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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Because TikTok is where the hip young demographic is. If they all move to say Instagram Reels en masse then Instagram will be the platform that is uniquely good for discovery among that audience.

And let's not pretend that TikTok is filled to the brim with high quality products and small businesses. Yes there may be a couple of feel good stories about a local pizza place or small band that got their big break because of TikTok, but 99.9% of the advertising there is for the same junk/scam products that are on every other influencer-driven app.

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Reels doesn't provide a true alternative because it's not about features and functionality it's about culture. The culture on Meta's Reels is really not it. And it's not just the user base but also the way the app is managed, and the algorithm.

TikTok's algorithm was amazing, as was the community.

You can't just recreate communities. They're alive, organic, fragile things.

How many times has YouTube recommended a your next video something with zero comments and maybe 10 views.

I cannot count how many times minute I’ve been the first to see or comment on a TikTok video.

It let small creators be shown to lots of people in a way no other platform does.

YouTube does this for me relatively frequently.

Genuinely glad to hear it. I almost always get something I’ve already seen before when I let it auto-play.

i don't know if it does it on auto play, i typically see a "rising video" in a top slot on the homepage. i think its also based on what it thinks you might like so not everyone may get them.

I explicitly disabled YouTube’s and extra layers of tracking. Ironically, it should still be able to track off my upvoted and playlists, it just doesn’t, unless it’s playing on my TV and then suddenly it can again and that’s when I sometimes (though only hours and hours later) get new stuff.

if you don't save your watch history, yeah, it probably doesn't bother using you for this feature

Maybe I should allow YT to save my watch history, then. I have found it frustrating that it refuses to use any of the other indicators (upvotes, downvotes, messages said back and forth, channels I’m subscribed to and their general type of content, etc) to curate my algorithm; but you know.

a well curated (pruned of anything you don't like) watch history is essential to getting a good youtube experience. it's pretty much the only signal that drives recommendations.

… why do I need to delete something, that’s frustrating :( I don’t want to need to log out and turn off my ad blockers to watch something weird or abnormal on YouTube… I pay for premium for a reason :(

there's a pause watch history button on the history page or incognito mode or just open it in an incognito window

I think in 2024, Youtube changed the algo for the front page. Now there is almost always one video in the top two rows with tiny amounts of views. I think it came about when there were lots of complaints about discovery of niche/new stuff.

Yeah, like the sibling comments I can confirm that this is a core part of the YT algorithm now and has been so for at least a year.

If YouTube never shows people new videos then how do new videos get views?

New videos and “new videos from someone that’s never been seen before” or “who I’ve never seen before” are very different things.

Lately I've noticed this more frequently with Shorts. It brings about an interesting dilemma because I know for the algorithm to work and benefit creators, people need to watch videos with few views. But I also don't want to spend my time to figure out if a video is worth watching for the benefit of the algorithm.

Having used both exclusively for warhammer and blood bowl content the instagram algorithm has been horrible in my very anecdotal experience. It keeps pushing content I have absolutly no interest in, where as TikTok only pushes warhammer and blood bowl content + adds.

To your point, TikTok is filled with absolute trash.

For example, there’s a company called “Cerebrum IQ” which scams people out of hundreds of dollars for fake IQ tests. We are painfully aware of this issue because we own cerebrum.com, and we receive at least 100 furious support requests per day from people who have been charged $80.00+ for a subscription they never agreed to, and they somehow confuse us with “Cerebrum IQ”.

They get most of their users from TikTok ads.

We’ve reported them to TikTok many times, with no action taken. Meta at least restricted their ability to advertise.

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