger scale surveillance implications, but then that&#x27;s not really a reason to stop using TikTok for individual purposes is it? We&#x27;ve seen people become presidents even after their entire dirty past was revealed. I literally do not care if a random Chinese employee knows everything about my life.<p>You&#x27;re welcome to feel differently, I never force these opinions on other people. Yet everyone seems to want to tell me I&#x27;m crazy. Yeah, I&#x27;m the crazy one, not the guy who thinks the government is interested in him as an individual rather than a collective for policing and advertising purposes, which by the way has already been going on for decades.