TikTok Remix Culture

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up.

It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in some way. Instagram, Reddit, Twitter etc all bother you from the very second you load the page with modals and banners bullying you into signing up or getting their mobile app, if they let you see anything at all.

[0] https://www.tiktok.com/foryou

It’s great to occasionally see success stories from companies that break the mold and can be used as examples a-la-Craigslist. Without them we’re forever stuck with “I know that a signup lightbox on first visit is ugly, but it converts!”

Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account.

For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content. I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get a wall requiring login immediately.

It's possibly/probably worse because I'm often doing this in incognito mode, which tends to make everything more aggressively naggy. Twitter seems to be fairly random as to when they'll let you, say, view replies or media or something without requiring login, while Reddit is basically fine on desktop (even better in the "old" mode) and a dystopian nightmare on mobile.

Pretty much everything "big" is much much worse on the mobile web, I guess because they figure they stand a pretty good shot at getting you to get The App instead. It sucks.

Though, sadly, things like Facebook Marketplace are eating nice sites like craigslist: https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sim...

I've been using teddit.net because reddit on mobile gas become unusable. Someone here pointed me to it.

Mobile is especially bad lately since Firefox Mobile has gone walled-garden and you can no longer install a user agent switcher to get a true desktop page. The fact the "view desktop version" option on mobile browsers still tells the server you're on a mobile device is utterly perverse.

I disagree, it’s fairly restrictive outside of showing you one video if you’re in the browser. You can see the video you were linked to but not comments, other videos that use the same sound, other videos by the same creator etc.

It’s a pretty common pattern these days; you can also see IG progressively locking down web features tighter and tighter for example.

Reddit used to be like that. Tiktok is young, it can change.

The difference seems to be if your company is in growth mode vs squeeze mode. Not to say that you're doing poorly if you're squeezing, you're just trying to extract every ounce of value from users regardless of the long term effects.

I don't know if I'd call craigslist a nice site. I know it checks all the boxes that HN loves but when I'm trying to buy something simple from the site, I'd rather not have to give the seller my email and/or phone number. Last I checked, there was no way to message on the website itself.

I “used” Twitter for several years without an account; it’s actually not all that pushy about it. Old Reddit isn’t either, although new Reddit will make you hate it with a passion.

Interesting, I recently downloaded the android app to see if there was anything interesting for me, but there they wouldn't let you past without signing up

You probably can identify someone without an account these days. So for some applications you really only need one of you want to post and even then I bet you can get away without one.

In my experience craigslist has always used a dummy email address between you and the seller. Neither person would see the real email address of the other. Of course, I'd eventually hand over my phone number to make communication easier.

Very likely after a certain market share.

> Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 requests with ~24 MB)

Yeah, teddit.net does seem to be pretty light on mobile gas.

That's not true. I use the app without an account.

> Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account. <…> Pretty much everything "big" is much much worse on the mobile web, I guess because they figure they stand a pretty good shot at getting you to get The App instead. It sucks.

Those are two separate issues. Almost all features of Instagram, except for interactive widgets in stories, are available from the web (doesn’t matter mobile or desktop). Like with Facebook, I chose to not install the actual app on my new phone, but I do fire up their web versions sometimes. Considering the extent of functionality, Instagram actually works really smoothly, and I hear the same about FB’s non-basic web version. Though yes, they do require an account.

Speaking of Twitter, it also works well from the web (albeit with no support for their equivalent of stories), but curiously they block VPNs (or perhaps just EC2 IP ranges) in a way that completely breaks some of the site (such as user profiles).

Due to EU terreg this will change most likely. Platforms that manually vet users may be exempt from having to have censor office in the EU and 1hr SLA to delete content.

Having to have an account is the problem. When someone sends me an Instagram link I used to be able to just watch the video and browse the profile. A bit later profile access was blocked. And now I can only watch a video once before it blocks for login. Only a matter of time before the window is completely closed.

On Twitter/TikTok I can watch any link without having to login. Twitter even allows anonymous search.

The post I’m replying to made two separate problems out of 1) Instagram requiring to log in, and 2) “everything big” being poorly usable on the Web. I’m not arguing with the silly login requirement (considering Instagram supports private profiles for people who don’t want to share), but providing a counterpoint to the (2).

> Almost all features of Instagram, except for interactive widgets in stories, are available from the web (doesn’t matter mobile or desktop).

Not exactly. When viewed in desktop browser, photo upload is not avaiable and you need to use developer tools to simulate mobile web browser view which is a workaround. Also, even in mobile web, you cannot upload more than one photo, even though this functionality exists in the app. These are very fundamental features of instagram, I think these are not so complex to implement in web versions.

Huh? When I open it it asks me to sign up or sign in and I didn't see a skip option, am I just blind?

Oh it will happen once organic growth slows down and the various teams have KPIs and OKRs to follow. Every company bgoes through these phases.

They're still benefiting from their "underdog" status, that won't last

Growth mode vs. death mode?

That’s the problem with something people build a community around being controlled by a company. That’s why open standards are better than a company. Also small things are often better than big. For example there are some great forums running in PHPBB or similar and lovingly maintained by owners. No bullshit like you get on modern apps making it hard to do what you want because like you say KPIs etc lead to dark patterns.

I clicked and immediately got a modal saying that TikTok is better in the app and I had to click X to go to the page.

Are we even talking about the same site? I opened tiktok.com in a private browser window and was greeted by an infinite scrolling list of videos. I scrolled past maybe a hundred and was never prompted to sign up. Clicking on a creator's name takes me to their profile with all their videos. Clicking on the music link immediately above each video takes me to a www.tiktok.com/music/<name-of-the-song> page with tons of videos using the same music. Only comments are behind a login wall.

These might change in the future, but your claims just aren't true at the moment. I'm not sure if there are regional variations. (douyin.com certainly behaves differently, but that's an entirely different product.)

It must be a really recent change in that case. For me the prompt to sign-up only comes up when I click on follow, a live stream or when trying to post a comment.

I stand corrected. I forgot I don’t upload anything there lately and am just using it to catch up with people.

No, give them what's statistically your real name and a full profile with many of your personal connections detailed on it.

Huh?

You're on iOS, right?

There are a couple of nag banners but reddit.com/.compact still functions as long as you don't want to open hosted multimedia.

old.reddit.com is still there.

Facebook Marketplace doesn't have a UI that came out of the 90s. No wonder.

Also isn't restricted to cities, plays nicely in smaller towns.

In the UK we also have Gumtree, which is like Craiglist but with a nicer UI - https://www.gumtree.com/

Yep, reddit used to allow lurking too.

This is why I use bibliogram mirrors to view Instagram posts.

Alt link: https://i.reddit.com/

>>It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up.

It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in some way.

This is the typical freemium cost structure amped up because endless video streams for the free (anonymous) tier resulting in higher peak-load operating costs (bandwidth & compute). In exchange, TikTok enjoys higher virality which they hope will translate into higher aggregate (but lower relative percentage) sign-up conversion rates.

The point is that you could click the X and still get the page. Others don't let you do that anymore.

I prefer 90s UIs

That definitely plays a role, but I think the much bigger factor is how it lets anyone download & share the video file (at least by default, which most don't change). These days, half of reddit, twitter and discord is just filled with TikTok videos. Even Reels and Shorts are full of TikTok videos, you can tell by the watermark. So much so that Reels had to forcefully derank videos with the TikTok watermark on them.

This has helped Tiktok spread and grow very quickly. Hell the very link on this post is from Twitter and has almost 100k retweets...

On mobile I still use i.reddit.com

Please don't post flamebait or call names in HN comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you more than once before not to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for something a bit different here.

I highly recommend using FOSS frontends [1] to access these Instagram/Reddit/Twitter/etc, it's a far better experience being able to browse without all these annoyances.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167924

why the past tense?

can lurk on old.reddit.com just fine

For now...

It depends on your region's privacy and compliance regulations

Call me crazy but I trust a website that has to operate under rules and regulations (albeit pretty lax rules) more than a random stranger I don't know on the Internet.

I should have added "by default", but you're right there is a work around. Eventually old.reddit.com will get in the way of a major infrastructure update and they'll kill it off. It will make a lot of people mad, but it will be such a small percentage of users that they will do it anyway.