One of TikTok’s network boffins says it causes ‘massive data wastage’

Before Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch put pen to paper to take over TikTok’s US operations from ByteDance, they might want to consider that one of the Chinese company’s network boffins thinks the app and others like it create “massive data wastage”.

News of that finding was the subject of a paper [PDF] titled “Wisely Optimizing Short Video Streaming for a User-Vendor Win-Win Outcome” presented at the SIGCOMM academic networking conference a couple of weeks ago.

The paper’s authors work at Columbia University, Renmin University of China, Tsinghua University, and ByteDance. Their work opens by observing “Short video streaming platforms widely employ video prefetching to ensure users’ quality of experience (QoE), but frequent user swipes lead to massive data wastage, creating a significant financial burden for vendors.”

The paper notes the popularity of short video apps and cites the billions of people who use TikTok ...