I don't understand the hate for TikTok I frequently see on HN. Is it just ordinary ageism/curmudgeonliness?
I'm not in its core audience myself, but it seems to me to be a very smartly put together app, both in its core features (practically the only video remixing/editing app for mobile that retains tolerable levels of both accessibility and expressiveness) and in its platform (particularly the recommendation engine which seems to drive pretty solid engagement).
It's cognitive dissonance. America is supposed to be the good guys, but on American social media everyone is toxic and hates each other and it's all full of political and corporate AstroTurfing; China is supposed to be the bad guys, but on TikTok everyone's happy and enjoying themselves and the content is organic and largely apolitical.
The easiest way to get rid of the cognitive dissonance is not to fix US social media, but to get rid of TikTok.
That's because TikTok does pretty heavy 'auditing' - the content is NOT organic at all. Only the good-looking people and the happy videos go to the top. The others go to the bottom or are 'disappeared'
Or it could be that we just don’t like apps that exist to Hoover up personal information and/or be state sponsored spying endpoints, no matter who makes them.
Correct answer, downvoted of course since this is HN. I personally don’t care about privacy too much, but the way TikTok operates and its ties with the Chinese government is more than a little concerning. The videos are fun, too bad about the content.
TikTok is notorious for siphoning as much private data as it can without being clear about that with the user. Apart from that the concept of TikTok has already been done in the past and it seems to me they didn't fail for technological or business reasons, but because they didn't have the money to fight against bigger players
I'm not in its core audience myself, but it seems to me to be a very smartly put together app, both in its core features (practically the only video remixing/editing app for mobile that retains tolerable levels of both accessibility and expressiveness) and in its platform (particularly the recommendation engine which seems to drive pretty solid engagement).