Comment by bearjaws
Comment by bearjaws 4 days ago
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
Comment by bearjaws 4 days ago
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
The algorithm is genuinely very good. That's why I deleted it.
It's very addictive and not always just shoveling slop.
I don't know if I can do it justice but there's something genuinely quite fresh about the AI stuff I see every now and again e.g. Anna from the red scare podcast shilling industrial glycine was a meme for a while. Very Land-ian. Neo-china...
It's a proper Skinner box. Very well made. And in millions of people's pockets too.
""" Within such a possible future system, the only command or need
that the machine would not respond to would be the one command that
I have a feeling some of us would most want to type into the
machine. Which is the demand that it destroy itself, you see, that
would be my problem with the machine. It would meet all the needs
except my need to see it destroyed. It would take every other
command well, and meet every other need well, but the need to just
to just shut it down. Television is something like that now.
I feel sometimes as though I am plugged into a giant computer that
will take every command I give it except the one that I want the
most. The command that the damn machine blow itself up. It will do
anything else I say. I type in "food", and out comes food. I type in
"I want to give this talk in Washington". It comes out. But the one
command I want is the command for the damn thing to just go "boom!",
and all the little transistors just to go... """
Rick Roderick 1990the tiktok algo is genuinely impressive. What's cool is that the engineers published some works explaining how it functions.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07663
It's an interesting read if you're into recommender systems or AI in general. What amazes me is that despite this published work google and meta still can't produce a decent social media algorithm, so it's either incompetence or malice.
Google can't even produce a decent search engine. I've switched to yandex.
Same reason I never touched prismatic after its first load.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prismatic_(app)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Back in the day when I was using Windows Mobile (2002-2008) there was an app (RSS basic) that was pulling the news from various websites (I had added BBC, CNN, some with IT news, etc.). Before I would leave home I'd sync it, and it would give me 'many' news articles, just the text ofc.
At some point I got addicted into reading news, so out it went. So yes, anything that gives you dopamine hits (cat videos, semi-naked men/women, news of the world), must go!
Prismatic was even worse (better?), IIRC it scanned your twitter feed and then gave you a set research articles, academic websites, etc. To say I have a breadth of interests is an understatement. My twitter feed looks like arxiv and and a british tabloid had a baby.
What prismatic gave me was pages and pages of Art, Design, Philosophy, Mathematics, Literature and all of it hours to days old. Every single article it back I wanted to read and there was pages of it, never ending. There was no way I could even filter out what read and even what to be aware of, there was simply too much.
I closed it and never went back. I also realized that even knowing of knowing is itself a Faustian bargain, we are all on a temporary atoll in a giant sea.
Can't watch YT shorts because their algorithm is too good also ...
I disable them with a browser addon (and Revanced on mobile) because I seriously never want to watch a 30 second video on Youtube. Having to scroll past useless snippets when I'm looking for something had borderline-ruined Youtube for me.
there's some astoundingly good shit on there. some japanese cabinet maker who does phenomenal stuff and conveys it all in 30 secs. so much more. but so much more, in fact, that i can't risk my life/time by stepping into the stream.
first time i did that, i finally realized that this is probably the tiktok experience that so many other people are talking about. utterly terrifying.
Your perception of TikTok likely depends on your TikTok for you page. If you spend time cultivating it, the algorithm will learn you like authenticity and show you more of it.
This seems to be less true on YouTube and Reels unfortunately.
The algorithm will spoonfeed you content that you perceive a certain way, whether that's true or not is a different story. Unfortunately for most people, all those hilarious situations that are not-so-obviously staged just fly over their heads as genuine. My wife is smart and well educated, but I even had to keep correcting her when she showed me videos that she believed were genuine.
I think a lot of people fall for the feels authentic and confuse it with authentic. Also a lot of people cant tell the difference.
My TikTok For You Page is almost entirely made up of Veritasium videos, sci-fi authors, some standup, lock picking lawyer and "how is it made" style videos. I don't get any of that brain-rot slop. If I did, I wouldn't use it. Which would be a slight improvement to my life. Although I'm not negatively impacted by the current level of my TikTok use, I can definitely see it takes an extra level of willpower to stop (i.e. close the app, put down the phone) than almost any other of my extra curriculars. From enjoyable hobbies to other fun time wasting activities such as gaming. Barring Factorio which is the biggest time warp I've ever encountered, with an almost perfect dopamine extracting game loop.
The algorithm is good. It's too good, and that's why it's dangerous.
These videos are often not that short. They're often broken into several parts and can be 30 minutes or longer.
The true danger of TikTok is the "wonder what will be next?" which is an infinitely rewarding question.
>The algorithm is good. It's too good, and that's why it's dangerous.
So, based on your description, the algorithm gives you almost exactly what you like, in terms of authenticity and legitimate interest on your part, instead of force feeding you crap that tries to change your perception of X or Y, and this is... bad? How exactly is it dangerous for doing what you want it to instead of pouring slop onto your brain?
The funny thing is I think you're misunderstanding the scale. You wife likes videos that are not-so-obviously staged. Somone else would get purely staged videos. Someone else would get actual real videos. If you like real pilots landing planes on runways where the wheels make sudden noises, it will give you that.
There are tens of billions of pieces of content there. TikTok is the furthest thing from a monolith possible.
It has to start somewhere, so it recommends the things that the most people like, but it's not the only content there, that's just common sense and good business (recommend The Beatles/Taylor Swift before you recommend Arch Echo/Aesop Rock)
the TikTok reocmmendation engine seemed to work better with a sparse history and better understood user feedback about content that one wants to see or avoid
Instagram tbh just feels icky but at least you can explicitly like or dislike stuff not that it would fix the feed though
YT shorts is also good but I hate you can't say show me this or do not show me that and it is all based on duration. idk what the powers that be at YT were thinking but I'm sure they did user studies and stuff
so much for free market economics though stuck with two imperfect options because Zuck couldn't fix the feed :(
> the algorithm will learn you like authenticity and show you more of it.
Jesus, this is like a line out of a William Gibson novel. I hope you wrote that aware of the irony inherent in it.
I'm also reminded of this George Burns quote: "The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made."
Connecting people to other people, to life changing art, places and things that they end up loving and wouldn’t know about otherwise? That has to be one of the best uses for technology. I’d like to see more of it.
I think you and others here are focusing on the stereotypical “influencer” faking authenticity for views but there are literally millions of human beings posting on TikTok about all kinds of things. A lot of them are pretty cool. Just click “not interested” on influencers and click like on the stuff you want to see instead.
I think it's fair to say after a decade or so social media does not "connect people to other people", what you are describing are parasocial relationships. People are lonelier than ever, not just in America but worldwide.
Besides, for any hobby, recommendations are only really relevant for newcomers without solidified preferences and knowledge, after that the space of available content quickly dwindles as one seeks increasingly ambitious and avant-garde works to their preferences. Amateur stuff can be quite generic after all, what not with the lack of resources and experience. If you're still relying on an algorithm, I'd see it more as a vapid surface-level engagement with a hobby/medium than a genuine interest to dive further.
Well, I guess that's what people want, but I'd argue that we're not better of it, that despite the greater size of it all, the culture of the early 2010s internet still produced far higher quality and authentic cultural products than today, hell alot of shorts I see today is just a rehash of well-known facts back then.
> Connecting people to other people, to life changing art, places and things that they end up loving and wouldn’t know about otherwise?
Does your opinion change if you understand that none of that is remotely real or actually exists?
You have an app that is designed to feed you Potemkin villages, and here you are praising their real estate value.
> That has to be one of the best uses for technology. I’d like to see more of it.
That's like praising psychosis for being one of the best mental illnesses, and concluding that you'd like to see more of it.
> Jesus, this is like a line out of a William Gibson novel. I hope you wrote that aware of the irony inherent in it.
There's a spectrum between Vaudeville and sharing family recipes. YouTube's MrBeast is on one end of that spectrum.
This is the kind of stuff that happens on TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXhx-yECOc
This is what was meant.
> This is the kind of stuff that happens on TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXhx-yECOc
still confused. Is this supposed to be an example of “bad” or “good” content?
Because I can’t (perhaps due to lack of empathy.. idk) imagine why anyone would want to waste their time watching stuff like that.
It's pretty creative and funny stuff, imo. If you consider that to be "good" or "bad" that's up to you I guess.
The way people choose to spend their lives is largely up to them, I'm not sure it's good to be labeling things as a "waste of time" when they're deriving something from it that you simply do not understand. Particularly when they do it in a way that is pretty harmless.
I don't know if you have pets, but if you spend time observing them you'll see most of what they do is simply letting time pass and for them, that's enough. Believe it or not, for many people the same is the case. Finding meaning in the acts we do is a personal endeavour so I think rather than telling people they're wasting their time instead try to understand what they're seeing in such things that you don't see.
I think a lot of people find creative acts very rewarding, there's an element of surprise that comes from it. The unexpected can be enjoyable. I think one of the reasons why the TikTok algorithm is so powerful is that it really succeeds in giving people the feeling of constant surprise.
Personally, I've found really inspiring art on Tiktok, as well as new music and also a lot of simple but engaging content in german (which I'm trying to learn).
> This is what was meant.
I think you inadvertently made an entirely different point: it's all fake, but you just swallow some content acritically believing it's something personal that speaks to you.
In the end, you're just complaining that some sirens are fake but others really do love you.
'authenticity' in the sense of content made by normal people without any strong goals other than 'some other people might like that' (and for some, maybe eventually getting some income from monetization) rather than highly produced content with the goal of reaching the largest possible audience and extracting the largest possible amount of money from that, which is what reels feels like. if you want to see that type of 'more authentic' content, tiktok's approach to populating your feed will be much more responsive to that than instagram's. there also seem to be a lot more people creating content on tiktok aimed at that level.
I had cultivated a FYP that felt authentic to me, especially relative to everything else on the internet, but after a while it looked just as phony to my eyes, without any real change in the content itself. Just a different brand of phony.
Just did a test, opened up TikTok
1) a guy telling me in my native language (not english) how to spot phishing scams 2) another guy doing a short video about how much you need to invest to retire in my native language 3) Donald's AG not answering simple questions directly 4) video about 2CV ice racing where people leisurely drive old Citroens 5) A skit by an Australian dude who has a wall full of Milwaukee tools
Instagram Reels
1) A couple doing a very much scripted skit 2) A stolen clip from an old 90s sitcom 3) one-liner joke 4) A dude farting 5) A homophobic "joke" video
Youtube Shorts
1) pro skier made up to look old doing tricks on the slope 2) A couple I don't know showing what they looked like in 1988 3) A skit by a couple 4) One of those weird youtube-only dating channels reposting a clip of their stuff 5) Americans not knowing how to drive on icy roads in 2022
The quality difference is so clear that it's not even funny. In my experience all of the good content in Reels is just reposted/stolen TikTok content. Shorts has the same or snippets of bigger YT videos.
FB Reels is so bad I don't even want to give them the engagement metrics.
Tiktok is serving you better things because
1) more people post there 2) you've used it much more and given them huge amounts of data on who you are and what your like to watch, when.
I can assure you those tiktok things are not the top of everyone's feed, sounds personalized. But your list for reels, and the other one sounds like the basic things they show to new people to try to figure out what they like, possibly somewhat curated by some past swipes.
Each of these are just algorithms. They get better the more you use them because your use = your data and personality and you've just used tiktok enough that they know _exactly_ what you like and who you are. Give it time, the others will come along if people use them
It's not the algorithm, it's the accounts and people in there.
I actually tried reels for a good while, but the content is just tits&ass (a major part of instagram), "funny" videos reposted so many times they're grainy from all the recompression and crap like that. Very very few people I would like to follow do actual original content on Instagram Reels.
Have you considered that Reels is so bad precisely because you don’t use it?
Mine:
A bit from the SF Chronicle on the LA fires. A comedy/info bit by Alex Falcone. An Ad. A wrestling technique (I’m into judo and BJJ). A card trick. Cooking techniques. An ad.
It’s ad-heavy and frankly I don’t try to spend a lot of time on it. But as somebody who uses it at least some, I get absolutely zero of the kind of garbage you suggest.
My wife hates it when I don't enjoy the TikTok videos she sends me, because it's very easy for me to tell how staged and fake they are. She, on the other hand, neither notices nor cares.
This would be concerning, if I didn't know that this way of thinking was incredibly common these days—instead, it's mildly terrifying.
Everyone knows movies are staged, and they expect this. No one in their right mind wants to go to a theater and pay $20 for some crap that someone shot on their phone with no script.
With the short videos, people expect them to be genuine, and not highly staged productions meant to entertain.
No, I watch these kind of videos expecting them to be fake. Why would I expect otherwise when I have every reason to expect them to be non-genuine? If people's expectations are not right, that is on them.
I think better comparison would be documentaries and reality tv.
Would you get angry because you thought it was real though? Because that’s what happens with these people.
They show you something and say something incredulous like, “I can’t believe something like this is legal. How is this allowed?”
Your choices are to point out it’s fake or play along in a stupid fantasy. The latter is disingenuous just to avoid conflict.
Hm. I’m a grown man and I post reels to all the platforms. I like the tech and enjoy trying to emulate a professional process with prosumer equipment and practices (filming, editing, color grading, sound design, etc.).
After about 30 or so reels this year, I’ve got about 70 followers - half of which are definitely bots, a third are family/friends, and the rest seem to be real people.
My feed has a lot of people like me, and people whose content I think is at the quality I’d like to be at (mostly photographers, videographers, small but full-time YouTubers).
Maybe you’re just finding what you’re looking for.
My TikTok feed is full of very much adults and who own small businesses. I’ve seen some people in college, but there’s no kids in my feeds.
You're both right! There was a good article/discussion on on this yesterday, but tldr: They are authentically fake! As in, the creators are not putting up a show with a 'real' person behind the persona, the algorithms have remade whatever person there use to be such that their 'authentic' self has become the persona.
Interpellation [0]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_(philosophy)
I don't know if I would characterize TikTok as 'authentic' first and foremost, but it's a platform where real people go to perform. When I scrolled TikTok, I would often get poorly-shot videos from average folks trying to put their spin on the day's joke format, or reacting to that day's outrage. It was junk food, but at least somewhat 'real'.
My Reels feed, on the other hand, is 100% bot drivel. It's all stolen viral videos by artificially-boosted accounts, and the comments appear to be fake comments that were 'paid for'. I assume there must be some sort of financial incentive to gaming the system this way.
The end result is that TikTok feels like scrolling through (attention-grabbing, reactionary) stuff by real people, and Reels feels like scrolling through some sort of bot wasteland.
I guess I should add that, due to its size, TikTok almost certainly also has a bot problem, but if it does it's not as clearly evident in a way that is detrimental to the platform.
I genuinely have no idea what Zuckerberg is responsible for at Facebook other than hijacking credentials (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433) and stealing/copying ideas
Anyone with half a brain ought to have come up with a better system than Reels is
I would use the word 'fresh' for TikTok; like old school YouTube, there's quirkiness and variety.
Strange. Until about a month ago, my IG feed was almost all independent and amateur musicians, interesting tech makers (NOT reviewers or “influencers”, and some alt comedy. Suddenly, in the past 4 weeks, my feed is all political propaganda from the far right, ads, and more ads.
I deleted Instagram because of the change. I’m done. Never used TikTok, it seemed totally fake to me.
You have to break it in, strangely enough. When I first used it it was like being logged out and watching Reels. But overtime it really understood what might interest me, even topics I didn't think I'd be interested in but was
Got any room over in your universe? I'm feeling pretty tired of this one.
Yeah… TikTok is absolutely chock full of garbage for me, whether or not I’m logged out.
YouTube Shorts are not bad now for this kind of thing. I’m guessing it’s based on my subscriptions so it’s already off to a good start for me.
If you spent 10 minutes on each platform, you'd immediately realize how tone-deaf and naive your comment is.
As someone who's been on TikTok for years now, it's extremely fake, the algorithm is a total ruse, as most of what trends is based on seeing news stories repeated hundreds of times, and most other content has the same repetitive music behind it... Far too much repetition and subtle seminaries in trending content, down to the way videos are color graded to be honestly real & organic... I've had a few videos go viral, but most things that do go viral are memes, the minute you want to push out anything remotely serious or related to business, they want money to let it pass the visibility gate.
I won't miss it if it does get banned. It's stressed so many people out for no good reason, and sucked up millions of hours of free labor from unrecognized & unpaid creators that deserve better.
That doesn't mean that any Meta product is good for content creators mind you.