371–380 of 503 posts
I've been spending more time on Discord. It is replaced forums and subreddits for many of my interests like synthesizers and music. I don't like that the information is stored in a chat-style vs posts.
I don't like that all the info is locked up and not indexable and searchable on search engines.
> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…
I think Mastodon or the other Fediverse projects do provide all we need, but the problems with getting there are awareness, intransigence, and excitement which the advertising networks provide. Most people are unaware of this free alternative because it doesn't advertise itself. Effort to change and migrate is too much for many people. Entertainment creation does not provide much if any revenue on free platforms. So…
Propietary products are usually more curated in features and stability than the free options, and those reach the market quickly. Big companies have money, free comunities do not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.
Same here. I completely blocked myself from accessing to YouTube on my smartphone and MacBook, just because of the shorts. This stuff is so addictive that I couldn't avoid it in my free time for dozens of minutes every single time I've opened youtube.
All I get is Family Guy, sigma grindset nonsense, and military stuff. I hate all of those.
TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. That's basically the whole story. Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally useful…
YouTube is video first. I think TikTok is winning because their objective algorithm optimizes for a different outcome. Facebook and YouTube optimize for time spent on the site. Youtube famously cut ad revenue for content that is watched for fewer than 10 minutes. They both make decisions based on what will increase time spent on the site, thinking that's the best way to sell ads. TikTok optimizes for content that peo…
Sometimes you don't want long form content.
> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…
A threadmill of products to "bring the world together" under different names and mottos but all sooner or later devolving into advertisement machines. Maybe next: WhatsApp, then Signal then Mastodon? For this to happen, founders just need to sell out, for example to Meta. WhatsApp already sold out but did not yet pivot.
> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…
This article filled me with hope, but I already see a danger: A threadmill of products to "bring the world together" under different names and mottos but all sooner or later devolving into advertisement machines. Maybe next: WhatsApp, then Signal then Mastodon? For this to happen, founders just need to sell out, for example to Meta. WhatsApp already sold out but did not yet pivot.
Discord is becoming huge - just people, chatting. Like it was when I started using internet and IRC
I was just chatting about the “golden years” of Facebook with a friend today. I think it was about 10 years ago. Maybe we’re over-glamorizing the past, but at least the way we recall it: Around 2012-2014, the newsfeed mostly was just updates from your friends with some ads sprinkled in. Everyone was on Facebook, so if you were hosting a social event, you could just invite everyone on Facebook and they’d hear about it…
My wife and I have never used Facebook. We would miss invites to things all the time since everyone assumes that everyone was on there and forgot that we were not. We used it as a litmus test to figure out who our true friends were. Fortunately now all of our friends have abandoned social media in favor of group texts.
For that reason I think that what we think of as social networks really are dead. It's not what people truly wanted in the first place.
TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. That's basically the whole story. Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally useful…
My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.