So TikTok is low-key the first big manifestation of AI taking over the world. Many of us (though now all, because Deondre' seems to have avoided the TikTok trap) have had those moments during the pandemic when we went down a TikTok wormhole and the next thing you know, it's 4 in the morning. 

We talk with our friend Andy Reinhold about why TikTok is so effective, and here is what he thinks: TikTok has nailed the discoverability problem that plagues a lot of new users on other types of platforms like Twitch or any platform where you need to actively seek out people to follow or subscribe to. As soon as you start creating, TikTok starts serving your content to other people automatically. This also also why it's so easy to be a consumer, as well as a creator: you don't have to spend time making decisions about what to watch and being paralyzed by the paradox of choice. 

TikTok has also been the proof of concept that people care about content more than quality. In fact, the shittier your TikTok greenscreen looks, the funnier it is, so people don't have to worry about their TikTok videos looking bad because that's kind of the point.

And then we also delve into the political elements of the fact that the company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, is a Chinese company, and how the threats to shut down TikTok in the US only bolstered TikTok's popularity. China has been pushing AI and machine learning by dumping loads of venture capital into it, and sees the role of government as a support system for their biggest companies, as opposed to the US where we look to the government to rein in big tech and big tech to rein in government. All these factors and more lead to a winning formula where TikTok has quickly grown to 690 million users, 90% of whom use the app every day, making it the fastest growing app in the world. 

Links:

TikTok stats: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics#:~:text=TikTok%20has%20689%20million%20monthly,App%20Store%20and%20Google%20Play.

BBC Article, "How TikTok Changed the World in 2020" https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201216-how-tiktok-changed-the-world-in-2020