281–290 of 725 posts
I've never used tiktok, but I do have one question. Does the fact that its in video make it harder for influencers to fake their lives? Or is superficiality still highly prevalent?
I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News of all places. TikTok content comes across as completely vapid. It's like the worst possible mashup of bad television and social media. As a company TikTok seems to have zero goals beyond increasing engagement.
Now does it bring __value__ to my life? No
Will I keep participating and creating content just to engage in these niche communities? Yes
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> The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist. I don't think the only question is "who wins at having the most popular social network." The more concerning one is of exerting political influence through manipulative amplification/suppression (which is something the PRC has a lot of experience with). That could be both highly effective and extre…
What sort of manipulative amplification/suppression, specifically? Maybe a skinner box outrage machine that turns us into hostile tribes sniping over cultural crap while completely unable to govern ourselves as they surpass us?
I don't know if this counts but I was surprised to run into this pro-DPRK account while scrolling recently: https://www.tiktok.com/@dprkorea_?lang=en
It purports to show North Korea through the lens of a hidden camera. Plenty of shots of couples holding hands and playing badminton without nets.
I get the sense that this is propaganda and not genuinely capturing the everyday lives of North Koreans. That said, I can't prove that this is the case.
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Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are obese, queer, or otherwise the target of harassment. Their stance is it's easier to get rid of the person being made fun of or limit who can see their videos rather than the 10k people harassing them. > According to Netzpolitik, the social media company instructed moderators to find users who are “susceptible to harassment or cyberbullying based on their physica…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/style/tiktok-gay-homiesex... Tik Tok is the queerest video platform out there. At least 20% of the videos I get are queer.
It's nice to see the data supports my observation.
I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and prote…
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Another thing Tik Tok does is get rid of people who are obese, queer, or otherwise the target of harassment. Their stance is it's easier to get rid of the person being made fun of or limit who can see their videos rather than the 10k people harassing them. > According to Netzpolitik, the social media company instructed moderators to find users who are “susceptible to harassment or cyberbullying based on their physica…
I would have to disagree with you about the anti-queer slant. Maye it's what I've tuned the algorithm to, but I see far, far, far more queer and people of color on TikTok than any media form I have previously encountered.
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Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic,…
This has been my experience as well. There are countless amazing, small communities on Reddit, and being able to kick the popular subreddits out of my feed makes it feel like one of the last places that embodies the spirit of the early internet. Namely -- small quasi-anonymous communities where people can sincerely discuss niche interests and discover new ones through the serendipity of interaction. Once old.reddit.c…
Interestingly some of the niche subs I'm on also have Discord servers which are lively and interesting, like the days of IRC.
Are we seeing apex Facebook? I still have a lot of friends that use it daily but it's all for things that don't hold a company with a 1T market cap. Anecdotal data: - Facebook usage from my feed it's just older family members posting cheesy political posts and selling items on marketplace - Instagram became a selling channel for brands, be it with their accounts or with "partnerships" with meme/influencer pages. I se…
Are we seeing apex Facebook? I've been thinking this for years now, but there's really nothing to replace it, it has a huge lock-in, and there's not been an underlying technical shift that enables product re-invention. "Social networking" has obviously been around forever, IMO that core technical landscape shift we've seen for 70+ years that results in product evolution has been increasing network connection speed. F…
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Going through a museum, and actively studying individual art deeply is a very different activity mentally, and much more stimulating, than scrolling through a feed passively 15 second clip after clip. It does actually take a sort of literacy to understand and appreciate art. Go talk to anyone about art who has spent a lot of time studying it and then talk to someone who just walks through the museum to take instagram…
>much more stimulating To you, yes. Not everyone is you though. >It does actually take a sort of literacy to understand and appreciate art. No it doesn't. It might add something (or nothing at all or detract from it) but if it is a hard requirement then it isn't art. > Go talk to anyone about art who has spent a lot of time studying it and then talk to someone who just walks through the museum to take instagram pictu…
That being said, it’s much more natural to actively read than to actively watch TikTok. Thus, in practice, reading is often a better activity than watching TikTok. The first chapter or Robert Adler’s “How to Read a Book” talks about active reading in more detail; he has a few more arguments too.
Side note: unless you are a relativist and think everyone’s view about art is equally correct no matter what, the person who studies art is probably “more correct” than the Instagramer; a lot of art requires cultural context (e.g, familiarity with the Bible and Ovid) to understand. If you are a relativist, then why does nearly everyone agree some art belongs in a museum and a lot of art is garbage that nobody cares about?
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If you had an issue with Zuck calling early Facebook users "dumb f**ks," wait until you find out what's going on behind the closed Tik Tok doors. You have to remember - we're still in the honeymoon phase with Tik Tok and haven't learned to hate them yet. Once the media and all your friends start sharing hatred about Tik Tok, leaks are going to start coming out, and there will be all the other fun ways through which w…
Does a US competitor need to be FB? I would like to see a new more privacy focused social experience prop up. It doesn’t need to be a network per se, but it can be. How do we create a fertile bed for development of new connected experiences? Do we already have it? I am wary of venture capital culture that requires outsized gains. Isn’t there a slow stock market concept now?
I would love a system as good as FB actually is (except their site is quite heavy on a decent Laptop) which doesn't eat my data.