True... though "588/user" is more digestable than "588/current user but likely accounting for future growth which is why there is a premium - though we can't be sure that userbase does continue to grow considering the cloud of uncertainty around this deal and that the user base is largely gen z/particularly young and it is not proven that they will be sticky"
They go on to acknowledge the growth profile and valuation multiples vs competitors based off projected profits ...which is probably the more useful way to look at it -
There have been reports of investors valuing TikTok around $50 billion in the takeover bid, this is approximately 50 times its projected revenue for 2020. Many publications have compared this to SnapChat’s market capitalization which sits around $33 billion at the moment (15 times its 2020 projected revenue). While Snapchat exists within the same social media ecosystem the comparison has to account for two factors.
1) TikTok vs Snapchat’s position in the growth cycle
2) TikTok vs Snapchat’s core proposition
“At a market cap of $755 billion (at point of writing) Facebook’s per user value is around $288. If Facebook is some leading indicator for the pinnacle of per user value for social media, then at $50 billion for the roughly 85 million American users, TikTok’s per user value would be $588.”
I think facebook would pay a hefty premium even above that; handing Microsoft a buzzing social media platform on a silver platter - with the weight of Microsoft's resources behind it. Surely Zuckerberg's nightmare manifest...and he has no real chance of trying to outbid - what with all the anti-trust press.
“We’re competing against free,” Jeffrey Katzenberg says referring to the likes of youtube and social media platforms like TikTok. “We have to offer something that is meaningfully, measurably, quantifiably, creatively different. They don’t know how to do what we do, with all due respect,…”
This is what always strikes me...the knowledge that you are competing against a "new" category of entertainment but the hubris to dismiss it in one fell swoop...why wouldn't you ask "why did this cattegory crop up"; "is there something new going on here that they do better than us?"
‘A ctrl+f for ‘privacy’ brought the word up thirteen times – the subtext was very much ‘at Google, we think about privacy’. But what makes this particularly interesting is that decentralised data analysis isn’t a new concept and didn’t find its origins in privacy.'
"Mahajan describes six tools: dimensional analysis, easy cases, lumping, picture proofs, successive approximation, and reasoning by analogy. Illustrating each tool with numerous examples, he carefully separates the tool—the general principle—from the particular application so that the reader can most easily grasp the tool itself to use on problems of particular interest. Street-Fighting Mathematics grew out of a short course taught by the author at MIT"
That short course looks like its still available on edx - though it's archived - I seem to be able to access the material.
Edit: I'm 50:50 on whether they take the negative press hit of publishing this anyway. If they publish without name included - everyone still finds out the name of the "flippant" writer. If they don't it just concedes that their attitude was wrong to begin with. They are in a tough spot now - hard to feel sorry for them given the asympathetic position they assumed.
~~~
SlateStarCodex shutting down in direct response to the hubris/disregard of one NYT reporter hungry for a story. This parasitic appetite for airtime come-what-may approach to journalism needs to be checked. There's no reason the writer couldn't leave the real full name out of the article once requested and with legitimate concern aired by the person hes naming.
I'm glad "Scott" is taking this stance if only for the fact that it puts the onus of hard/difficult decisions back on the NYT - i.e. why despite legitimate concerns are your writers comfortable doxxing people?
The key highlight for me -
"When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he just said that me having enemies was going to be part of the story. He added that “I have enemies too”. Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer.
(though out of respect for his concerns, I am avoiding giving his name here.)
After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks."
I've heard the term seamfulness in design before without properly grasping it and it took me some time to flesh out. The basic gist as I understand it is that our experience of the "real world" is characterized by intrinsic knowledge of limitations (seams) - but knowledge thereof allows for intuitive navigation of said seams - knowing where the edges/seams are gives us a more satisfying/richer experience than running headlong into less-understood limitations where the seams have been hidden from us (ironically for our own convenience).
From the article "when we know where the seams are and how to manipulate them. The power in being able to manipulate the seams creates an elevated experience, one that emulates the ease of a seamless experience with the added power of control. Where seams help you identify how any one element interacts with the broader environment, the knowledge of ‘beautiful seams’ (source) could become invaluable to the user experience."
What a beautiful way to map out the terrain - I immediately feel inspired to use this as a starting point for hobby-research projects. Only problem is now i'm inclined to check the alternatives to "ego graphs" as a starting point for research!
I have a sneaking suspicion that SEO/keyword mapping with all the resources devoted to that space may have some tools that elaborate on this idea - though im no expert. If anyone knows of useful tools to replicate this in browser I am all ears.
Great read on the possible rationale - Summarising
#1 It Hurts Google - erodes googles dominance vis a vis commercial access to geospatial data + a viable reason to collect valuable location data on end users.
#2 It Complements Their Augmented Reality Business
#3 It Supports Facebook’s Place Data Generally
"what if street level imagery and supplementary data like reviews were built directly into Facebook’s products or at least resided somewhere on a Facebook property that could be linked out to? That at least would keep users in their scrupulously measured web of control."
I would flesh out one related/adjacent point.
~Google's mission statement: "Our company mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
~Facebooks Mission Statement: "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together"
I'm not so naive as to suggest these ideals aren't deeply infiltrated/influenced by commercial imperatives but it is possible to see the way some of their behavior wraps around the stated principles. Google's credo of organizing information aligns with building out immense location data - and effectively mapping the world (and subsequently commercializing it). Whereas with facebook what I have noticed is - given their size and scale; they can follow their users (and subsequently envelope/"empower" user efforts to create community) ...if need via acquisition. In the digital world this has mean't buying the likes of instagram and whatsapp to ensure that community-building happens under the nexus of Facebook's control. If you accept that facebook believes in being where it's users are; understanding/being more proximate to users and how they traverse the real-world is invaluable - you are now more able to map out a digital proxy that is informed by person's experience of the real world. By creating a more informed digital proxy you embed a user more deeply in your ecosystem.
"As with the carrion crow study, when these crows were presented with playback of a more familiar acoustic style—in this case a Japanese speaker—they didn’t show a strong reaction. Play them what was likely a completely unfamiliar language—Dutch—and the crows were rapt. Or at least they acted more vigilant and positioned themselves closer to the speaker. In other words, large-billed crows were able to discriminate between human languages without any prior training!"
I would be interested to hear the respective recordings - is it possible that something else in the speaker's voice (tone/manner/volume) that they were responding to?
"We used twenty Dutch and twenty Japanese sentences as stimuli. They were all declarative, adult-directed, approximately 2.5 seconds long, and spoken by four
female native speakers. After the habituation to the aviary on three consecutive days, the crows were tested for their responses to the Dutch and Japanese stimuli
in a total of eight trials which were distributed over four days (i.e., two trials per day). Four crows received Dutch stimuli for the first four trials and Japanese stimuli for the last four trials, while the other three crows were assigned the opposite language order. Before the start of each trial, the crows were given 3–5
min for familiarization to the surroundings. Each trial consisted of four blocks of stimulus presentation with inter-block intervals of a 1–2-min silent period. Within
each block, a set of ten sentences spoken by two different speakers was continuously presented twice in a random order. A 30 min silent period was inserted between the trials each day. The trial schedule including stimulus presentation was controlled by the programme PsychoPy 3 (Peirce, 2007). The sound level was set at a range between 70 and 80 dB across the perches. According to the different behavioural responses to 1,000 Hz and 1,600 Hz tone......"
Well said. I can't help the feeling that i encounter more "eager contrarians" both in real life and online (moreso online). Perhaps the way social media is though - pays to be adversarial?
Agree - original comment was on the meta not the specific.
So where there is no specific group or context in which to place said "contrarian" - just a description of what was felt/instinctive. Would change immediately once we get into a specific example.
As a counter-point to this being a "veiled reference" - Your comment that the article is a reference to something that's happening in the world could conceivably apply at any given point in time.
There will always be contentious ideas - the meta of an "in-group contrarian" transcends the current social narrative.
Thanks for clarifying. Exactly what i was getting at - my "default state" was based on the Contrarian sans context (i.e. for the sake of it). Think it's an interesting thought exercise.
With all due respect - I think you've oversimplified a bit. It goes without saying that "intellectual curiosity to opposing ideas is good". I think anyone would agree contrary views should be treated with intellectual fairness/intrigue - but that's separate from instinctive reactions and I think it's unrealistic to believe people won't have a range of emotions on any given day for n number of reasons.
I was quite surprised to note it myself but just trying to be honest about an unexpected self-observation rather than offer what i think i should feel. Importantly the reaction was in reference to the Contrarian Sans Context (i.e. contrarian for sake of contrarianism; context is everything).
What's more if there are only three default settings to the contrarian (simplifying here - for/against/neutral)... it follows that some sample of any population will begin at each of those defaults and it is unlikely that everyone assumes a neutral position even if that's taken to be favorable. Admittedly it is difficult to discern right now whether this is a localised (in time) reaction for me or if there's something more fixed there.
It could be contended that a mix of default positions (For/against as well as neutral) to the IGC is in fact "normal" - rather than to prescribe that everyone should be neutral and that is always preferable. For example across a population if people assume different starting positions then we could see a variety of responses and perhaps more dynamic conversation at the extremes/edges.
"algorithm shows it first to a small subset of users. These people may or may not follow the creator already, but TikTok has determined they may be more likely to engage with the video, based on their past behavior. If they respond favorably—say, by sharing the video or watching it in full—TikTok then shows it to more people who it thinks share similar interests. That same process then repeats itself, and if this positive feedback loop happens enough times, the video can go viral. But if the initial group of guinea pigs don’t signal they enjoyed the content, it’s shown to fewer users, limiting its potential reach."
Applying an algorithm to human preferences will necessarily magnify and entrench our likes and suppress our desires. To my mind it accelerates existing social processes.
I've seen an increasing push to place responsibility at the feet of these platforms for the posts that are promoted vs suppressed. Another post the other day conspiratorially suggested instagram promotes partially-topless posts over clothed posts (whereas in all likelihood - it is just what the masses want to see - that post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23548059). I guess it is in a similar vein that we see reports around tiktok discriminating against less attractive people etc.
I'm not sure if there is an easy answer to this but framed another way - Do companies and the algorithms they design need to curb the biases/excesses that are natural/intrinsic to the people that use those platforms? When you speed up the discovery/propogation of human bias - are you morally or socially obliged to create speed-bumps; or is it ok to accentuate the kinks IF they are already present in the social fabric?
They go on to acknowledge the growth profile and valuation multiples vs competitors based off projected profits ...which is probably the more useful way to look at it -
There have been reports of investors valuing TikTok around $50 billion in the takeover bid, this is approximately 50 times its projected revenue for 2020. Many publications have compared this to SnapChat’s market capitalization which sits around $33 billion at the moment (15 times its 2020 projected revenue). While Snapchat exists within the same social media ecosystem the comparison has to account for two factors.
1) TikTok vs Snapchat’s position in the growth cycle 2) TikTok vs Snapchat’s core proposition