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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

#261

Post by kritiko »

robertlagrant wrote: post #239
ghaff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's one specific communications channel. You mostly don't socially call people out of the blue outside of a very tight circle of friends and family--and cell phone numbers can't be looked up in general. However, many people--especially professionals--have LinkedIn profiles. And many in general can be searched on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Given someone's name and maybe a little more information about them, you…

The point being was there used to just be a big book with everyone in it, and now there isn't, and probably never could be again with how we all now feel about and regulate data privacy.

There are so many services now that have data scraped from various sources - many of them charge money, but they're readily available, even with increasing privacy laws.

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

#262

Post by lovehashbrowns »

nivenkos wrote: post #107
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #47

Tiktok is a far superior social network compared to Facebook and the others. Good that it is taking over the US.

Yeah, I don't understand all the negativity here. I met one of my friends on TikTok, on a post about an event going on in the city (when I'd just moved). It's much more social than Instagram, etc. IMO.

Having just moved to Austin, this is something I’m curious about. How easy is it to be social on TikTok? From my limited outside perspective, it seems the primary use of TikTok is watching videos, which doesn’t lend itself well to discussion or actually getting to know someone.

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

#263

Post by psyc »

rr888 wrote: post #226
fragmede wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok has its share of enraging material if you go looking for it. The genius of their presentation is it effectively doesn't exist unless the algorithm decides to show you that content. When presented with that content, if you scroll away fast enough, it won't be presented again.

> if you scroll away fast enough I love that quote, its like being in the jungle and if you can't run away fast enough you'll be attacked by the flesh eating bugs.

That's exactly what it was like for me. I played with it for a couple of months. I had a tendency to frown at, SMDH at, rubberneck some dumb videos for a half second too long it seems. That magical FYP of great stuff never happened for me. I got like 70% stuff that makes me... huh, I don't know what the emotion is, but it's negative. Irked maybe.

At any rate I ultimately decided I absolutely do not need any part of TikTok in my life.

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

#264

Post by mrex »

SilverBirch wrote: post #110
mrex wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 se…

I'm not sure any of this stands out to me as particularly imperialistic. The standards thing just seems like a sensible move to try and get leadership in high tech industries, which any country would be smart to do. As for the military aspects, I think this is a bit funny. China has 2m active military personnel vs 1.3m US active personnel, which doesn't seem outlandish whey you compare populations. As for the fleet a…

>All these disputes are quite clearly about China being pissed off that the US is projecting power right on their doorstep.

The South China Seas dispute is, in fact, primarily between China and a series of smaller nations like the Philippines and Japan. International governing bodies including an UNCLOS tribunal have consistently ruled against China's claims of sovereignty to open sea, but China keeps on doing it anyway.

That's not imperial behavior?

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

#265

Post by dimitrios1 »

ironlake wrote: post #255
_fat_santa wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is that kind of stuff is just not profitable anymore. IMO it shouldn't be a company like FB running a people directory, it should be something mastodon. The utopian future I would like for social media is if we had a protocol for a people directory social network. It would function in much the same way as facebook pages or your myspace page. Most users will just sign up for a service, technical user…

>fediverse needs to go mainstream. Mastodon has been around for more than five years, and the idea of decentralized social networks long before that. Email, from a user standpoint, was much like Mastodon: a protocol that you consumed with software of your choice. But it was never a great experience for the average user, then gmail made it a great experience. People switched very quickly. The experience has to be firs…

Just want to highlight that this is a very tech-focused perspective. "If we make it good enough people will use it!"

Also is there room in this utopia for people who want their privacy and secrecy? Will they be disadvantaged if they don't participate in this digital phone booth? My gut tells me yes.

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

#266

Post by jnwatson »

desindol wrote: post #186
slategruen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I believe the world is way more anonymous now when I grew up you could basically take the phone book look a name up and just call them. That's now mostly impossible.

Not really. I had to look up the addresses of 50 distant relatives for sending out a graduation announcement and it was almost trivial to find everyone (along with their past addresses and possible associates). It just isn’t on well-known sites.

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

#267

Post by mistrial9 »

kritiko wrote: post #254
decafninja wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Is such a business model like Facebook circa late 2000s simply not viable? How did Facebook make money back then before they turned "evil"?

To quote Abe Simpson, "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it , and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you..." Facebook late 2000s was a very utopian vision of the social graph with Obama staffers bragging about the same tactics that were demonized by Cambridge Analytica. If anything, Facebook was more evil because of the data leakage then. The way that…

as a FB sceptic and part of a Berkeley data science community, I visited FB on a group tour, in the first weeks of opening the Menlo Park Campus. We were told explicitly, with a ten meter wide screen in the back, that any analytics could run on their Map-Reduce stack for pay. The example was "people who bowl in the Minneapolis area" or something. Some nod to political or sexual extensions to that was implied but not explained. "You can run your code jobs on this data. We have customers now" the spokesperson announced to the Berkeley data science crowd of about 45 people. I regret not recording it on video.

Much later, after personally running away from anything FB, this Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, and a picture of Zuck and wife walking with the King of Spain was publicized, and a picture of FB COO Cheryl Sandberg on a tour of a US Aircraft carrier and the fleet admiral in dress uniform was publicized -- I do not know how these transitions were managed socially but ... ?? How could anyone not see this?

ugly, creepy.. against the whole FB consolidation here, from Day Zero.

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

#268

Post by calvinmorrison »

nemo44x wrote: post #257

Social media and Websites in general are like TV shows or recording artists - they exist within an era and eventually become legacy/classic and irrelevant to the new youth culture. No one wants to engage with the same cultural artifacts of their parents or the previous generation. They want to establish themselves as a distinct cultural era and need symbols, etc that are distinct.

which is why facebook was smart to buy instagram (checks notes) 10 years ago. Time for them to buy the next gen interface for socializing with friends for zoomers

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

#270

Post by kick_in_the_dor »

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.

I feel like I started this way (in middle school and high school), but grew out of it over time. Basically had a video game addiction and could not for the life of me long-term-goal anything outside of school.

I think eventually I found that these short-term sweets are quite unfulfilling in the long-term, and now enjoy less immediately-stimulating hobbies like fitness, reading, learning, etc.

Hopefully people can grow out of this as they age.

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