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Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

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Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#191

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

nine_k wrote: post #180
Morromist wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.

Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction. There's no comparison.

Discord is designed to gamify communication. It has 'features' like likes, reacts, gifs, roles, badges, etc. Many communities add bots that enable profile leveling, quests, challenges. These things are designed to reward and drive engagement, and lights up the reward centers of the brain. Between an IRC user and a Discord user, the Discord user's going to be much more addicted.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#193

Post by xethos »

notpushkin wrote: post #173
8organicbits wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.

This does solve the problem, although I do hope it doesn’t turn into another Bluesky this way.

I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#194

Post by rustyhancock »

mortsnort wrote: post #154

The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product . These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes. They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.

As is the incessant stream. If there is a pause at all in the next video loading the addicted user can break free.

One of the issues with federated anything is that there will be good servers and bad servers.

Good servers get hammered, and if you're popular you might end up perversely paying for people to watch your videos having to fund your server to maintain its performance.

This happened with mastadon, matrix and will be far worse if they want to deliver tiktoks insane performance.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#195

Post by echelon »

brutal_chaos_ wrote: post #186
mortsnort wrote: post #154

The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product . These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes. They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.

To be fair, you don't need to slay giants to be a viable product.

"nicotine free cigarettes" are a product too.

We have limited time on earth, so many tend to evaluate things on how big of an impact they make or how large of a demand they satisfy.

It's okay if not everything is big, but it's also okay for people to use scale as a criteria for sizing things up.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#196

Post by echelon »

rustyhancock wrote: post #194
mortsnort wrote: post #154

The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product . These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes. They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.

As is the incessant stream. If there is a pause at all in the next video loading the addicted user can break free. One of the issues with federated anything is that there will be good servers and bad servers. Good servers get hammered, and if you're popular you might end up perversely paying for people to watch your videos having to fund your server to maintain its performance. This happened with mastadon, matrix and…

Birth rates took a dip with broadband, smartphones, and TikTok.

Dopamine and attention sinks are pulling society in directions counter to evolutionary programming. Our runtime algorithms optimize for different things.

No value judgment, but it's interesting. I haven't had kids (yet?), and I feel the internet (and the career that revolves around it) is the biggest reason why.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#197

Post by niam »

willis936 wrote: post #190
niam wrote: post #172

I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.

What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid? https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg

We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#198

Post by CqtGLRGcukpy »

It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers.

You can see the recounting of his hostility at https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/

(I'm not a signature of the open letter)

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#199

Post by willis936 »

niam wrote: post #197
willis936 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid? https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg

We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.

Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.

Re: Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

#200

Post by eddythompson80 »

jmyeet wrote: post #54

For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14). And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time sp…

completely agree. Every time I see a "fediverse" on a project, I know its not going anywhere.
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