TikTok is 'Fundamentally Parasitic', Says Reddit CEO (techcrunch.com) 115
TikTok is one of the hottest social media platforms but the CEO of Reddit had some harsh words for the popular app, calling it "fundamentally parasitic" at an event this week. From a report: The comments from Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman were some of the more controversial offered up during a panel discussion with former public policy executive Elliot Schrage and former Facebook VP of Product Sam Lessin. During a brief conversation about the feature innovations of TikTok, Huffman pushed back hard on the notion that Silicon Valley startups had something to learn from the app. "Maybe I'm going to regret this, but I can't even get to that level of thinking with them," Huffman said. "Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone. I actively tell people, 'Don't install that spyware on your phone,'" he later added. Worth mentioning: Reddit is heavily backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which competes aggressively with TikTok's parent firm ByteDance.
Yeah but (Score:4, Insightful)
I actively tell people, 'Don't install that spyware on your phone,'" he later added.
He's not wrong but he is a raging hypocrite. Steve Huffman has abused his admin access to edit end user's comments. He is also willingly accepting money from a regime that is actively oppressing multiple cultural and ethnic minorities as well as their own people.
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"Reddit CEO "
LOL. WTF. What exactly is he the "CEO" of? A shitty message board where people post stupid shit? How in the fucking fuck does that require a CEO?
Re: Yeah but (Score:1)
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It's 90% college age leftists.
secret tax (Score:2)
Joke's on millennials and zoomers, they're paying social security but boomers and genX aren't going to ever let them see it.
On the other hand the younger generation is much more adept at connecting online. If they ran an Occupy style protest it would be 50X the size the 2011 one was. While it might be as aimless as the original movement, it would be bigger. We'd all find it really inconvenient when we're driving to work.
Re: secret tax (Score:1)
You don't really believe GenX is going to have Social Security, do you? When we're old we're going to die in the street like dogs.
Get Off My Lawn! (Score:3)
One of the advantages of being an old, "Get Off My Lawn" guy is that shit like TickTack, Twatter, InstaEmbaressment, and the like are utterly irrelevant to me.
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Re: Yeah but (Score:1)
It's probably not so much that they have great SEO, as it is that Big Brother Google overtly favors them. Reddit is notorious for rampant censorship, and that's just what the totalitarians at Alphabet crave.
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"Reddit CEO "
LOL. WTF. What exactly is he the "CEO" of?
A shitty message board where people post stupid shit? How in the fucking fuck does that require a CEO?
It's the 5th most visited website in the United States, 430 registered users.
A shitty message board where people post stupid shit?
And Youtube is a shitty website where people post stupid shit. IBM is a shitty company that makes toys for businesses. Apple is a shitty company that makes toys for millenials. Exxon is a shitty company that makes that crappy liquid that makes go-carts go so retards can run into each other. Why do any of those need CEOs? Amazing how businesses are easy to dismiss when you describe them in such ridiculous, reductive terms.
How in the fucking fuck does that require a CEO?
They're pr
Check the box (Score:3)
"If companies shared profits with all employees like they do with the top people"
If you would like some of your compensation to come in the form of stock rarher than cash just like the top people, and get more total compensation, check the box marked "401k". By the way, the top people, the educated people, do it that way because it's a really fucking good idea.
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Those stock options aren't going to be worth jack shit once Reddit goes full Digg.
Re:Check the box (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wow, spoken just like a true middle-upper class person;
Spoken just like someone who is working really hard at staying broke.
Yep, upper middle class indeed. We're waiting for you to join us whenever you get done with your jealous whining and you're ready to do the same things that brought me from homeless to upper-middle. I can only tell you what I did to get here, I can't make you shut up and do it.
Re: Check the box (Score:1)
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Raising your economic status is not simple. It's an obscene amount of work. I, like raymorris, have also been homeless in my life.
I started dirt poor, as the military brat of two military parents, Army and Air Force, took all the wrong turns, attended the school of hard knocks, went to jail for 2.5 years for a decision I will forever regret, and made my way into an upper-middle class lifestyle, because I worked my goddamn motherfucking ass off.
No, not everyone has our capabilities. As beings constructed acc
Better to avoid (Score:2, Informative)
> The vast majority of the upper class were born upper class. Of course, it is possible to get into the lower-upper class but generally only from the high-middle class. Only in exceptional cases do people manage to change more than one subclass. If you look at the people who do go up or down in class, it is most often due to externalities, like exceptional fortune, bad
You may or may not want to bring up statistics, depending on what you are trying to accomplish.
For example, over 80% of millionaires never
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How does someone who works harder than you do, yet makes $2.50 a day ever going to be in the upper, or even, middle class?
You probably at least have a roof over your head, clean running water, heat, clothing, and enough food to make you fat. You are as far above those $2.50 / day people as the OP is above you. Perspective.
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Well they could start by going home and opening a textbook and studying instead of switching on the television and watching 4 hours of garbage and then crawling into bed so that the next day and the next day and the next day they can rinse wash repeat their endless drudgery. Studying and getting more qualifications opens doors, getting better work and better pay. A friend of mine used
Re: Better to avoid (Score:1)
There's something a bit misleading about these "$2.50/day" sort of statistics. They don't account for purchasing power. Especially purchasing power for the most essential things in life: food and housing.
In America, Europe, Japan, etc if your income is $2.50/day you are living outdoors and starving to death. In a suitably poor country, on that income one lives indoors and eats.
Not saying the folks who earn $2.50/day aren't poor. They are poor. But not NEARLY as poor as one would be living on the same nomina
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In America, Europe, Japan, etc if your income is $2.50/day you are living outdoors and starving to death. In a suitably poor country, on that income one lives indoors and eats.
Not saying the folks who earn $2.50/day aren't poor. They are poor. But not NEARLY as poor as one would be living on the same nominal income in a developed country.
And it's pretty much the reason why things like offshoring/outsourcing/moving your factory to Mexico, Philippines, China exist. Because if you can provide your worker the same standard of living** as a domestic worker gets while paying them 1/5 as much... yeah, you're going to do that.
It's also the reason why region-specific pricing occurs. Your US worker is often going to be able to afford that $15 dvd. But the guy earning $2.50 a day in the Philippines is not. Since the marginal cost of each unit is close
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yes, the great lie. Here it is folks, we are wealthy because we are [...] smarter
If you look at the people who do go up or down in class, it is most often due to externalities, like [...] intelligence
So, which is it? I didn't start middle class, buddy. I started dirt poor, and went from there to homeless. Military doesn't pay much when you're supporting 3 kids fresh out of high school, like my parents were.
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For instance, we could live without high paid CEOs, but could we live without cleaners, servers, drivers, etc.?
I know how to clean, serve, and drive myself. So yes I could easily live without that.
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Could you? Could you live without a job because Joe Soap was promoted to CEO, didn't know what the fuck he was doing and sank the business?
A prime example of how someone who doesn't know what it is you are doing and therefore assumes it's easy to do. I don't like the inflated salaries CEOs get, but to just assume you could live without what they do because "all they do is go to meetings" is just ignorance.
I get this all the time when coding, "He just sat and typed
Re: Check the box (Score:1)
Do you also know how to tell pompous lies, and how to schmooze with inbred aristocrat "investors"? You could live without CEOs too!
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Do you also know how to tell pompous lies, and how to schmooze with inbred aristocrat "investors"?
Actually no. Doesn't really make your point for you, sorry.
Re: Check the box (Score:1)
Another thing to consider: raymorris isn't particularly rich. You can find his bio if you look for it. He has a solid "middle-class" job, nothing special. His purchasing power is most likely on par with a union factory worker in the 1960s.
Now I don't doubt that Mr Morris has been through some tough times. Nor do I doubt that he worked hard to get where he is. But he is certainly not an example of a rags to riches story.
If you're born poor and you work hard, can you land a solid "middle class" job that pays
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Also, some of us COULD rise higher, earn a ton more money, etc, but we choose not to. I've certainly passed over positions of management because I'm happy with my job, get paid enough to live on with some left over for retirement, and I generally want to enjoy my life. I can do that, and I don't need to increase my wealth by seven figures each year to do it. I legitimately don't think I would enjoy life as much doing that, so what would be the point of being rich at that point? Winning a numbers game that I
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Your excuse is that you're too dumb to follow the instructions that I followed? I doubt that.
Closed-minded I could believe. Sorry, I don't believe you are incapable. Possibly unwilling.
Re: Check the box (Score:1)
"By the way, the top people, the well-connected people, do it that way because the systemically corrupt tax code hugely favors rentier income over earned income."
FTFY
Pretty much, yeah. Top execs get hurt there (Score:2)
Agreed. If you lose your job something happens with your company, that's a really bad time to lose your savings. So yeah, don't invest significantly in the company you work for, generally. There are two exceptions.
Top executives are frequently REQUIRED to have significant investment in the companies that hire them, in order to ensure that the execs care very much about how the company is doing.
Various programs are offered at different companies that let you get a really good deal on own-company stock. I
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Just look at Reddit, it's so over-moderated, it's basically censorship. Just try posting anything negative or controversial and watch it get banned. It's amazing how overzealous people get when you give them the slightest bit of power over others.
Not to defend Reddit, because it's pretty crap for the reasons you mention, but not every forum has to be 4chan either. If the community there likes how the site is run, that's their own business. If it turns out they're largely authoritarian jerks, then let Reddit be a containment zone for them.
Re: Yeah but (Score:1)
Re: Yeah but (Score:1)
How's that bootleather taste?
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He's also a fucking cannibal
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He's not wrong but he is a raging hypocrite. Steve Huffman has abused his admin access to edit end user's comments. He is also willingly accepting money from a regime that is actively oppressing multiple cultural and ethnic minorities as well as their own people.
It's to everyone's advantage when these sorts of weasels turn on their own kind.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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That is because certain people on Slashdot do not mod honestly.
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There is nothing "troll" about that post. It is factually and demonstrably correct.
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He ran against Trump for President in 2016.
Yeah, Trump nominated him for Energy Secretary, but I'd be willing to bet he did that on the advice of others, and hardly knows Perry.
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I actively tell people, 'Don't install that spyware on your phone'
Sounds like someone is going to get Epstein'd
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Pot, Kettle (Score:3)
Black
Another nation does something (Score:2)
Welcome to some competition for users time.
You fell for the viral advertising. (Score:2)
It is a Flappy Bird. The ONLY reason anyone is installing it, is because "It is retarded and pointless, it sicks ass, but somehow everyone seems to want it, so let's install it to belong with the cool kids."
Except nobody had yet installed it, and it was just a marketing campaign... until that campaign made peopled do it, fulfilling its own prophecy.
Protip: When a newspaper titles "America thinks ...", it does not mean that that America thinks that. It means that they want everyone to think that America thin
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Its mentioned by this decades top social media experts... their talking of the topic was the US wide "ask around".
Privacy Analysis Of Tiktoks App and Website (Score:5, Interesting)
Information available here [rufposten.de]
Reddit is backed by china money? (Score:3)
I hadn't joined yet, but now I never will.
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News at 11 (Score:2)
Re:How's /r/The_Donald's Quarantine going? (Score:4, Insightful)
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To be clear they were ousted for repeatedly breaking the rules(doxing, brigading etc...), not because "Trump Bad!"
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While the sub occasionally talks about what people say on
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No, they weren't.
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In this hypothetical, wordpress corp had a problem with your blog and started applying rules and limitations to it unevenly clearly based on political bias, ridiculous limitations and demands holding the blog to an impossibly high standard as well as penalising it and its audience for bizarr
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I agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I agree... (Score:1)
Donâ(TM)t tell me what and what not to do.
That's TWO reddit stories in the past 2 days now (Score:5, Insightful)
and not one discussing how Spez (aka the CEO of Reddit) has changed the rules so that merely upvoting a story that Reddit finds offensive is grounds for permanent banning and then proceeded to take over /r/The_Donald by kicking out the existing Trump supporting mods and replacing them with Reddit approved personnel.
Is that NOT a tech story? News for Nerds? Stuff that matters? Is TenCent asking Reddit to clamp down on proTrump subreddits? Is that a form of foreign interference in an election?
No no- Spez hates Tik Tok so he's heroic.
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I doubt Tencent asked for that. They were doing that kind of "US progressive" censorship before Chinese money was involved. Remember how they completely deleted r/fatpeoplehate, r/waterni**ers and a bunch of other subs that offended them?
FOSS (Score:2)
In the absence of source code, you can safely assume that all proprietary software is spyware. This includes Apple's OS, big chunks of Android, and all of Windows too. And can we please dispense with the euphemism "telephone" for what are clearly hand-held computers?
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That's basically how I approach it. You can debate which tech giant spies how much but unless the source code is open, you better assume that the difference between them is marginal.
Re: FOSS (Score:1)
It also includes the reddit app that my phone's browser screeches at me to install anytime I navigate to reddit.
Re: FOSS (Score:1)
Yup. There's nothing Reddit does that even remotely benefits from being done in an app. The entire purpose of nagging users to install the Reddit app is to snoop them and to slurp up all their private information. That much is obvious to everyone.
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it's just in machine code, and you're not up to reading it.
I tried once, one advice: don't.
They are not computers! ... to the user. (Score:2)
A computer is an universal information processing device. Aka it is programmable.
Smartphones certainly are that, to the manufacturer.
But then they are locked-down and crippled, until they are merely a fixed-function appliance with manufacturer-approved modules. That does not qualify as a computer.
In other words: Call me, when they come with an open boot-loader, kernel, drivers and OS. They aren't even freakin' "rooted" by default.
Who is the user? (Score:2)
Re: Who is the user? (Score:1)
Those public access computers are "terminals" or "workstations", not "general propose computers".
Blocked on Permissions (Score:2)
I have TikTok blocked from all permissions. I just watch videos there, you don't have to allow an app to do anything, you don't want it to be doing.
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The only way I can explain it, is ... (Score:2)
that it is a service for pedos to watch kids dance in tight clothes.
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Nah, it's mostly videos of dogs doing stuff with the "don't be suspicious, don't beeee suspicious" sound.
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But you installed it? Just curious, is there some value added activity to the app? I've never used it and never had a desire to try it out.
Value added no. It's entertaining. I don't install apps that are purely "value added". It's pretty random, I liken it to Vine, longer videos but pretty much that. I follow some comediahttps://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15864016&cid=59773638#ns, cooks, espn, nfl, fail.army, etc. There is a random "For You" page that is what I can imagine is the trending tik toks of the day/week/etc..
Says The Man That Effectively Runs A "News" Site (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the site readers get their news and opinions from Reddit, and thus the narrative becomes manipulation into group think.
If people aren't spending time on Reddit, they aren't being manipulated as much.
TikTok is the new Snapchat. It'll have its heyday, then parents and companies will have TikToks, then you can vote on The Voice with TikTok and then it will fade to the background like the other social media apps when the next app comes out.
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Not to mention that their moderation system practically guarantees that anyone with an opposing comment to the mainstream groupthink of a subreddit is moderated into oblivion. Just simply asking a question on a touchy subject in one of the politics forums is a great way to lose about a 100 karma points overnight.
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Please God no, not the KARMA!!!
My shitpost got downvoted and now I'm sad.
Re: Says The Man That Effectively Runs A "News" Si (Score:1)
Yet you keep shitposting...
I've been on Reddit a bit lately (Score:2)
Works great for pictures of cats though.
Toootally unlike Reddit, of all things! (Score:3)
Yes, I agree! Completely!
But maybe a viral advertising filter bubble circle jerk site with rampant SJW terrorism should first check its own garden before spraying a shart into that of its neighbor.
It's Afraid (Score:2)
TiKTok is the best fucking app there is.
Endless entertainment. Instant loading. Never crashes. Never lags.
TikTok is DESTROYING Reddit, Snapchat, and soon, Instagram.
Keep scaremongering about the Chinese. No one believes you or cares. If they cared, they wouldn't have installed your shitty apps.
TikTok is 'Fundamentally Parasitic', Says Reddit C (Score:1)
TikTok is fundamentally useless, anyway! (Score:2)
Forgive me if I seem like an "angry old white guy who doesn't get it". Maybe I don't? But I haven't even reached age 50 yet, and for the life of me, I can't see any real purpose to TikTok? The entire idea seems to be letting people trying to share super brief video clips, which I guess is supposed to be the video equivalent of Twitter with its purposely character-limited ability to share text comments.
But in practice, you're not seeing anything of substance on there that I'm aware of? Real short video cl
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As someone just short of 50, the world is essentially looking for shortcuts these days, they want an easy route to fame, an easy way to learn, and easy way to make money, none of these exist, everything worth doing properly takes effort. TikTok, much like Vine before it, allows you to "make movies" like YouTube but with the limited screen time you don't have to script anything. Simply film yourself for a few seconds and you're instantly famous for a bunch of retarded morons who think watching endless stream
Two types of parasitic service (Score:2)
One type would be an app or something that monetizes access to you with spyware. Another type would be a website or something that discourages production of any cultural products by its own members and instead mostly serves like a obnoxious tour bus that drives them around to see the things others have worked at.
Obviously, as a slashdot user I have used the latter, but I also have used the former.
TikTok, the current generation's Vine (Score:2)
TikTok, make mindless fodder for other morons so you can get your "15 mins of fame" with a few thousands followers. I think I'd rather write a book or some music that only a few people liked, than be famous of 5 secs dancing around like a moronic dick. TikTok is on an intellectual par with unboxing videos on YouTube. Lap it up morons, get your few mins of fame, the platform will be dead in 3 years time when a generation finally grows up and has get a job that no longer time to waste on this.
TikTok are just copycats (Score:2)
Every TikTok video that I've seen has been a rip-off of someone else's viral video, re-filmed, and with a TikTok watermark added. They find viral content, copy it, and blast it out under their own name.
That is parasitic behavior.
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Re: Ms. Mash is fundamentally RETARDED (Score:3, Insightful)