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TikTok’s Poison Pill

calnewport.com

291–300 of 430 posts

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#291

Something I've never understood about these pivots from successful, revenue generating products. Sure, some users will leave Instagram for Tiktok. But isn't it a different product? Wouldn't Meta have been better off creating a new product and integrating it with Instagram, rather than killing the golden goose? This kind of thing seems to happen really often.

They already have a tab called Reels inside of Instagram, I tried using it instead of TikTok and it was fucking awful at trying to learn what videos I liked. It seems that they're just gonna force the video format on everyone in order to get better learning data?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users Because the U.S. has access to and therefore benefits from the data that these companies collect. The exception on that list is TikTok - the U.S. can't access that data, but their rival can. That's why they're keen on banning it.

Respectfully... Does anyone really think the NSA are not able to access Tiktok? Or that Chinese equivalent orgs are not able to access Facebook etc? Really? This whole thing is just the cultural side of people pushing a new cold war for self serving purposes (increase my budget, grant me more powers, buy my newspaper etc). I'm not saying China is great, I'm just saying this seems very much like a made up issue to me.

TikTok is already a NATO propaganda app anyway.

https://archive.ph/qYSsL

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#294
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while many struggles with the mental gymnastic, for me it has always been clear-cut. Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it? Did any harm come to Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Adam Driver for portraying real life events depicting US government in lesser light? Can the same be said to Fan Bing Bing if she is to portray Li Wenliang in a movie? Or Viktor Bychkov playing Navalny in some sort of biopi…

How would you know if someone less famous got disappeared? How would you evaluate the claim from people who say they saw it happen?

Almost everyone living in the US has some sort of record. They went to school, had friends, teachers, family, etc.

It's unlikely you wouldn't know someone has disappeared, especially if they were important enough that the government decided to illegally disappear them.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course it matters. Is it sufficient? Probably not. But it’s a substantial improvement over not being able to e.g. protest the government. Anyway, our government isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting, which despite all its flaws does shift inertia.

> isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting Even voting within states are completely rigged with gerrymandering and popular vote means nothing in national elections.

This is a disingenuous pattern of argument. You point out a known problem and then throw the baby out with the bath water. In this case, its clear voting does have some effect because seats are constantly changing parties, and parties fiercely compete for votes.

Other similar examples of this argument:

"Everyone knows taxes go to corrupt corporations, they are completely useless get rid of them"

"Everyone knows masks dont block 100% of airflow, theyre completely useless!"

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#296

Something I've never understood about these pivots from successful, revenue generating products. Sure, some users will leave Instagram for Tiktok. But isn't it a different product? Wouldn't Meta have been better off creating a new product and integrating it with Instagram, rather than killing the golden goose? This kind of thing seems to happen really often.

is there any evidence that the pivots actually "kill the golden goose"? facebook has a long history of making product changes that initially cause a lot of complaining from existing users. they seem to be making a bet that existing users are addicted enough to the product that a change to it won't drive them away. and so far that seems to have worked for them.

There has been push back against the more algorithmic content they are pushing because it gets in the way of the post of people you follow. I use Instagram to follow some artists and design companies, and it's frustrating when every other post is not the people I follow, but some bad influencer vaguely related to your interests begging for likes and follows. Previously, they had suggested posts after you scrolled a bit or after you've caught up with everyone you follow.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#297
post #153

TikTok makes me incredibly angry and I need to vent about it somewhere so I am going to vent about it here. I have ADHD. TikTok is almost certainly designed in a way to directly exploit that fact. It really makes me angry. It feels like they are making a real attempt to take my agency away and to create a product that triggers me so viscerally that I can't keep away from it. I feel like I am intentionally being taken…

> I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok.

Well, you are. That's true for all of the "attention economy".

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#298
post #22

“… we just might be left with more breathing room for smaller, more authentic, more human online engagements.” Like talking and writing directly to a chosen audience of friends instead of acting as an unpaid or low paid content creator / publisher for a social media company? Any examples of recent apps that might accomplish this goal pf authentic human online engagements? Seems like the difficulty is getting enough u…

It's not recent but IRC is good for authentic human online engagements.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#299

Something I've never understood about these pivots from successful, revenue generating products. Sure, some users will leave Instagram for Tiktok. But isn't it a different product? Wouldn't Meta have been better off creating a new product and integrating it with Instagram, rather than killing the golden goose? This kind of thing seems to happen really often.

From what I've read, Meta's strategy (and valuation) ultimately relies on 'ubiquity' (as they put it) - where everyone on earth has a Meta account and uses it. The stall in user growth is accompanied by a massive decrease in the company's valuation as a result of this, so they do the classic "what's working for the competition" action. I've not had a FB account for years, and didn't use it other than for messenger fo…

> The stall in user growth is accompanied by a massive decrease in the company's valuation

That's because of unrealistic expectation from the stock market, not due to the company's health. A stall in user growth means a limit to the company size, and investors were betting that after the IPO Facebook (that was already used by a large share of the humanity) would still grow by two orders of magnitude.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#300
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a video app, exercise some self-discipline and self-accountability and uninstall the app.

Exercise some self-discipline and read what I wrote. I did uninstall it.

Yes, I read that, I am speaking in the general sense with respect to remarks such as "it feels like they are making a real attempt to take my agency" and "I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok". I can see why that's not clear though, so fair critique.

I understand you literally removed the app from your phone, but framing yourself as hapless prey without any agency negates the ethos of self accountability and self discipline.

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