TikTok and the Future of Social Media

The content on&#x2F;recommended by TikTok has two main interesting characteristics as I observed:<p>- Being very &quot;personally relevant&quot;: It doesn&#x27;t only recommend generally popular stuff. It can be very quick at picking up some niche interests of yours.<p>- Feel very authentic. TikTok makes it easier for &quot;ordinary people&quot; to get millions of views &quot;accidentally&quot;. And as a result, many popular video feels very authentic, which might be preferred compared to curated content like in Netflix or even YouTube.

My impression is that TikTok is the most shameless exploiter of curating content to maximize attention. You resign all the control and hope to petition &quot;the algorithm&quot; to change what you get to see -- like some kind of a god that ultimatly controls you, no matter what you sacrifice. They are in a position to spread propaganda and prevent imformation from spreading -- or you from being heard. Even more so, this can be individualized (especially with the rise of virtual influencers). I wonder, if it might eventually be able to change someone&#x27;s mind by slowly nudging them in the right direction, breaking down pre-existing beliefs and positions. And as youtube, twitter, etc. have shown, one of the main ways to increase addiction is to spread controversy. Have people screem and cry at one another, who wants mediation? Society is being reduced to a means of entertainment.

I think TikTok&#x27;s keys are ease of use - you can just swipe mindlessly, no choices, next, next, next, next. Good algorithm to predict a mix of stuff you&#x27;ll probably like and new stuff so you can still explore the space. The combination of the two makes it addictive. You keep hitting that Skinner box and you get rewarded.<p>I personally used TikTok for a bit (only as a consumer) but had to cut it from my phone. It was too addictive. I found myself using the app for longer than I wanted.<p>While TikTok is entertaining I don&#x27;t really miss it now that I&#x27;ve removed it. I feel lots of videos there lack substance.

How does TikTok&#x27;s recommendation algorithm work?<p>It&#x27;s the best I have ever tried. I have never found so many people with interesting hobbies on any other platform. TikTok actually learns from when I click &quot;Not interested&quot; unlike Instagram Reels that seem to ignore the &quot;Not interested&quot; button.

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TikTok scares me. They have found a way to get you addicted to 6-seconds content that you can watch mindlessly without <i>ever</i> choosing it. Basically like a TV except you have no control and your attention span becomes that of a child.<p>It&#x27;s literally a (non-chemical) drug and it should be treated as such.

I was very resistant to signing up for TikTok because I didn&#x27;t think I&#x27;d enjoy using the app in public with my sound muted. However, while home one evening a few days ago I decided to give it a shot and was completely astounded at just how fast the For You Page was able to adjust to videos I found entertaining and enjoyable. I think it boils down to a few factors, but the main one is simply that it&#x27;s able to get a ton of interaction data in a very short amount of time. It&#x27;s basically all the same data points as from YouTube, but nearly thirty times faster. While a YouTube video is typically eight or so minutes, a TikTok video might only be about 15 seconds. And since your entire screen is dedicated to a single video, TikTok is able to make very specific inferences that something like Twitter isn&#x27;t able to. So after just a few minutes of swiping through videos, liking a few to indicate I wanted to see similar content, and following a few creators, I was able to get a FYP that felt specifically catered to my interests. Over the past few days, it&#x27;s even changed dramatically, while still feeling personalized to me, whereas I find YouTube takes days, if not weeks of watching to accommodate to a new interest or topic.<p>All that being said, it&#x27;s certainly not without its frustrations. For example, there&#x27;s certain topics I&#x27;m interested in that I can&#x27;t seem to get it to show me videos from (mainly technology topics). I even went as far as searching specific hashtags in the hopes that was enough of a signal, but the FYP still didn&#x27;t seem to suggest any videos from those topics. It may just be that tech-related videos don&#x27;t do very well on the platform, and thus the algorithm is unable to collect and process enough data to make useful recommendations.<p>Finally, I absolutely despise the fact that the Following page isn&#x27;t chronological. I follow a few creators, and I want to see their new content, so you&#x27;d think Following would be the place to do that. Well as of right now, the first video on my Following page is from July 11, despite the fact that specific creator has posted six newer videos since then.

Tiktok does many things well but making videos easy to find is not one of them. It’s a miracle for discovery of new content, but a menace for ever being able to find it again. Video search is hard, but they really aren’t trying- they would rather you have to hit the like button on every video you might want to see again. The problem is that the likes list is also not searchable or filterable. The only way I was able to find a video I really wanted to share with somebody was to request a data export, wait 2-3 days, then run through a long CSV of my whole watch history to locate it. It’s pretty clear that they transcribe all of the content for internal use only-moderation and analytics at least; I wish they could use that for search as well.

I downloaded it, noticed that the initial content I was shown was some kids and their dog dancing to a pop song. Recorded myself drumming a fancy beat with some stick twirling, edited it to a short loop. (Not sure how these folks do anything musically related, the apps loop point setting was coarse and it took me ages to make it loop properly) I opened the app a few more times, saw more videos of people dancing to pop songs. Saw that I still had zero views two days later. I never managed to find any content that didn’t look like a line dance or a wanna be mc-hammer video. More kids dancing to pop music with their dogs. Never managed to find the addictive content.<p>YouTube has me fairly pegged, however, I can usually safely skip the channel welcome and plea for likes and subscribe and hit meaty content showing me some woodworking or culinary tricks, etc.<p>The takeaway for me is that a superficial ADHD format results in or best features superficial ADHD content. It’s not like I couldn’t see the restless nature of it and how it could thrive in our short attention span contemporary society, it’s that I felt it to be one more rung down a ladder shortcutting our race to be bottom.<p>But I’m atypical, admittedly. I have never owned a tv in my life. Don’t Netflix or HBO or whatever is on these days, and YouTube tutorials are about as “vegging out” as I get. I want less screen time in life, not more.<p>But yay for the tiktok devs, good job on the successful app

TikTok is different from other social media. People seems to be nicer on there. Others have echoed this sentiment. The platform favors talent, it is a great way to learn how to film. You get feedback in terms of views in a very short time.<p>I see the format as a new way to teach and educate. I coin the phrase “micro lesson” to describe the idea.

Tiktok is fantastic at disguising ads as videos.<p>In to food? Look at this amazing restaurant, filmed in high quality, with lots of editing, exactly the length of a tv ad. All done because the person just loves the place so much &#x2F;s<p>Gay? The person is the advert for their onlyfans.<p>It seems absolutely chock full of “brand ambassadors” just like Instagram.

I don&#x27;t hate TikTok, but for some reason (almost?) every time I open the app it wants me to authenticate. In 90% of cases I can&#x27;t be bothered so I just close the app and open reddit.