Les Orchard

I've been a TikTok user for about 5 years. I've seen things change a lot on there. But, also, I know what I've seen is related to how their algorithm's model of my interests has changed. Their algorithm isn't a magic oracle, but I do think they've managed to implement something interesting.

Your mileage will vary. But, when I see folks dismiss the service as "that place where the kids do their little dances", those folks are telling me they have no idea what's going on with TikTok. (That, or maybe they're just faving every dancing kid they see?)

I haven't seen a teen dance on there in probably 3-4 years. I see cats & crows & critters, queer jokes, drag acts, nerd fandom stuff, political commentary, general life-in-america commentary, current news, ADHD & autism content - all stuff I'm interested in care about and it's all served up more reliably than on any other communications channel.

The main thing TikTok themselves seem to inject are incessant attempts to make me directly buy something - which, I mean, seems more honest than weird advertising.

I do have to work hard to keep the tinfoil hat from settling on my head, though. Maybe I'm soaking in "Chinese propaganda" so thick I don't perceive it? But it seems really suspect that my government's been able to turn on a dime so fast with this thing of all things.

My real tinfoil-hat notion brewing is that all "China" (or insert random adversary here) has to do to destabilize America is just let us talk about how fucked up shit is - they don't really have to nudge us at all.

Mar 14, 2024 at 7:18pmWeb
Show threadLes OrchardMar 14, 2024

Like, I know it's a compromised communications platform - but pretty much all of our current popular channels are garbage in one way or another. We're all rats living in the walls of one corp or another, these days.

But, on TikTok, they've got some interesting stuff going with their recommender algorithm, with the easy collaboration features in duets & stitches. (I mean, dang, the spontaneous musical team-ups I've seen on there have been delightful)

Why has that product taken off like it has where other products haven't? Can we build something like it in a more federated universe?

Show threadskippyMar 14, 2024

@lmorchard I'm not a user, for much the same reason as I'm not a user of YouTube. But the ban is unconstitutional, performative, and dumb.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/14/once-more-with-feeling-banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-wont-do-shit-to-deal-with-any-actual-threats/

Once More With Feeling: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional & Won’t Do Shit To Deal With Any Actual Threats

Over the last few days, we’ve had a few posts about the latest attempt to ban TikTok in the US (and to people who say it’s only a divestiture bill: there is a ban in the language of the bill if Byt…

Techdirt
Show threadAsta [AMP]Mar 14, 2024
@lmorchard I look it at like people who come out of the woodworks for prison abolition when a cop or major crypto or otherwise racist fuck goes to prison: they are 100% not interested in solving any of the actual problems… they just don’t want them applied to them for once.
Show threadmDuo13 📖Mar 14, 2024
@lmorchard I have heard the hypothesis that the "magic" of TikTok's recommendation algorithm is the way it rapidly and passively accumulates both "upvote" and "downvote"-like information from each user based on whether or not they watch the already short videos to the end. YouTube recommendations aren't as reliable because long-form content is watched in many different ways, and text/photo-based social media also don't have as reliable ways to detect whether you appreciated the content.
Show threadLes OrchardMar 14, 2024
@mDuo13 It also seems to be doing something interesting with those signals to triangulate on topics & interests, like they might have some neat semantic vector clustering going on. But my machine learning chops are shallower than I'd like to be able to explain it
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Mar 14, 2024
@lmorchard lovely post. It aligns very much with my experience
Show threadPanderito Mar 14, 2024

@lmorchard

The fact Mnuchin, former Treasury secretary, said he's getting funds and people to buy it says a lot more about the ongoing stuff.

It's all about business. Wars are about business. Bans are about business. Political reasoning is just diplomatic doublespeak. They are making USA companies great again, one way or the other

Show threadJames BennettMar 14, 2024

@lmorchard I think it’s risky to assume any one person’s experience of it is representative since it’s algorithmic and responds by showing you more of the kinds of things you interact with.

That’s very similar to the way YouTube’s recommendations can send someone down a rabbit hole. And seems to have that effect on some people — a while back a host of a podcast I listen to mentioned she realized the TikTok feedback loop was doing that to her with creepy tradwife stuff, for example. And if we criticize YouTube for that even though plenty of people have positive experiences of it, I think we can criticize TikTok for it too.

In general though I think the TikTok divestment is just the US catching up to policies similar to what a lot of the world (including the EU) already have adopted against “foreign” (historically all US) tech companies, where they want some level of local control/leverage over them.

Show threadLes OrchardMar 14, 2024

@ubernostrum

where they want some level of local control/leverage over them.

Yeah, that's the bit I'm really trying not to be all tinfoil-hat about but seem very plausible. It's not the data, it's the deficiency in jurisdiction

But also yeah, I definitely wouldn't say TikTok should be above criticism for what it's actually doing in terms of serving up content

Show threadJames BennettMar 14, 2024
@lmorchard Basically every big country/bloc these days does some form of “put some personnel/assets you care about inside our borders where we can get to them”. Justifications vary — EU justifies it on privacy and “data can’t flow from here to your country” — but the end result is the same.
Show threadThe Penguin of EvilMar 14, 2024

@lmorchard They are watching the wrong hand as ever. The really ugly stuff is buried in all the dubious 'anti cheat' buried in Chinese games. That's basically a giant foreign controlled rootkit network that's running windows kernel level.

But then they can't buy that whereas they can maybe force tiktok to sell to their mates at a bargain price.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/14/business/steven-mnuchin-tiktok/index.html

Maybe it's chance but something smells very strange...