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TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

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Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#91

Post by slategruen »

captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

> people are afraid of data collection now in a way they weren't in 2006

I disagree with this one. They might be afraid of sharing their data explicitly i.e. sharing everything happening to them for everyone to see (even strangers). The trend now is sharing content to people they only have very close relationships with. But them being afraid of big tech collecting and analyzing their data? I don't think so.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#92

Post by trh0awayman »

t-writescode wrote: post #31
oars wrote: post #17

The Tiktok algorithm we have rewards repetitive dancing in front of the camera, pulling ("fake") pranks and random snippets from movies edited together with dramatic music added. In China (their app is called Douyin), the algorithm rewards things they want their youth to be doing. Content which involves maths, engineering, medicine, etc are rewarded. I'm certain that there is some strategic motive from China to push…

Everyone's TikTok experience is different. Although sometimes you do need to long-press on a video and say you're not interested, the experience as a whole tends to be relatively finely tailored per person. For example, many of my videos for a long time were basically short essays about current events, relationship advice, (edit: BIPOC) creators, interesting skits or stories about Marvel or DC characters and so on. S…

I long pressed on videos to say "not interested" that show gross dermatology videos, root canals, and ear cleaning. I would still repeatedly get those when I was using the app.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#93

Post by ngold »

captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

For some reason before MySpace was high school friends websites, that bordered on stalking platforms. In 1999.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#94

Post by ngold »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
thematrixturtle wrote: post #35

> Facebook, it seems, is moving away from its traditional focus on text and images, spread among people who know one another, to instead adopt TikTok’s emphasis on pure distraction. This shift is not surprising given TikTok’s phenomenal popularity, but it’s also shortsighted: platforms like Facebook could be doomed if they fail to maintain the social graphs upon which they built their kingdoms. This. I on occasion vi…

In my experience, FB and others moved away from being about your friends to become content sharing machines long time ago. It’s like reddit but without sub separation + influencer glamour. Tiktok on the other hand came from purely creative angle. It’s not about your friends, it’s about using creative tools to express something. That’s why TikTok dominated the original new content market. TikTok’s editing tools are ph…

No disrespect, but....Chinese spying company? It's free and you are definitely not the product, but your information and contacts and photos and videos sure look tasty to the CCP.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#95

Post by [deleted] »

disgu wrote: post #29
timeimp wrote: post #19

I've heard (anecdotally) that the attention span of all the younger users has taken a dramatic shift south. Educators and employers are noticing they cannot keep students / new employees engaged. Makes me wonder what damage is happening, long-term, with all these short bursts of dopamine that TikTok gives it users.

Was there ever a time in recorded history where this was not claimed?

[deleted]

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#96

Post by mrtksn »

ngold wrote: post #94
mrtksn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, FB and others moved away from being about your friends to become content sharing machines long time ago. It’s like reddit but without sub separation + influencer glamour. Tiktok on the other hand came from purely creative angle. It’s not about your friends, it’s about using creative tools to express something. That’s why TikTok dominated the original new content market. TikTok’s editing tools are ph…

No disrespect, but....Chinese spying company? It's free and you are definitely not the product, but your information and contacts and photos and videos sure look tasty to the CCP.

I'm not American, most of the people aren't and from our perspective FB and TikTok are exactly the same.

In fact, Europeans and British can positively say that FB had a substantial life changing impact due to personal data misuse and political manipulation.

It's one of the core reasons most Europeans would like to see their data protected and Tech giants held accountable. Be it American or Chinese or another one.

You might argue about EU/US alliance and say that CCP are the devil but the fact is, US is documented to spy on scale, have spying partnerships with US tech giant(Google for Snowden and WikiLeaks), rich history of organising coups and political movements and most importantly the political situation in US is also not stable and it's quite possible for Americans to elect EU-hostile president with questionable ties to Russian oligarchs like the last time.

The situation with TikTok might be a new phenomenon for the Americans but it's how the rest of the world has been living in the last 30 years.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#97

Post by Diris »

captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

>Maybe a Mastodon-derivative which deemphasizes the feed, but lets you design your personal page more creatively would be a cool thing.

Like this? https://jasonrobinson.me/ (uses https://socialhome.network/)

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#98

Post by mrex »

achenet wrote: post #88
mrex wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> clear aims of world domination this part I'm not too sure about. Historically speaking, China has been rather "introverted" as a country. They care about making sure their people are well fed and all, but seem to show a distinct lack of imperialism compared to say, the Romans, or Arabs under early Islam, Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany.

>this part I'm not too sure about.

Modern China exhibits genuine imperialism. They've even developed and published plans for dominating world standards bodies by 2035[1]. They're crafting a gigantic blue water navy[2]. They maintain a standing army with larger numbers of soldiers than the US, to put on those ships[3]. And they have no qualms about exerting their power globally, challenging freedom of navigation at sea[4] and territorial integrity on land[5]. In their meticulous and naive way, they are most certainly pursuing a world domination strategy.

[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/27/china-standards-2035-explain...

[2] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-has-modernized-the...

[3] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/29/just-how-strong-is...

[4] - https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/16/asia/us-navy-freedom-of-navig...

[5] - https://news.yahoo.com/china-threatens-forceful-measures-pel...

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#100

Post by enraged_camel »

madeofpalk wrote: post #85
captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

I don't think that gap actually exists. That "directory of people" is now people's whatspp/discord/snapchat/instagram/messenger DMs. I think people are over the one giant hirehose of people you're loosely acquainted with, so social media has split into two extremes - a big feed of content from others, like reddit/tiktok/twitter. And a lot more closed/private groups, like DMs, group chats, and discords.

Yes, the gap does exist. Back in the day you would meet someone IRL, get home and then find a friend request from them on Facebook because they found your page. Sure a lot of those went nowhere, but I became closer friends with a lot of those people as they kept engaging with my posts and uploads.

Adding someone to private groups has a ton more friction. They need to download the app, you need to send them an invite, etc. It’s nowhere near the same as before.

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