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TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

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211–220 of 464 posts

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

#211
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it will never happen, but I would love a resurgence of micro-blogs. All this talk of decentralised social media and all these new solutions, just to full circle back to self-hosted personal blogs. I feel like in the tech circle they never left, but they aren't consumed by the general population.

I don’t think self-hosted will ever happen. Centralisation wins for consumer services. This has been proven even with the crypto shitshow, which revolves by and large around a few centralised platforms. On the other hand, are micro-blogs so different from TikTok stories, other than the format of the content (text vs. video)?

I don’t think self hosting can win either. As you’re saying. I do like the idea of everything like micro blogs not having to be on a central site. Though even that seems unlikely. It would be nice to have the format of blogs again where there’s different subdomains or domains and you can’t directly click thru to get to the rest of the “social media” bigger org.

I sort of described substack here but a bit more personalization and independence if possible.

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

#212
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.

Why default to blaming the students/employees? The educational system and employers have a responsibility to be engaging and enriching if they want interest and passion back from their students/employees. I'm not saying there's no problem with overconsumption of cheap media. But I think we're too quick to jump to blaming individuals. We can just as much flip the question around and ask what educators and employers ar…

This just reeks of entitlement. “Entertain me and engage me! Let no moment of my life ever be touched by confusion or struggle! Spoon feed me everything I can ever want or need!”

Ultimately, it’s not the school’s problem if you don’t learn, it’s yours. You’re the one who’s going to have to go through life not understanding math and whatnot. So if you care to have any agency and control over your own life you better figure out how to learn what you need to know, whether it’s engaging or not.

As for jobs, they’re hiring you to do work, not to be entertained. Don’t like it? Move along to something else then.

The people who feed you an endless stream of engaging content that keeps you mindlessly consuming are not doing it with your best interests at heart.

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

#213

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…

We probably need a social media craigslist that implements the basic features you are describing and then is ok with keeping things running without the need for growth.

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

#215
post #158

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. It has been 6 years since Mastodon should have accelerated to be a viable alternative to Twitter and today the only successful Mastodon-derivative that is in operation is Truth Social; a centralized social network and even that has more users than Mastodon itself. I don't know but t…

Does Truth Social have more people than the rest of Mastadon now? I thought it was mostly a dumpster fire. The SPAC stock isn’t doing well nor the insider behavior.

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really trying to compare a dictatorship state to America? And I say this as as foreigner....you are creating quite the false equivalency here. But muh both sides....People need to stop looking at things in black and white.

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#217

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 thought I would love Facebook but apparently people don't. My family do not share more than a few holiday pictures. No one really shared normal likeable lifevents. WhatsApp groups are totally fine and even showed me how little I care about constant updates from other life's. And no people also don't care what I do. People are busy. Family people think about school issues and handling their daily life and planing a…

Google+ fucked up for a variety of reasons. If you had a Google Apps account, you couldn't sign up at first. You had to have an email address ending in @gmail.com. With that move, Google alienated their most enthusiastic users from the start.

When I finally was able to get a Google+ account with my Google managed email address, it immediately had me following some celebrity and it suggested following other celebrities. I use Facebook for the same reason I use(d) instant message protocols like AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, etc. and now still use Facebook, Discord, Hangouts/gchat/whatevergooglecallsitnow, etc.: To talk to my friends, and to share stuff and organize events with my friends. No interest in using anything Twitter-like. So I didn't. Facebook also has surprisingly good private interest groups, still based around talking to people rather than celebrity/influencer culture.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really trying to compare a dictatorship state to America? And I say this as as foreigner....you are creating quite the false equivalency here. But muh both sides....People need to stop looking at things in black and white.

[flagged]

Which right wing influencers are your favorite? Tim Pool, Peterson, Shapiro, Tucker? Or politicians like Rubio, Paul, DeSantis, Hawley?

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

#219
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think Instagram (The core product, not stories or reels) is to today what Facebook and MySpace where back in the day. Obviously though that is being eroded away by Instagrams lack of confidence and insistence to fight TikTok, which I also find strange I mean yeah its a vertical feed of video but really why you go to it is really different for why you go to IG, TikTok has more in common with YouTube than…

Instagram just did a huge update I think a week or two ago that makes it more like TikTok and people are revolting because it went from "see what friends are up to" to constant ad spam, worse than before. I always think FB/Meta is about to go the way of Myspace with a popularity drop off but I'm clearly biased as I deleted my account years ago and people still talk about using FB a lot.

I was an occasional IG user and that update was really jarring. I figured alright, I guess I’m not an IG user anymore, and I uninstalled the app without much hesitation.

I think the ad spam was what did it. There was enough already, but it’s way over the top now. I had to constantly stop and check if I was seeing something relevant, as though there was never a long enough break from it to just enjoy my friend’s photos.

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

#220
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.

I think we are in for big problems. I graduated from college in 2017 and my adult classmates couldn't even pay attention in class. If adults are hooked then children stand absolutely no chance.

Probably because class is boring. People are happy to watch three hour criminal psychology interrogation videos on YouTube. It's the educators who need to change, not the students.

I've learned a lot more on YouTube than I did in a classroom, and I don't buy the idea that reading is somehow a superior form of learning than video.

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