[tomerico]

The most disruptive part of Tiktok is how it managed to dramatically reduce the "rich gets richer" effect of entertainment platforms. If you upload a video, TikTok will show it to other users even if it's your first. This allows them to assess it and progressively grow its audience. On YouTube and Instagram you'd have to rely on search traffic or external sources to build up your audience and get recommended (except for the new Reels / YouTube Shorts that are mimicking TikTok's UI).

I've done an experiment on the new year and created a video on a new account trying to catch people's attention (relevant to the new year, funny, with something unusual). I've done i on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. On TikTok it gained over half a million views, with 0 views on YouTube and Instagram.

Another way to frame this is around the Gini Coefficient of these platform. TikTok has a much lower inequality measure, which increases the incentives to produce content and hence the quality of content.

[drawkbox]

Youtube early days were similar to TikTok or any new platform, there are now just regular people doing creative things. As more and more videos are added, more businesses start to participate and more video depth/detail is added, then it gets harder to compete. It becomes less about just content value creation and more about content value extraction.

It is almost as if these platforms need a few different algorithm setups, the ones that are for more long term quality content, indie/business and just one that is raw where fresh content can be seen. They try this with "trending" type systems but due to market size they are usually heavily manipulated.

Right now featured platforms like TikTok are similar to like Twitter in that only the latest stuff matters. On Youtube it is more about quality, long term content for many creators. It is about right now but also you'll find amazing videos on history, art, gaming, development, markets, information and more. Youtube, Vimeo and others or sites that have been available for a while, are more about all types of creators so the real-time hype of new content isn't as successful for creatives, they start building more niche or long term bases that requires more work to produce. To compete the levels of production go up and up.

Shorter term real-time fresh platforms like TikTok are like the "new" algorithms on reddit/HN or the Twitter style freshness.

Longer term real-time fresh AND detailed deeper content videos are more like what you find on when looking for information on a search engine like Google or "popular" algorithms and more refined, more competitive and owned by larger players, but also more about information and answers.

[RGamma]

To be fair, the discoverability on Youtube is shit and has been for years now (another topic).

As much as I dislike TikTok for being idiotic, that's actually an aspect to sort of like about it.

Of course it's still algorithmic spoon-feeding, but it seems they're inching closer to saner discovery tools. One can hope...

[feralimal]

Serious question - if we are being recommended anything to watch, shouldn't we have some sort of idea of what the algorithm does?

I would love to see advocates for openness in algorithms, as we have advocates for open source software. We have no idea what filters are applied by tiktok, youtube, etc. If I knew what they were, would I agree with them?

Questions that arise for me, are:

* What are the value judgements behind the algorithmic recommendations?

* Is it ok for corporations to entrain their users with specific content, if that it is not based on a neutral algorithm?

* There is surely interest on the part of corporations to promote or constrain certain ideas, that do not suit them. These would play out in the political, economic, legal domains. If the algorithm does not let you know, this would be a lie by omission, and therefore immoral IMO.

Etc.

I don't think I have seen any discussion on this, albeit I think it is a hugely important issue.

[user00012-ab]

Are you sure this isn't more of the Medium model, where they can show you a bunch of new people all the time, but you'll never actually follow them or see them ever again (just another nebulous medium post)? So really the only person that profits in this model is the company hosting the content.

[fragmede]

That happens with TikTok, but it’s a result of the app’s UX. (It seems intentional, but that’s conjecture.) Following a user whose video you like is easy, but the app defaults to the “For You“ page, which presents videos as picked by an algorithm. That algorithm doesn’t just iterate over all the videos out of a user’s followed artists, leading to the effect on creators mentioned. I may never see an artist’s new content if it doesn’t surface via the For You page.

[fakedang]

Exactly. I think their algorithm explanation explicitly mentioned giving less weightage for follower counts and users following a particular creator. I'll not be surprised if the following feature is mostly for satisfying creator egos (thus helping to keep them on the platform) and not for the algorithm itself.

One excellent feature of the algorithm is how it ties user feedback to the type of content shown and not to the creator of the content, thus giving better recommendations.

[cma]

When I visit TikTok without logging in I see a side bar recommending Will Smith, Gordon Ramsey, Kevin Hart, Selena Gomez, and SnoopDogg.

They may surface other stuff better than other platforms, but they definitely have the same "rich gets richer" stuff in the default landing page too.

[jsemrau]

Well, I am probably not getting the argument that you are trying to make. When you need to surface content without any idea what the person might like then using aggregates of popular content for a given culture is a good low risk default

[vinger]

I think he was expecting popular content from unknown/non mainstream artists instead of popular content from popular artists that can be found anywhere.

[rrdharan]

This always sounded pretty unequal to me.. has it stopped?

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

[myroon5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a... does have less traditional celebrities compared to the lists for other social media platforms

[tp3]

I watch TikTok and watch their videos because my audience is just me. And because they are just me. I don't want to watch anyone else because I believe it's not worth watching them. But they are my audience. That's all I want. And they are my audience. And I feel like I should be making sure that they feel that way for me.

And they are making damn sure that it is worth watching.

When I think of this "I believe this thing is fucking worth watching" line I think of the way things used to be.

[justwalt]

GPT3?

[tp3]

Do you mean the model? What about it?

[psyc]

I think they mean the text of your comment. I’m unable to parse it.

[mtgx]

This is an issue I've always hated about Steemit.com, too.

There were a few writing mediocre at best content making up to $1,500 a day/post at some point, just because they managed to gain a lot of followers initially, while everyone else had to deal with writing dozens of posts and making only a few dollars a month, if that.

Social platforms should take this "inequality" issue a lot more seriously. It's in their long-term benefit to have thousands, millions of people who "make it big" on their platform, not just a handful that make it "really big."