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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

This is, fundamentally, what made TikTok a success.

This is why TikTok is not a lens you should perceive the world through, or get "controversial" news from. It's a highly curated feed to maximize long term engagement and profits. Cortisol, the stress hormone, is the "situational avoidance" hormone [1].

> High glucocorticoid stress-responses are associated with prolonged freezing reactions and decreased active approach and avoidance behavior in animals.

Increasing a chemical that is tied to avoiding an activity is in complete odds with the goals of TikTok.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15854783/

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That's the opposite of what Facebook notoriously found—but, either way, is maximizing long-term engagement in the best interest of the users?

> That's the opposite of what Facebook notoriously found

Consider that Facebook's conclusions are why they don't have anything remotely as successful as TikTok, for engagement.

> in the best interest of the users?

I don't understand this. Is this some moral motive? TikTok is an independent for profit company that has a product with better engagement than any other in the world. Within that context, yes, it's in the best interest for the user, measured by engagement.

Exactly, let’s not forget that Facebook is currently losing users. A shrinking business.

You cannot answer the question of whether maximizing engagement with TikTok is in the best interest of the user by pointing out that maximizing engagement maximizes engagement.

I was answering in the context of video watching, where “interest” is literally how interested the videos are to the person, which could be measured as a global max of long term engagement.

As I said, I don’t understand the question. To understand I would be to know what “best interest” means to you, and in what specific context?

Facebook is kinda dead now proves the point

False. Facebook continues to grow.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

That's not growth, it's just logged in users navigating the web and FB counting anybody that hits their APIs. Facebook is dead.

Growth can be gained from the shape of the graph.

Sure, you can buy the lies you want

3b monthly users would mean nearly half of the entire world's population is on Facebook at least once per month. No matter how you shake it, that's simply not a realistic number, even before you consider people that live in areas with no internet, or regimes that disallow sites like Facebook, children too young to even possibly use Facebook, so on.

It wouldn't surprise me if the total number of real users, not counting bots and alt accounts, is probably ~1b or less.

HN lives in a bubble. Almost everyone I know uses FB daily. These are legal numbers and shouldn’t be too much off.

also a difference for approaches, possibly, for maximizing engagement (commenting) versus maximizing time on app

> This is, fundamentally, what made TikTok a success.

The algorithm optimizes for engagement.

This is outside of that optimization because it is outright just removing this content, not even considering it for display.

> This is outside of that optimization because it is outright just removing this content, not even considering it for display.

This is based on what? Another assumption could be that the algorithm identified this as "net negative".

>TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company’s efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to new documents published by the Intercept.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tr...

Could you explain how this is related? This is evidence they've always curated for what they deem as "undesirable" things, related to engagement.

> who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled

From the engagement perspective, you'll find that movie stars, social media stars, CEOs, and even politicians (with some famous presidential results [1]) are, nearly without exception, attractive and fit. Why?

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/kennedy-nixon-debates

I would say removing political rage bait is a sign that they are not optimizing for engagement but enjoyment. TikTok is a feed of stuff that's interesting, funny, and wholesome, not the slop and doomscrolling that chasing engagement gets you. Just from looking at the thumbnail in the article you can tell it would never be shown on TikTok, regardless of political content.

huh? Doesn't tiktok engagement increase as a person becomes more avoidant of whatever it is they'd have to do if they weren't scrolling on tiktok?

A logical way to achieve that would be to minimize cortisol and maximize dopamine, providing a stress free escape from the stress inducing real world. ;)

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