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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

#321

Post by woweoe »

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…

Facebook was never a peoples directory at the start. It was similar to how instagram is now because you could only find your friends and other people your age in your area. Instagram keeps this by not being a peoples directory and thats how the original facebook users want to keep things.

From the perspective of Europe and Asia at least, the rise of the far-right and far-left was already in motion by 2006 and was catapulted by a combination of increasing tensions with Muslim minority groups and the Great Recession. It is almost a steady rise rather than something fueled by social media. The social media in these regions is probably too left-wing for the mainstream.

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

#322

Post by upupandup »

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.

think this is the new "opium" war that China engages in, our minds. Reduce the young generation to become emotional, depressed from dopamine fatigue, reduce their attention span and they have zero chance of rebellion.

hmmm yes but its a different type of addiction. In video games you still had to pay attention and at worst you'd develop some type of muscle memory or familiarity with a level but you were still focused on the game for hours.

TikTok and other short term media seems to have disastrous consequences for the young developing minds. Your setting up your brain to focus in short bursts and it immediately expects a dopamine hit.

I think we are already seeing signs of this amongst the Z generation, mental illness and well-being is reportedly lowest out of all demographics, and its puzzling why policy makers aren't taking note of this.

If I wanted to make the young generation of a hostile nation weak, ineffective, this is how I would do it. Create something that appeals to them, and turn the into dopamine fiends. It's no different than creating addicts that relies on other substances but because nothing is ingested, this type of neural behavioral programming is not seen as urgent.

I'm glad I don't have kids, I would be so stressed out about them in today's world. It's a completely different environment than the one we grew up with.

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

#323

Post by fragmede »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #265
ironlake wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Those that don't have Facebook are already disadvantaged in that way. They don't get invited to the party, they aren't told about life updates via the feed. But you soon self-select for friends that don't use Facebook and that do invite you to parties and tell you about things.

That same divide isn't going to go away, no matter the technology. (ofc replace Facebook with whatever app is popular with your group.)

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

#324

Post by fragmede »

baby wrote: post #249
_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…

> IMO it shouldn't be a company like FB running a people directory, it should be something mastodon It really is not a technological problem, it's a "how do you get everyone to sign up" problem, which FB has solved. I don't think we'll see another company solve this in a very long time, unless they hit the jackpot while really focusing on creating a USEFUL product for their users.

That said, there is a concept of friction for signups, and that's something TikTok does well with their UX. You open the app and are immediately in the app, no sign up. After using the app for a bit you can go and customize your username and such so that you're not a generic username, and you're able to find and be found by friends on the app, but that's optional.

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

#325

Post by woweoe »

varispeed wrote: post #119

I could never get Twitter. I remember friends being excited by it, but to me it was just adding short text to a page that probably nobody is going to see anyway. Then Instagram - I couldn't get that either. I put my photos up and what? I could do that on a forum with people with common interest. Eventually forums got closed so I realised you can add a # with the topic you photos / videos are about. But this is so lim…

Facebook was just a way to talk to your friends and replaced Yahoo! Messenger, except that you could find new friends your age in your area as well. This worked because the rest of society wasn't aware of Facebook. LinkedIn might be a better candidate for a personal directory.

Twitter and Instagram are both ways to connect to people you do not know, but the former is genuinely about finding people to which you share some interest, whereas the former is still mostly about adding friends that you already know. Instagram replaced most of the functions of Facebook that I described in the first paragraph.

TikTok is basically the video version of Twitter with a good algorithm that finds new content you might like.

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

#326

Post by fragmede »

cpcallen wrote: post #307
_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…

> that kind of stuff is just not profitable anymore. It wasn't profitable back then either, alas—which is why Facebook has repeatedly pivoted to less useful, more annoying, but more monetizable offerings.

Facebook takes in giant piles of money, it just doesn't have the growth wall street has come to expect.

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

#327

Post by phreack »

With the decline of Instagram, and Facebook's like of vision and product, I wonder if it's time for a new site to share pictures (and specifically not video since it seems to be cursed) with friends.

I see people uploading pictures to Instagram less and less each day, where they'd have over a hundred at once before, but it's not that they don't want to, it's just that the app feels too complex and repelling.

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

#328

Post by anonu »

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 think there's a substantial part of society who don't want to be part of the people directory.

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

#329

Post by woweoe »

baby wrote: post #149
alexvoda wrote: post #99

I still wish for a clone of Google+ v1 to succeed and replace Facebook. Sometimes i still wonder why it failed.

IMO Facebook used to be perfect, and can still be if they split the content platform from the close social networking platform. Not because you are forced to use the content platform, but I think it drives people away. I got a close friend who deleted his facebook account and I can't find him anymore, nobody knows how to contact him, I went twice to his city and couldn't reach out to him.

LinkedIn would be the best replacement for a peoples directory because it has a certain professional air to it. Facebook initially was a casual platform similar to Instagram.

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

#330

Post by ergocoder »

baby wrote: post #147
someonenice wrote: post #52

Tiktok here does not force you to login for watching the videos (unless you want to like / comment / subscribe etc.. ). And also allows downloading the videos right from the app (if the creator has enabled download for the video), so I download the ones that are to be bookmarked. This is in stark contrast to what the FB and Insta like companies do. Since I don't login, I use multiple devices to access tiktok. And I n…

Surely Tiktok will change to do exactly this in the future, that's what they all do.

I don't think they will. Tiktok is a creator platform. More audience is better.

Instagram has left a huge gap by forcing everyone to login.

IMO, Instagram and Twitter are using the wrong metrics which ignore non-login users. They focus on converting users to logged-in. They don't focus on delivering maximum value.

For downloading, I can see that go away though.

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