I Trained My TikTok

https://metastable.org/2022/05/how-I-trained-my-tiktok.html

by pbw • 4 years ago

156 149 4 years ago

eckza3• 4 years ago

powering human-to-human interaction at a scale and speed we’ve never seen before

Clearly, this is working very well, and more of this is the solution to all of the problems that we're facing as a result of hooking four or five of every single person on the planet's belongings to the internet and connecting them all together.

blahedo• 4 years ago

Yes! I've been saying versions of this for a while to people who dismiss Tiktok as just teenager dance and prank videos:

If a video seemed repetitive or shallow or snacky in any way, I skipped it, and I tried hard to do this within the first few seconds..... if a video seemed nourishing or worthwhile, but was a bit slow-paced or challenging, I stuck with it... Quickly my For You page was transformed. I saw long thoughtful videos...

I haven't seen teenagers dancing or prank videos for months, and while it's far from perfect (in particular, they have some moderation problems), I learn a lot from the videos I watch and get a lot of value from it.

pbw12• 4 years ago

OP here. That's great to hear. Yeah it's kind of interesting when people complain "TikTok only has teen girls dancing" or some similar niche, without them realizing they are basically revealing what they tend to watch. Although one flaw I think I'm hearing, with other social networks as well, is people see shock-content and cannot look away, and then they get more of that. Which seems like a flaw. Also, I find it's a skill game to very quickly detect a video is not worthwhile and skip it; it's often not easy, people work really really hard to grab your attention.

ffhhj2• 4 years ago

I find it's a skill game to very quickly detect a video is not worthwhile and skip it

Is there a name for this behavior in which a company decides how their system should work to make it easier for the user, but actually makes usage harder, and the company stands with its arms crossed for years never understanding what the user really needs, like in this case a simple "don't show me more/I want more" buttons and a little history list to up/down vote? Usage blindness? Distortion field?

lilyball2• 4 years ago

You don't need to detect it quickly. TikTok lets you explicitly say "Not Interested" on a video, which is really handy if you end up watching too much of it while trying to figure out what the video is about.

wruza2• 4 years ago

what they tend to watch

Human interests are versatile, but that’s what you look at first time opening it. I think youtube does the same – my decade old feed is nothing like rage/news/pop/teens – but most of us have no patience to train it.

Ideally I’d prefer switching between “moods” on the frontpage, where predefined options would be like “I feel like astronomy”, “I feel like laughing” or “I feel like watching teen girls dancing”. All in good time. The problem is the stupid algos think that I’m an invariable blockhead 24/7, because some ai counter says so.

radu_floricica3• 4 years ago

I miss dancing videos. I make a point of liking any slutty girl I see just to keep the dopamine hits up.

But yeah, to get there it takes discipline and deliberate action. Any action (full view, like, share, favorite) is now a mix of "is it worth having this in my feed", "does the creator deserves a like", "do I enjoy this enough to like" and yeah, a good measure of keeping the fun in the mix.

g42gregory4• 4 years ago

It took me a while to train my TikTok as well. No celebrities, no entertainment of any kind. Eventually, it has become a very valuable tool that I use once a couple of days. I am amazed that TikTok algorithms let me actually do it.

Very big difference from Amazon videos and YouTube, where I feel that they are trying to shove the content, they want me to see, down my throat. This is one of the main reasons I completely cancelled Netflix.

I ended up buying $600 worth of long-form products from the TikTok content providers that I watch, without any advertising from them. I am guessing that letting customers watch what they want works out as a business model.

I suspect that my experience is not the norm, though.

pbw12• 4 years ago

OP here. My guess is the vast majority of TikTok users don't realize how much control they have over its contents, and thus they end up watching mostly attention-grabbing fluff. I think even they will stumble on good meaningful stuff, but it won't be that often. But yes, I've find with effort it's a great resource. The best one for short-form videos that I know of.

g42gregory4• 4 years ago

I agree. I found that the process of training TikTok requires self-disciple and self-control and it was not easy in the beginning. I just marvel that the TikTok actually responded to this, unlike other solutions that basically don't care about your feedback. I wonder why that is? I feel that there is a huge manual override in the Google/Netflix/Amazon algorithms. In TikTok, I feel like I am having a relationship with Artificial Intelligence. It feels dangerous. If you lose control, it will eat you up alive and waste tremendous amount of your time. But if you can control it, it will deliver value.

closedloop129• 4 years ago

How do you break into the good content? Where do you get the first seeds? I can't ad weight to interesting videos if no interesting video is suggested.

wruza2• 4 years ago

Eventually, it has become a very valuable tool that I use once a couple of days

A tool or a toy? I don’t have tiktok and am suspicious whether folks itt mistake a good algorithm for a good content, or is it really helpful to your interests. I mean, if youtube or twitter had it, would you still stick to tiktok? What does it deliver apart from fragmented “shorts” erudition?

g42gregory4• 4 years ago

I ended up using it for getting motivational thought leaders, such as David Goggins, Joe Rogan interviews, Dr Jordan Peterson, Brad Lee, and the like. It turns out that 15-30 sec format is just enough to deliver a point across. There is the whole army of people slicing long YouTube videos into 15-30 sec bites. They generate more content that anyone could imagine. Periodically, I would go to the long-form on YouTube or pay to access the lectures. But after the TikTok, I know exactly where to go and whether it’s worth to pay for access.

bryans2• 4 years ago

Does this mean someday humans will stop creating, that we’ll let the machines take over? I don’t think so, I think TikTok shows us humans crave to create as much as consume.

I think this boils down to a desire for connection, rather than creation, and is part of a decade-long consumer shift toward seeking individual relationships and bucking corporate brands. TikTok, Twitch and YouTube are the primary channels for this, and it's on display 24/7. There are millions of people throwing mountains of money at individuals, not just for sharing their thoughts or talents, but by creating a genuine connection and community around that content. And that's the reason humans won't stop creating content no matter how great AI gets -- because it was never really about the content to begin with.

However, AI will assuredly become the dominant form of entertainment at some point, as the predictive capabilities alone would allow for flawless content suggestion for any given situation. And that's before the inevitability of generating content indistinguishable from anything Hollywood or Nashville can produce, including online personalities that mimic human behavior well enough to create the same "genuine" connections I mentioned in the first paragraph.

kovek• 4 years ago

Imagine if an AI could simulate(/emulate?) a person. What if it could simulate(/emulate?) a community.

Some people are almost becoming friends with AI already

bryans2• 4 years ago

With current technology, I think it would actually be somewhat simple to create an ASMR channel, for example, with generated content that only shows realistic hands manipulating objects, accompanied by a bot that variably responds to comments in a method which conveys gratitude, and invites everyone to a Discord where the bot also maintains sporadic and jovial communication. Instant community, and none would be the wiser.

qaid• 4 years ago

I am in the minority here but I also love TikTok for the same reason. I trained it to deliver content that aligns with my interests. In order to do this, I had to consciously use it, being aware of (how I think) the algorithm works.

I’d even force myself to watch videos I didn’t like if the subject was highly interesting me and I wasn’t getting enough of that type of content. Using TikTok in this way frequently inspires me to be better

The type of content I receive with this account is extremely different than another that I use when I’m on “autopilot.”

thinkingemote• 4 years ago

But you didnt train it. It trained itself to you.

Its not yours its theirs. it might sound like just a way of speech or semantics but its a fundamental difference.

That users think the application is their own creation is an intentional effect from the developers.

It's like Apple in a way. A brand is not just a thing, it's part of your identity. Tiktok becomes a (e.g. small, frivolous) part of your very self.

radu_floricica3• 4 years ago

If course it's a fundamental difference. It's just irrelevant for most purposes.

teej• 4 years ago

TikTok is the only social platform where you can reliably train the algorithm and it sticks.

On Twitter, no amount of curation, mutes, or blocks will save you from screenshots of content you don’t want to see.

On Reddit, you rely entirely up to the mods of a subreddit. Once a subreddit gets too popular, the submission rate overwhelms volunteer resources.

Facebook is just garbage.

pbw12• 4 years ago

I agree TikTok is doing something different from the other guys. The amazing thing is that it's been out for 5 years and no one has copied what it does. Although I'd guess the algorithm has gotten a lot better over time as well, so it might be a moving target for the others.

throwaway2906• 4 years ago

I don't know if anyone in this thread uses YouTube, but its algorithm is insanely quick to adapt and videos you see on home page and in recommendations entirely depend on what you have watched before. Watch a video, see your home page change; watch a ton and it will reflect your preferences. (It also makes an attempt to list the topics it thinks you prefer and offers additional separate home page for each, as well as one for videos not matching any topic but still possibly of interest to you.)

Everything about TikTok's algorithmic malleability can be said about YouTube, so I am confused as to why this is news to anyone.

One difference is that YT also has longer videos. Unlike fixed-length blurbs of TT, this increases the challenge for recommendation algorithms, but I welcome this heterogeneity.

Jensson6• 4 years ago

That isn't true. For example, I taught YouTube to not show me animal videos, and now it basically never suggests them to me Like once a month one of them pops up and I just block it and then things are fine again.

wohfab• 4 years ago

I'd only wish, blocking and muting would be as easy as it is with twitter. Seeing crap live streams on your For You Page and having to find your way onto their profile page and it's like 8 clicks before you are back on your FYP.

thih9• 4 years ago

Long press a live stream and click that you don’t want to see this content?

Also, perhaps visiting a streamer’s profile, as a form of interacting with content, is training the algorithm to give you more live streams like this.

paraknight• 4 years ago

If you long-press on a video, you can immediately press "don't show me content like this". This sped up my "training" significantly.

esperent2• 4 years ago

YouTube is also untrainable. I spent quite a while with "not interested" and "don't recommend this channel" and it worked pretty badly but kind of worked.

Then suddenly a few weeks ago it totally stopped working. I'd click "don't recommend this channel" then refresh and the channel would be right there.

I researched and the recommendation to fix this is to clear your watch history. So I did that, and it cleared all my recommendation building entirely. "don't recommend this channel" works again but I'm starting from scratch and no doubt it'll stop working in the future again.

_Algernon_2• 4 years ago

Id be happy if youtube just stopped filling my entire home page with videos I've already watched.

drbernardi• 4 years ago

I found the opposite to work better. I don't care about sport at all, so I deleted all my previous likes and just liked a few dozen sport videos. With watch history disabled (to avoid gathering further data), I'm actually see mostly sport content now, which I can safely ignore.

scrollaway• 4 years ago

Youtube is very trainable. You have to curate your watch history more than click "don't recommend", though.

If your recommendations are currently absolute trash it might even be best to clear your watch history altogether and start from scratch.

But FWIW... it's absolutely worth it. The YouTube recommendation algorithm, when trained, works REALLY well and is a gold mine of useful content.

idk12• 4 years ago

I've never so succinctly seen the social media platforms described. If I was to add Instagram, it offers up an infinite feed of perfect unattainable things you don't have in your life.

So true about Twitter - I cannot for the life of me let it know I don't like sports.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

Have you recently tried from a fresh account? I have and it's very eye opening. These platforms are all very close on parity with suggestive content. TikTok just makes it easier to constantly consume by manipulating your emotions with uplifting content one swipe & shocking content another swipe giving you hits of dopamine and adrenaline around your topics you engage with. The other platforms do the same thing, just has a less intuitive UX and why every platform has shifted to short video, because our attention spans have shortened over the years.

healthysurf• 4 years ago

I built a plugin, mostly for reddit, but has the beginnings for use on twitter too. http://healthy.surf

Right now it just removes toxic crap from the sidebar, but it'd be pretty simple to make it remove tweets as well. Biggest missing feature is custom filter lists.

eric4smith2• 4 years ago

TikTok is a cancer on the universe. (In terms of converting its users into the version of the people on Wall-E). -- Go ahead Google "Wall-E people".

I thought Instagram was bad.

Trained or not, there is nothing good about scrolling through stuff for every moment when you're bored.

Boredom is nature's way of making the universe go forward. And it's best when its channeled into creative, industrious or thoughtful pursuits. Instead we have channeled Boredom into watching barely clad teens dance, or women complain about dating misadventures.

And the paradoxical thing about it. Is that the creators vs viewers ratio is still 99% viewers to 1% creator. Creators are the ones that have channeled their boredom (however misplaced) into something that others watch.

But then all of this is human nature anyway. And perhaps I'm railing about nothing. Flame away!

pbw12• 4 years ago

Trained or not, there is nothing good about scrolling through stuff for every moment when you're bored.

OP here. TikTok doesn't mandate you use it every moment you are bored, that's a choice made by the user. However I agree it is very potent entertainment technology, and I have read about people using it 8 hours a day, and hating what it's doing to them. I have not read the book, but it brings to mind Infinite Jest, a film "so entertaining that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die." The premise of my post is it can be used for good instead of evil, but it does require discipline.

eckza3• 4 years ago

Dissenter in the thread here; rather than read Infinite Jest (which I've also not read, purely out of disinterest in doing so), I would kindly suggest that you read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, the premise of which is that the premise of your post is flawed.

And I really mean it; if you're the sort that has an interest in figuring out how things work, which is clearly the case here - you will find it effortless and fascinating reading.

mhh__2• 4 years ago

TikTok does have some interesting culture to it, there's an immediacy not really found elsewhere in the modern internet.

but I also think its possibly the lowest of the low when it comes to the dominant prevailing culture. Even ignoring that awful synthesized voice.

That being said I'm not sure whether this is just an insight into what I'm now going to literally call the "unwashed masses".

I spend most of my time on the internet in niche communities full of smart people, even shitposters have an intellect to them, most normal people do not, hence awful TikTok spam.

corobo• 4 years ago

“Unwashed masses” is usually a downward punch on poor people, isn’t it?

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

Absolutely. After the WSJ article a year or two ago, I gave it shot. Tried to tune the algorithm by selecting super cars related clips. What I got was a first burst of insanely fucked up content from rage including to glibly funny, you know stuff that you find on the bottom rungs of Reddit’s r/WTF pages. Then it got decent at showing car clips but with an occasional vomit inducing pimple popping or some girls dancing in bikinis.

I absolutely could not stand it. Not for intellectual content. Not for entertainment. I will never use it again and will recommend everyone to avoid this epic and monumental failure of human enterprise.

It makes me sad about the human species. This is what most people like to do.

antiterra4• 4 years ago

Commenting on this sort of Hacker News article doesn’t exactly rise to Leonardo Da Vinci level either.

TikTok is a triumph, especially in the light of the big social network outrage machines. Even at its worst it still can do things like introducing people to Chopin in a manner rarely seen since the Beethoven ‘Fur Elise’ McDonalds commercial in the 80s.

alex_sf• 4 years ago

This sums up my views exactly, and it's why I quit using TikTok when I realized the impact it was having. I appreciate the neat summation of the (imo) core issue.

antiterra4• 4 years ago

Consuming analytically is a part of creation.

Writing TikTok off as dancing or dating misadventure stories is exactly what the article shows isn’t necessarily correct.

There are TikToks on eigenvectors, Taylor series expansions, making butter blocks for traditional layered pastries, calculus, Kubernetes and how to exit vi.

There are all kinds of creators whose content is worthy of consumption on TikTok: musicians, visual artists, comedians and dancers.

There are book reviews, hints for authors, demonstrations of music theory, memorization tricks, Japanese pitch accent, notes on philology/philately/phillo dough.

It doesn’t have everything, and plenty of interesting topics that are just grist for simple comedy, but it can get better.

zaptrem• 4 years ago

Quickly my For You page was transformed. I saw long thoughtful videos on motivation, psychology, science, and philosophy. I listened to excerpts of lectures on Stoicism or Zen Buddhism, and speeches by enigmatic Indian meditation gurus. It figured out I was a software engineer and showed me many jokes or insights about work. At one point I was hunting for a job and TikTok started showing me interview tips. I witnessed drawings and paintings and animations by countless visual artists. I found myself zooming through trippy 3D fractals while listening to Alan Watts. Instead of watching videos with thousands or millions of views, I was seeing videos with a hundred views or even ten views. The algorithm seemed to be trusting me to deliver an early vote.

This is both inspiring and terrifying to me. We're working toward AI that can almost read your mind and show you videos that are extremely relevant and impactful with nothing more than watch time measurements.

If we gave that kind of power a goal like "make them better people/help them achieve more/find happiness" we could usher in a new golden age of achievement, fulfillment, and mental health.

Unfortunately, right now we've only figured out how to give this power a single goal, "increase watch time/engagement," and I don't want to be turned into a zombie optimized for ad consumption.

MarcelOlsz3• 4 years ago

There are TikToks on eigenvectors, Taylor series expansions, making butter blocks for traditional layered pastries, calculus, Kubernetes and how to exit vi.

So? It's still limited by the ADD format of TikTok and you'll forget about it 3 seconds later. It's garbage.

mdoms• 4 years ago

Boredom is nature's way of making the universe go forward

I generally agree with your comment but no, this is a ridiculous piece of scientism.

leach• 4 years ago

I agree, there is rarely any good content on there and it mostly just creates echo chambers. No actual value is really extracted from using Tik tok.

not to mention when people use it around me its just so annoying to listen to in the background. the stupid synthesized voice or loud dumb music just one after another is annoying to say the least.

antegamisou• 4 years ago

I thought Instagram was bad.

Back in the early 2010s it mainly consisted of hip - actually cool photography feeds.

I don’t recall TikTok not being a cesspool since its early days of operation.

amatecha2• 4 years ago

Instagram was initially super awesome. You could look up some totally obscure hashtag about, say, #68040 and find a ton of photos relating to 68040-based computers. Every image with the hashtag was actually directly related. Maybe you still "can" look up such hashtags, but the platform became so overrun with what I would call "noise" (and then got bought by Facebook), so I haven't logged in in years and refuse to now... What I mean by "noise" is, I'd search some seemingly-specific topic only to find that it has of course been appropriated by some pop culture thing that is completely irrelevant to the previously-unique term. I really just want to see stuff related to my totally niche interests, and it started to become impossible to actually do that. Also, any actual on-topic posts became fewer and fewer, I suppose as people like me realized it wasn't the platform for them.

xnx• 4 years ago

My experience is wholly different. The content I see if funny, creative, unique, genuine, wholesome, and supportive. I feel much better about the next generation after seeing some of what they've made on Tiktok. It feels like time for the current geriatric generation (see the average age of US senators) to stop clinging so embarrassingly to power and wealth and make way for what's next.

jazzyjackson2• 4 years ago

And the paradoxical thing about it. Is that the creators vs viewers ratio is still 99% viewers to 1% creator

I don't know if there's a paradox here, TikTok has hundreds of millions of users and therefore (1%) millions of creators making content people enjoy.

TranquilMarmot5• 4 years ago

Your comment assumes there is nothing creative, industrious, or thoughtful on TikTok. The fact that you think it's just dancing teens and "women complaining" (yikes dude) shows that you've never given it a chance. As the article suggests, you _can_ "train" it to give you the content that you want, and it can be more fulfilling.

I'm not saying that it doesn't have issues, and it does feel like it's trying REALLY hard to keep me hooked in some pretty morally ambiguous ways, but it's not as toxic as the media would like you to believe.

I assume you also don't go on Twitter or watch TV or movies when you're bored since then you're not "pursuing" anything. People are allowed to just chill and turn their brain off for a bit.

mikebenfield• 4 years ago

There is indeed a lot of good content on TikTok. And it's eerily good at showing me things I'm interested in, in a way other social media sites utterly fail at.

But (not having deliberately tried to "train" TikTok), it also shows me plenty of content I find depressing or juvenile. And I am firmly convinced that the experience of continuous scrolling through very short videos damages my brain and attention span much more than watching a traditional TV show or movie.

Feriti• 4 years ago

I had to uninstall it because this particular format made me quite addicted very fast.

And it might contain creative things but enough is very repetitive.

BiteCode_dev• 4 years ago

First, I don't want to train a commercial product so that it can make money with me. How crazy is that?

Secondly, I've been told it takes 20 minutes of browsing and it would train automagically. Well after 30 minutes that I regret spending, it was still showing me the most terrible content humanity has ever produced and my eye were bleeding.

I uninstalled the app and won't touch it again. It feels like being a teen forcing oneself to start smoking cigarets.

rockbruno• 4 years ago

As usual, people love giving opinions about things and products they've never used. It took me maybe 2 minutes of browsing TikTok for the first time for it to stop showing me dancing teens in favor of things I actually wanted to see. The people who complain about this being the only content either never used the app or actually secretly engage with this content.

eric4smith2• 4 years ago

(yikes dude)

Bruh, get real. TikTok is filled with women complaining about dating. Why not just admit what is staring you in the face? There is an entire segment of the universe that just responds to those videos.

And there is plenty on TikTok that is good.

But even if you can "train" it, the problem is that it's scientifically engineered to keep your scrolling. I think that part you missed.

Watch Wall-E where everyone sits in special "TikTok" chairs, have food delivered to them and the screen continually scrolls. That movie was before its time man.

Watch here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw7WAq_GZY8]

Unfortunately, you will not get the message until you have to go out with friends that are tuned out to you because they're constantly scrolling TikTok on their phones.

(And yes, I have installed TikTok for weeks and months at a time and always ended up deleting it and washing down my phone. Even after "Training" it.)

KVFinn• 4 years ago

I thought Instagram was bad. Instead we have channeled Boredom into watching barely clad teens dance, or women complain about dating misadventures.

If this is what you see on your TikTok, it's because those are the videos you lingered on the longest. Pro-Tip: Never 'hate watch' on TikTok.

Jensson6• 4 years ago

But that is a huge problem with the service. On YouTube I can search for whatever topic or video I want and find high quality videos on interesting topics instantly, so no need to train any algorithm to get good content. There is no hook in TikTok unless you actually like the default feed, since there is no good way to find anything else without first wading through all those default videos.

Edit: Not sure why I was downvoted, but I really can't get into TikTok. I went there, the default feed was 100% uninteresting, I wont wade through that for a week looking for videos that might be there. I searched for some topics, for example "Warhammer", it is a very popular topic and it would be interesting to find more of that, but the search didn't turn up a single video about it. So I don't really see what I am supposed to do then, I am sure they have at least some warhammer videos but if it takes hours or days or weeks of work to find them then I don't see why I should bother with TikTok at all.

blackoil• 4 years ago

This is a lazy analysis. I don't use it (banned in my country), but from a little interaction I had, it is only social media that doesn't felt on rage inducing for engagement. This comment and lot of other other are example of that, we don't do introspection, deep analysis of rational discussion just rage induced comments.

ssnistfajen• 4 years ago

For some Gen Xers and Millennials it seems raging against TikTok is their generation's moral panic.

TikTok does not have anything fundamentally different than other forms of social media. But sure, please keep ranting about how anything you dislike is somehow literally cancer.

dpcan• 4 years ago

You are correct.

I think the saddest thing is how addicted people have become to it. Instagram too.

Just read through the comments on this post, so many people defending it even though the content is just user-generated hot takes with catchy quotes and people saying things they want to hear and want to agree with.

It’s poison.

Be careful. If all you get is what you want to hear, you aren’t training TikTok, TikTok is training you!

And you keep coming back to the feeding tube for more.

vmception• 4 years ago

The duets are marvelous and the dual livestream battles are genius

If they were their own apps you would appreciate it

croes• 4 years ago

still 99% viewers to 1% creator. This wouldn't change without TikTok.

Most bored people do nothing creative. And the creative ones get inspiration by things like TikTok.

Barrin92• 4 years ago

I think this idea that creative or thoughtful people don't 'waste time' on tiktok is more of a performative status thing than anything else. I've worked with plenty of incredibly smart scientists who read the very worst pulp fiction, watch youtube for hours or do other 'low status' stuff.

On the other hand there's an entire class of dopamine fasting, knowledge graph generating busybodies who have not output one meaningful thing in their entire career. If anything I feel like this kind of behavior and scoffing at mass entertainment is inversely correlated with having built anything at all.

That aside I found the crew of a cargo container ship vlogging on TikTok who were shipping stuff around central Asia and following them was by far one of the most interesting things I've seen on social media.

Jensson6• 4 years ago

I don't think people saying that Tiktok is mostly garbage are doing that to signal, at least not here on HN. I waste a ton of time watching random videos on youtube, because there I can search for all kinds of niche topics and finds plenty of videos about them even from very small creators. On tiktok however I can't even search for mainstream nerd topics that gets many millions of views on youtube, not even a single video shows up since it seems they don't let you search for content, so to me it isn't that I feel I am above Tiktok content, it is just that it doesn't show me anything I want to see and it doesn't offer me any way of finding it.

nicbou• 4 years ago

We can all enjoy a bit of downtime, the same we we can all enjoy a snack.

I’m just wary of entertainment that’s engineered to be addictive. Simple, bite-sized, all sugar and salt, served in a bottomless bag.

I don’t bring certain snacks into my house because I can’t trust myself to snack responsibly. TikTok is the same, but with the flavour expertly tailored to my weaknesses.

radu_floricica3• 4 years ago

That's a cheap shot and you know it. All you said can be equally applied to books.

I truly bemoan the HN algorithm that made you do this for karma.

clippablematt• 4 years ago

I urge you to go flick through http://pessimistsarchive.org/

brainzap• 4 years ago

dopamine

amelius• 4 years ago

TikTok is a cancer on the universe.

For the most part, yes. Though I find it pretty useful while brushing my teeth. You don't need any audio. And my brush time has gone up a bit since I started this viewing habit.

elvis10ten• 4 years ago

TikTok is just way too “thirsty” — they try too hard to get me hooked which is a massive turnoff.

I have the app. I only open it to upload videos. Then I ignore it and its notifications.

Instagram works well for me. I have “trained” it to recommend fitness, football, & comedy. I go to search, watch what’s on the first page without scrolling, and then I’m out.

TranquilMarmot5• 4 years ago

Sometimes I feel like it knows which videos I'll like and don't like and it will purposefully show me 10 videos that are "meh" that I skip through quickly and then 1 or 2 videos that are spot-on (funny, intellectual, etc.) which makes it feel a LOT like a Skinner Box. Keep pulling the lever until you get something good, and all the bad stuff in between makes the good stuff seem that much better.

pbw12• 4 years ago

People think you get dopamine hits when you find cool stimulating things. You actually get a steady drip while seeking, it’s what keeps you transfixed looking for the next thing. And as this shows a variable reward gives you a stronger drip:

https://liveinnovation.org/dopamine-more-than-pleasure-the-s...

I figure a big challenge for TT is they must send you less good stuff to rate it. They probably hold off doing that until you appear hooked. You wouldn’t want a new user to get a bizarre/lame video with 5 views.

mrfusion• 4 years ago

How do the like and follow actions affect the algorithm? From a training perspective when is it good to do?

pbw12• 4 years ago

I don't know how it all works. However one thing I will sometimes do is like a video but not watch it to the end. What I'm thinking in that case is this is good content, but not something I really want to watch. Like a musician that I want to encourage, but just don't feel like watching to the end. I suspect TikTok "understands" that situation.

I'm tend to not follow. I'm not sure how that factors in, except obviously it populates your Following page.

asadlionpk• 4 years ago

I wish the model could be downloadable, so I can just download this user's model/config, load it up in my TikTok, and experience their TikTok experience without having to retrain my own TikTok.

It would be fun to follow these 'models' instead of the actual Algorithm, so I can easily view the world through this individual (or businesses ;) ) "lens".

noman-land• 4 years ago

This is a neat idea. It's almost like following someone's brain.

nicksiscoe• 4 years ago

Random thought dump here.. it’s kind of crazy how we all discuss the implications of the internet and social media on society and culture whilst all seeing dramatically different “versions” of the internet

The TikTok/Twitter/Instagram that I know is totally different than the version you’re familiar with. Dropping into your feeds would give me a totally different impression of what those platforms are

Basically, the way everyone mentally models and perceives these platforms is unique. YouTube in my brain is literally a different application than the YouTube in your brain

We’re probably really underestimating the impact of these differences on the way we view the world around us

ffhhj2• 4 years ago

That's a feature I'm developing for my next generation search engine, a way to switch between recommendation bubbles.

neither_color• 4 years ago

Quickly my For You page was transformed. I saw long thoughtful videos on motivation, psychology, science, and philosophy. I listened to excerpts of lectures on Stoicism or Zen Buddhism, and speeches by enigmatic Indian meditation gurus. It figured out I was a software engineer and showed me many jokes or insights about work. At one point I was hunting for a job and TikTok started showing me interview tips. I witnessed drawings and paintings and animations by countless visual artists. I found myself zooming through trippy 3D fractals while listening to Alan Watts.

I appreciate the screenshots because they show a side of TikTok I wasn't aware of.

I've still up to this point managed to avoid ever installing or browsing TikTok. The few tiktoks I've seen were clips forwarded to me. I'm sure, like Twitter, it's full of awful content by default that you can learn to filter and fine tune until it feeds you good content, but that's exactly why I'm avoiding it. I never even had a twitter account until 2020(that I started following out of covid lockdown boredom) and 3 months later I was becoming really heated politically and felt like America was collapsing. Reading about a new social network is like reading about a new flavor of crack. I'm sure it feels nice but No Thanks!

guerrilla• 4 years ago

I tried training it in a very specific way too. I only liked and finished watching videos that made me smile or laugh. I was perfectly disciplined with this but in the end, it only kind of worked. I gave it about a week or so. Maybe it takes longer? Or maybe it can't figure out what I like and can only do themes/topics?

pbw12• 4 years ago

OP here. Once trained I still get videos I don’t want. So the mix is much better, but you are never totally done training.

Videos that make you smile or laugh might be a hard criteria for it to learn. Compared to specific interests like “wood working” or “astronomy”.

winternett• 4 years ago

We try to act like the algorithms are these flawless implementations of intelligence, but they're often not.

Most social apps right now are run like bad casinos, where people get exploited often for money and time... They prey on users in stealth from many angles, and now they even hand select who wins and who doesn't.

Ask yourself why these companies need so many employees (psychology experts, PR teams, Lobbyists, Lawyers, Moderators, Product Owners, Developers, Financial Experts, etc) if the algorithm is the key factor at play...

The algos are made with non transparent bias that we simply can't see, and that bias and disposition can be changed at any time to cover it's tracks... Bias which is often toxic and geared towards company profit over doing what's right. We only understand how damaging that bias is when it becomes a trend of kids destroying school bathrooms or when we find out people who projected an image of fame and wealth were actually completely faking the persona and unfortunately harming themselves as a result.

I often rant about social media because it's really a system of rewards for bad behavior where only the platform ends up profiting most... It can also destroy respect and disregard cultures and encourage danger and self harm for others.

The reason why most are complacent is because everyone is having a different experience on it... If you're suicidal, the algorithm floods you with dark content that makes you into a profitable news worthy story. If you're an "influencer", the algorithm floods you with tips to keep you working hard within the platform and encourages you to buy "essential" gear to boost your career (that pays VERY LITTLE in comparison to the time and money you spend on the influencer pursuit).

In my opinion as a developer, most of the major app (TikTok, Instagram, FB, etc...) social algos are not designed any more with the intent of making sure you're entertained online, and they're bent on maximizing engagement and ad revenue for these companies at any cost...

Understanding that first is the way to stay sane when using any of these apps/sites. Other than that I do enjoy doom scrolling through memes when I'm bored, it's kind of like a video game you don't have to really invest much into.

jollybean2• 4 years ago

Say what you will but TT deserves acclaim for making something that's engaging not based on political toxicity.

Twitter is constantly trying to trigger me with some 'bait' statement by someone on the side of an issue.

Our entire media/political class seems to want to make statements that 'pop' which is basically 'taking a strong stand' on something.

'Base TikTok' - untrained and just the popular stuff is really trashy 'Island Boys' and 'Johnny Depp' - but 'trained' TT is reasonable.

There's a lot of very interest creators out there.

pbw12• 4 years ago

I’m amazed how seldom I see political posts on TT. I’m not really sure why that is. My Twitter is highly political even though I try to follow very few political people.

Maybe the hurdle of making a video is just that much higher than typing in a few angry words?

jollybean2• 4 years ago

Algorithm doesn't favour it, and my bet is TT actively dissuades.

It's China, they don't like political agitation.

moron4hire2• 4 years ago

I used TikTok and posted videos on it for about three months last summer. I was mostly posting nature education stuff and replying to people's questions about math. I wasn't going gangbusters, but growth was positive and obvious. Certainly a lot faster than any other platform I've been on. Plus, the community is super interactive. Even as an upstart, I was getting replies from popular accounts to my replies to their posts.

You can say just about anything about the content on TikTok. There's vapid stuff. There's funny stuff. There's informative stuff. There's insightful stuff. It's all there and you can easily shape your feed to whatever you want.

But there's also a lot of really dark stuff. And by that I mean how TikTok themselves interact with people. I once got suspended for updating my profile to say I liked Star Trek. I'd randomly get content warnings and videos removed for "sexual" content for videos that didn't even contain any people. And I was only experiencing the tip of the iceberg. I saw several popular accounts get banned, often for "sexual content" or "harassment", of people who did nothing of the sort.

And of course, appeals for review were always useless.

There are a lot of hidden anti-features in TikTok, too. User accounts exist in different classes, based on follower count (undocumented, naturally). Certain features don't get unlocked until you hit a certain number of followers. I got high enough that I could post 3 minute videos, but I never got high enough that I was allowed to put a link to my website in my bio (that got me another suspension). New accounts get spread further, more often, to give you a dopamine boost of attention that you end up chasing with no insight into why your viewership is dwindling even though you're learning and posting better videos. Various hidden rate limits are in place that can trigger account suspensions if you do something like edit your bio too many times in a row (like, maybe cuz you're fixing a typo). There are shadow suspensions, too, where going over a certain quota of posts means your subsequent posts won't show up in anyone's feeds, which can happen easily if you're having fun with making reply chains.

And always. Always the complete lack of human review. It became really clear that the "report user" button is being abused to brigade people off of the app. As I said, I saw several popular accounts get banned for trumped up charges, with some extremely worrying patterns emerging regarding the race, sex, and sexual orientation of said accounts (and never any of their content, that I could ever tell).

TikTok is an amazing app and community. But TikTok is also an extremely terrible company. For that reason, I gave up on it, and I strongly discouraging getting started with it.

pbw12• 4 years ago

That’s really interesting. Thanks for all the details. I think every mega social media site has serious problems such as these that stem from the fact they don’t have enough humans in the loop. TikTok is so different though it has surely created its own new blend of problems.

I think the game they are playing is hoping new users and creators pour in faster than burned and burned out ones leave. Which is sad, but from an economic angle makes some sense.

In a way they are promising a service they can’t possibly deliver on. It would (presumably) be unaffordable to have top-notch moderation and customer service.

I think some day we might decide it’s not legal to run a site so big you cannot possibly police it.

account-5• 4 years ago

My take from just the comments in the thread, not the article, is that most people like social media or think there is some benefit in it for them.

I, like some others here, am in the minority. HN is my only social network and I consider this more a forum. I am not on any social network as my opinion about them is they are tools to spy on you and waste your time.

I am not disputing that there isn't some good stuff on these networks just that I'm not interested in being a product or wasting my time looking at trivial pish; I would also include training a social media AI system in this too.

All power to you if you find benefit in these networks but I'm yet to come across anything worth the effort on them.

News-Dog• 4 years ago

TikTok hashtag analysis toolset

The tool helps to download posts and videos from TikTok for a given set of hashtags over a period of time.

Users can create a growing database of posts for specific hashtags which can then be used for further hashtag analysis.

It uses the tiktok-scraper Node package to download the posts and videos.

tiktok-scraper : https://github.com/drawrowfly/tiktok-scraper

daptaq• 4 years ago

My constant fear with TikTok is not whether or not you can train it, but whether you will realize when it has managed to train you.

FrozenVoid• 4 years ago

Youtube can be "Trained" (with a blank profile/container) into TikTok type content by repeatedly watching first recommended video and skipping videos in 2-3 secs.

pbw12• 4 years ago

I visit my YouTube “home” screen on my TV and I like most of what’s on there. It finds good stuff.

Unlike TikTok’s one video at a time with YT I’m scanning through dozens of thumbnails for what to watch.

idk12• 4 years ago

I have somehow managed to train my TikTok into showing me comedy, some of the best sketchs/comedy I've seen in the past year or two have been on TikTok.

I feels to me a bit like watching stand-up in basements in the 90s. Loads and loads of raw comedic talent and a platform to them to do whatever they want quickly.

ausbah• 4 years ago

the first move is getting "good" content out of your social media feeds, the second is to limit how much you watch them all together

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

There's many people saying that other platforms cannot be trained or at least they don't notice it. Well, that's the point. For you to not notice.

You can see this firsthand by not following/subscribing/etc to anyone on these platforms and seeing the algorithm train and change as you slowly consume content.

At a certain point, you will even have your default feed settings changed as if you were following a modest amount of people.

Many platforms hide these feed settings by default so that you consume without realizing it. Some notable examples of this are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You won't even notice you're being manipulated until you check your settings again. Ever wonder why certain things like stories, shorts, or reels all of a sudden are being shown from people you don't care about? Well, now ya know.

The one thing I believe is "uplifting" about TikTok is that the power is being shifted to the individual creator rather than the big six media conglomerates. Instead of a couple hundred channels, there's thousands. But the problem with that is there is an infinite amount of content to be entertained with. America is already a big shopping mall with everyone holding out their credit cards. This makes more of these channels advertise even more shit we don't need in our lives with the impression that it's personal or everyday when the creator simply needs to survive and put food on the table too.

snowwrestler• 4 years ago

AI recommendation systems like TikTok can be great tools, if you have control over your own thinking.

Control over one’s thoughts—metacognition, or thinking about your thinking—is an essential tool for advancing your life. It’s a huge focus of the formal education system, why teachers insist on “showing your work” and not just writing the answer down by itself. Understanding science is not just knowing that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but understanding the system of thinking that led scientists to that conclusion.

It’s also a huge focus of therapy, getting patients to recognize their own patterns of thinking so that they can decide whether or not to change them. Even corporate “EQ” training starts with getting people to recognize when they are feeling strong emotions and then think about why.

Does TikTok by itself teach these skills? To me the answer seems obviously “no.” One can bring an analytical mind to TikTok, but does TikTok encourage analytical thinking? I don’t see how. It seems to me it is built to deliver an experience that is the exact opposite of analytical thinking.

And this is why we worry about the kids on TikTok. Metacognition is one of the later patterns of thought to develop, and therefore something most kids struggle with in general.

moron4hire2• 4 years ago

Remember when Google gave good results, you could find good stuff on Amazon, and Pandora played just the right music? I'd be interested to find out if TikTok's recommendation engine really is AI or if every other recommendation is corrupted by advertising money. I get the feeling that TikTok is still in growth stage, still acquiring users, and hasn't really turned the monetization funnel on yet. I suspect that the recommendations will get worse over time.

toss1• 4 years ago

I'd want various DIFFERENT trained curation sets - for different work and hobby activities, interests, and entertainment. I suppose that might be done by making several accounts, but it seems it should be a feature... like the Netflix [Who's Watching] or maybe [Select Mood]...?

jdnordy• 4 years ago

ahh, this is such a refreshing article. Social media is not the evil of all evils. What matters is how you use it. "The Algorithm" can be really good if you use it well. I benefit a lot from my engagement with these platforms from staying up-to-date on the news to blowing of steam after work to thinking about new and interesting thing.

Instead of shouting, "Boo!" Why not talk about how to engage well?

pontifier• 4 years ago

In the story "Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling, a girl trains an AI powered jewelry tree by carefully selecting pieces that will move the product toward what she wants.

I Trained My TikTok

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