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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

#311

Post by micromacrofoot »

smoldesu wrote: post #286
micromacrofoot wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People weren't happy with Instagram selling to Facebook, but the bigger problems and general drag of Facebook being Facebook didn't exist at the time. Now selling to Facebook is almost a surefire way to lose street cred. Snapchat famously said no to $3bn, and TikTok probably wouldn't consider it for any amount. I really can't imagine any situation where a younger gen z kid finds anything Facebook owns cool. I think t…

> I really can't imagine any situation where a younger gen z kid finds anything Facebook owns cool. Really? Things must be different now, I remember Instagram being the most popular social media platform at my high school.

I'm specifically talking about younger gen z... 14 and 15 year olds today.

I might be basing too much on a few anecdotes, but it seems Instagram is heading the way of Facebook in terms of generational "coolness." I suspect it's just starting to hit a wall similar to Facebook did. TikTok is eating all of it.

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

#312

Post by fleetwoodsnack »

Agamus wrote: post #284
concordDance wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might seem like long time ago but American-made social media was riddled with conspiracy theorist and white supremacists I reckon that even at its height the type of people likely to be labeled conspiracy theorists and white supremacists were more common offline than online. I'd bet at least 40% of Americans have views that if stated online would get them a white supremacist label and I bet the figure for conspi…

> I reckon that even at its height the type of people likely to be labeled conspiracy theorists and white supremacists were more common offline than online. My ~50 years of life experience leads me to suspect the exact opposite. New fancy soapboxes have distorted our understanding of each other, deeply. They amplify, magnify, and otherwise inflate the sense that fringe ideas are more widely represented.

Agreed. It was hard seeing a professor whom I admired slowly transform over the course of the last ten years into a conspiracy theorist and alt-right content propagandist. He used to reliably offer the on-the-other-hand perspective, but knew what he was doing and generally kept a level head. Once his “devil’s advocacy” started getting him attention and likes on social media, it started to be more and more his focus until the persona became the person.

Very sad to see. He has fewer friends among his students and colleagues but a cadre of online followers gathered from who-knows-where.

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

#313

Post by robertlagrant »

ghaff wrote: post #247
robertlagrant wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you honestly think that you can't find out a heck of a lot more about people in general quite easily than you could in the white pages? (Which also required you to know the town/city where they lived.) For one thing, if you own a house, that's a matter of public record. Fortunately most of the deep search tools have gone behind paywalls but it's still trivial to find out a lot about someone especially if they have…

> Do you honestly think that you can't find out a heck of a lot more about people in general quite easily than you could in the white pages?

No. I never said anything of the sort.

Yes it's possible, but not as by design as a book delivered to everyone's dwelling with the express purpose of giving you some of their information.

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

#314

Post by concordDance »

Agamus wrote: post #284
concordDance wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might seem like long time ago but American-made social media was riddled with conspiracy theorist and white supremacists I reckon that even at its height the type of people likely to be labeled conspiracy theorists and white supremacists were more common offline than online. I'd bet at least 40% of Americans have views that if stated online would get them a white supremacist label and I bet the figure for conspi…

> I reckon that even at its height the type of people likely to be labeled conspiracy theorists and white supremacists were more common offline than online. My ~50 years of life experience leads me to suspect the exact opposite. New fancy soapboxes have distorted our understanding of each other, deeply. They amplify, magnify, and otherwise inflate the sense that fringe ideas are more widely represented.

> My ~50 years of life experience leads me to suspect the exact opposite.

Duration/number of datapoints is less important than sampling. What is your sampling?

My own sampling is from talking to people next to me on trains around south east England. This is obviously not a completely random distribution, but it's much more representative than my friends, family, colleagues and online acquaintances.

Our filter bubbles are incredibly strong.

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

#315

Post by ajot »

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?

Youngsters and modern times have been condemned since times immemorial

https://redd.it/7btv14

https://xkcd.com/1227/

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

#316

Post by woweoe »

skinnymuch wrote: post #205
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #180

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…

IG doesn’t have any of the people directory. It’s heavily focused on bigger brands, profiles, influencers, and seeing random stuff from these entities I have no personal relation with. Facebook of old was like what the OP was saying. IG is only marginally like that with friends pic posts. This is regardless of whatever tiktok stuff since I don’t use IG much for the same reasons as OP.

Facebook was popular in the era when it wasn't used as a people directory however. It was used as instagram is currently until older people came in and the website became very commercialized.

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

#317

Post by madeofpalk »

enraged_camel wrote: post #100
madeofpalk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I just met someone at the park - they added me on whatsapp and invited me into a local community group.

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

#318

Post by arrosenberg »

baby wrote: post #253
Noe2097 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the money that FB "generates" is literally insane, and doesn't make sense for a single company to generate. Possibly a mastodon based solution where users pay a small recurring fee for server management and some R&D and offering privacy, could generate enough benefits for a company (or companies) to strive. FB (among others) made us forget the sense of scale and the value of things, including the value of pr…

Most people would not be willing to pay for this, QED

If people aren’t willing to pay for it, its either a social service or it shouldn’t exist. Facebook continued existence is subsidized by extremely lax regulation in the advertising industry.

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

#319

Post by benibela »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #125
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 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.

Or just a personal webpage with a guestbook.

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

#320

Post by phreack »

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…

Have you looked at Tumblr lately? It always sounds just like what people say they miss nowadays from social media. Its feed is chronological by default (for now), and it does allow you to customize your own page in a lot of ways. I feel it's inevitable that it'll become a soulless ad space like all others eventually, but it's not there yet.

They're trying to monetize it with different approaches at the time like being able to boost a post's visibility without giving you any targeting tools, tipping, or giving another user a button to spawn crabs on the UI for a day.

Will it last? Probably not! But it's not a terribly awful dystopic place yet.

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