>Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term.
And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
>> Are we going to be putting [US] government-appointed directors on all [US] social media companies?
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
Agreed.
Great so let’s ban it then and avoid that problem? If you’re upset about the US government having a board seat on the US-specific app then you are even more mad that the CCP does while you munch on Tide pods and get outraged about whatever the algorithm tells you.
Or you can just get rid of this crap and stop lying to yourself about the value and they can rule over an empty kingdom.
Otherwise yes indeed the US will get a board seat and the Trump admin will make content demands and you will take it like a coward because you’re too addicted to give it up.
(Just a note I don’t mean you specifically - I don’t know if you’re addicted to social media or not)
> there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.
I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows.
Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole.
Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...
I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
At the rate the US is going this will be interesting for Europe and Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, in probably the near future.
I think its pretty obvious how and why, every other platform copied the key parts of Tik tok, youtube has shorts, and others have their own rendition. What they all miss is that this IS Tik Tok its not some additional part of Tik Tok. It's a simple UI that gives you endless content you like, they tag all the content in a meaningful way behind the scenes, and then the recommendation engine works to feed you more of what you like.
Pinterest but for short videos.
Turns out short attention bursts is enough for the younger generations, they get condensed news. The big downside I see is they get used to the cut version of things, I am a huge fan of longer videos with raw uncut context, I tire of people telling me what someone said, just give me the video thanks, I can think for myself.
> but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
I think political scholars will debate on what the net effect of this is actually going to be. As in, are we better off with the GOP or the CCP controlling the algorithm? Certainly, the CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not, like trying to confuse us as to how we should feel about protecting Taiwan.
But in the past, the CCP has been interested in sewing discontent in the US and the method by which they have done that is by propping up the GOP. And many ways by which both the CCP and GOP would presumably manipulate the algorithm would be similar—owning libs, promoting radical right wing views, etc. But having the GOP control TikTok is a different thing entirely, they are much more incentivized to propagate their own flavor of politics to skew the nations narrative to their liking, in a much more controlled way than I think the CCP would. See twitter for prior art here.
At least if TikTok is owned in the US there might be some oversight into what’s going on. As bankrupt as Mark is as a person it doesn’t seem like hes pushing his own political views into instagrams algorithm, unlike the case at twitter. I think we have yet to see how Ellison will treat the great power of controlling the TikTok algorithm but I’m cynical.
> CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not
The GOP wants to destroy the west even more than the CCP, yes.
Having control of "The Algorithm" is putting it vaguely. The two things are making sure everyone sees a certain video, like how China did with the factory videos taking down luxury brands. The other is filtering out things entirely, eg Epstein or Luigi Mangione. The worst is that they'll learn from the CCP, which is to let people air their frustrations, just don't let them get organized.