A lot of your argument seems to be based on the assumption that I've been on the platform for a long time.
I joined last month.
Specifically, over a year after the article cited by the parent comment was written.
That's my point here: I don't know if their algorithms were bad in the past, they are not bad now in the way the parent comment claimed then to be.
As for the rest of your comment, you seem to miss that we're already out of sight away from TikTok, so your doomsday scenario is my yesterday. And we are so isolated that a walled garden is a huge improvement over solitude.
There's tremendous value in creating safe spaces for people to connect with people who understand each other better. HackerNews is such space for tech.
The incredible thing about TikTok is the the algorithm can connect you to the right people even if you're not consciously aware of belonging to the group.
As in "Wait, I didn't know that I'd be into programming so much until I found out what it actually is after watching all these videos, and now that I know, I enjoy interacting with software developers tremendously".
And, as I pointed out, we already have other platforms to speak out to the world (which, consistently, chooses not to listen).
What TikTok does is an unparalleled reach to speak to each other.
It's peer-to-peer way more than you'd think looking from the outside in.
Let’s say that this purported effect of hiding the ”divergent” to ostensibly avoid bullying does not exist at any substantial rate, at least not for you. I’m still curious what you think about the claims in the articles further up the thread, regarding steps they took to try to make that happen (even if maybe they were unsuccessful). Personally, it doesn’t leave me with a great taste in my mouth.
Let's be clear: it sucks, and at least it used to happen.
But it sucks precisely because there's no other platform that gives the neurodivergent crowd a voice the way TikTok does.
This is why I'm talking about it! If the engineers in the West don't understand the value of TikTok, we'll never get a homegrown alternative.
Think about TikTok as an apartment complex with an awful landlord that sometimes kicks disabled people out...
...while still remaining the only accessible housing for disabled people in town.
Everyone here is saying that obviously it's going to turn into a slum, look how it mistreats disabled people!
And I say, please come and see for yourself how this place is different from others if you want us to move, because this goddamn slum at least has wheelchair ramps, and wherever y'all are living does not.
Short legth limits, audio captioning, using audio from another video so you don't have to talk, easy text placement (again, so you don't have to talk), all videos are vertical, ability to respond to a comment with a video (and encouraging it by imposing 150 char limit), responding to another video with video (including part of it for context), ability to download videos (so you can play or edit them however you want),
— and that's just off the top of my head on the content creation side. Off the top of my head.
Most importantly, it's that algorithm does a good job at bringing you the right audience, having one-click promotion tools, having detailed analytics, etc.
If you don't see this as accessibility features, well, that's my entire point.
The net result is that a TikTok post can start a conversation, with videos. And someone just talking - or just acting to audio - is first-class content. As is just showing a slice of your life and slapping some text on it.
Even if you make such content on other platforms, it'll have zero reach there. You have to do much more work to have people watch a video on IG or FB (people would just scroll past your video without playing it), or YouTube (whose UX strongly favors long videos, otherwise it's too many clicks).
The effort required to make a video for other platforms that people would see is a barrier that TikTok creators don't face.
This applies to everyone, but neurodivergent people benefit from it especially.
> That's my point here: I don't know if their algorithms were bad in the past, they are not bad now in the way the parent comment claimed then to be.
It isn't that the algorithms have been changed for the better. It is that they don't affect your use case. People expressing the things you want to see expressed are they and can be found if searched for, the recommendation algorithms don't have a significant effect there.
> The incredible thing about TikTok is the the algorithm can connect you to the right people even if you're not consciously aware of belonging to the group.
While the algorithm is serving you more content from those groups now you have been identified it isn't the algorithm that got you there in the first place, and once it has put you in your clique it is perfectly happy to give you more content from within that clique and serve any content you share within that clique.
If that is good for you then that is fine, but you have been digitally segregated. The algorithm doesn't mark individual items of content as being targets for bullying and so hides them from the larger population, it marks the user who posted that content (and possibly those that interacted with it too). What about people within the clique that the algorithm's filters are is assigning them to who have other interests too, and they want to express those widely? To make up a realistic example: my friend who happens to be trans puts out a great little clip based on one of Fiore's dagger plays, as does someone else who isn't (or hasn't been identified as by the TikTok) in any minority group, me for example. My clip has a greater chance of being presented by the recommendation algorithms to the whole global HEMA community, hers will likely only ever be presented to other users within the assigned clique. Nothing stops either bit of content being published, found by direct link, found by people that know us so might check our stuff specifically, and so forth, but because of the “hide users who bullies might pile on, instead of actually dealing with the bullies” filter the spread of her content will probably be more curtailed than mine because she is trans despite the content not being related to that part of her identity in any way shape or form.
> What TikTok does is an unparalleled reach to speak to each other.
Which is fine if you don't want to use the platform for anything else. You might be happy[†] being segregated into a clique by these filters, or at least otherwise unaffected by the fact because you don't want to use TikTok for anything else, but other people are inconvenienced by it, potentially significantly so.
There may be workarounds of course. Perhaps having multiple accounts. But that is asking people to make an effort to not be inconvenienced which is itself inconvenient, and the multiple accounts thing might not even work reliably as accounts could end up linked to each other in the back-end by various means either deliberate or as an emergent behaviour of tracking and classification functions.
For the avoidance of doubt: I think it is a very good thing that you have been able to “find your people”, to find an environment in which you feel safe to be you, in which you feel both understood and supported. Just be careful that this safe environment doesn't slide into becoming more of a prison, keeping you in rather than keeping negatives out.
I joined last month.
Specifically, over a year after the article cited by the parent comment was written.
That's my point here: I don't know if their algorithms were bad in the past, they are not bad now in the way the parent comment claimed then to be.
As for the rest of your comment, you seem to miss that we're already out of sight away from TikTok, so your doomsday scenario is my yesterday. And we are so isolated that a walled garden is a huge improvement over solitude.
There's tremendous value in creating safe spaces for people to connect with people who understand each other better. HackerNews is such space for tech.
The incredible thing about TikTok is the the algorithm can connect you to the right people even if you're not consciously aware of belonging to the group.
As in "Wait, I didn't know that I'd be into programming so much until I found out what it actually is after watching all these videos, and now that I know, I enjoy interacting with software developers tremendously".
And, as I pointed out, we already have other platforms to speak out to the world (which, consistently, chooses not to listen).
What TikTok does is an unparalleled reach to speak to each other.
It's peer-to-peer way more than you'd think looking from the outside in.