<story><title>TikTok and the Sorting Hat</title><url>https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dirtyid</author><text>IMO TikTok&amp;#x27;s draw is that it&amp;#x27;s the anthithesis to American &amp;#x2F; western social media culture. It&amp;#x27;s algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship.&lt;p&gt;What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. &amp;quot;Creative and Joyful&amp;quot; opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media &amp;#x2F; content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It&amp;#x27;s how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics  is how toxicity is produced. It&amp;#x27;s counterproductive to even try. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. Of course, politics and toxicity exist all over Chinese internet as well, they just get filtered &amp;#x2F; harmonized over time or never reach many eyes in the first place. It maybe a bad unitary model for governing cyberspace policy for an entire country, but it&amp;#x27;s has merits when applied to certain audiences &amp;#x2F; networks and the west should learn from it even if TikTok gets banned.</text></item><item><author>mgraczyk</author><text>&amp;gt; How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps&lt;p&gt;Part of the explanation is that they weren&amp;#x27;t in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded.  musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn&amp;#x27;t understand US culture.&lt;p&gt;This is important to the article&amp;#x27;s thesis. At least part of the early insight into the US market comes from the founders living and working in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>majormajor</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s hardly &amp;quot;nonwestern&amp;quot; or unique.&lt;p&gt;Big part of the appeal of snapchat was that you could be silly and send goofy shit without leaving a permanent record of it on your feed...</text></comment>
<story><title>TikTok and the Sorting Hat</title><url>https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dirtyid</author><text>IMO TikTok&amp;#x27;s draw is that it&amp;#x27;s the anthithesis to American &amp;#x2F; western social media culture. It&amp;#x27;s algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship.&lt;p&gt;What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. &amp;quot;Creative and Joyful&amp;quot; opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media &amp;#x2F; content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It&amp;#x27;s how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics  is how toxicity is produced. It&amp;#x27;s counterproductive to even try. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. Of course, politics and toxicity exist all over Chinese internet as well, they just get filtered &amp;#x2F; harmonized over time or never reach many eyes in the first place. It maybe a bad unitary model for governing cyberspace policy for an entire country, but it&amp;#x27;s has merits when applied to certain audiences &amp;#x2F; networks and the west should learn from it even if TikTok gets banned.</text></item><item><author>mgraczyk</author><text>&amp;gt; How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps&lt;p&gt;Part of the explanation is that they weren&amp;#x27;t in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded.  musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn&amp;#x27;t understand US culture.&lt;p&gt;This is important to the article&amp;#x27;s thesis. At least part of the early insight into the US market comes from the founders living and working in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ontifica</author><text>This doesn&amp;#x27;t make any sense, I use tiktok and there&amp;#x27;s plenty of content I wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect china or america to endorse. There are lots of videos dedicated to communism, capitalism, uyghur muslims, BLM, etc. It&amp;#x27;s actually fairly open and this type of content gets noticeably boosted by the algorithm if you express interest in it, and gets a ton of likes too. There is also plenty of happy cat videos as well if that&amp;#x27;s your thing.&lt;p&gt;Also, ugly people get a lot of attention. I would expect china&amp;#x27;s social credit system to discredit those who are less attractive, but on tiktok you see less than conventionally attractive creators get a big following. They don&amp;#x27;t even need to be freak shows, it&amp;#x27;s just an app that&amp;#x27;s full of regular people openly talking about regular things. Very much the opposite of what I have heard about the way media works in china.</text></comment>