- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
Signups opened this week for Loops, a short-form looping video app from the creator of Instagram alternative Pixelfed, reports TechCrunch.
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Maybe I’m just old, but I traveled by plane recently (I don’t fly very often) and seeing everyone around me mindlessly scrolling short-form video content was shocking. Looked identical to the people in the space ship in WALL-E.
Dude, it’s the airport. It’s boring as fuck.
So are 10 second videos.
Maybe the next one won’t be boring though
Millions upon millions disagree. Some people are alcoholics and some people can enjoy a drink now and then. It’s the same with short form video content. Not everyone is an addict and I like that I can search something and actually get answers instead of an article or 10 minute video begging for subscribers and 1/3 of the video being an intro.
For what it’s worth, getting in the habit of making excuses for one’s use is part of alcoholism.
I’m not an alcoholic and I’m not addicted to TikTok because I watch it at the airport.
Right, exactly this. Also not ALL of the stuff that’s shortform is brain rot or nonsense. There’s so many different people doing so many different things and if you give it a chance enough to find the things you like it can be as enjoyable as a long form YouTube video or whatever form of media you do consider to be more respectable than short form videos. Dismissing ALL short form content is just silly. And sure if you actually just don’t enjoy it than that’s your thing.
They should go do a crossword puzzle and get off my lawn.
You can have tons of fun at the airport as long as you don’t mind getting on the no-fly list.
Fair, but I traveled for a music festival and saw lots of people pulling up their phones to get a few hits of TikTok/insta when there was a small lull in action. And most of them were with friends. Just enjoy your surroundings.
I was at a party with a small group of friends recently. We were all talking in a group and then one guy started watching tik/insta/whatever with the volume on. Everyone kinda looked at each other like wtf? I asked our friend if he wanted to borrow my headphones to watch that. He took the hint and rejoined the conversation. I still was gobsmacked someone would do that while hanging out with people.
And there are so many things you could do even just on your phone than mindless, objectively bad for your mental health shit like tiktok style content. Watch actual videos about interesting, cool and/or fun things, play a game, talk with a friend etc.
TikTok DOES have videos of interesting, cool, fun, and even educational things. If the algorithm has you on garbage, it’s because of what you watch.
The way you write tells me you are young.
The older you get (and having a family of your own) the more you enjoy the quiet moments, just like the ones when you sit in an airport, waiting for the plane.
It’s really feels like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.
I’m 37 with 2 kids. Sometimes I watch short form videos to kill time when bored. I’m aware of the fact that it’s not great for me. I also drink too much caffeine.
Instagram has been getting me with this. I like to post sometimes, but my friends and I recently compared our screen time stats and I couldn’t believe I was regularly wasting hours a day mindlessly scrolling IG. I uninstalled the app and will just occasionally post from my computer.
WALL-E was depressingly prescient.
TikTok has 2 versions:
One is what we use. People mindlessly scroll brainrot contents with algorithm desinged to as addictive as possible.
Another one is chinese version. It has actualy useful and educative content, but its China only.
I don’t think the national security risk from tiktok is people watching it while waiting an hour for the plane to actually take off.
it’s from the clear boosting of propaganda.
The boosting of propaganda and the identification, tracking and exploitation of government targets.
People in key government positions are still people like us and they love social media too. Having an app on their phone doing data mining can identify people of interest and then collect data, target and compromise them. Even without the app on a government issued phone they can identify key people using their personal phones and then target them for more sophisticated surveillance.
Yeah, fucking sheep!
I also thought about those scenes in Wally when I was walking the dog the other day.
Soon all of us will float around in armchairs and never step outside.
Welcome to the new world.
PS: I am old too.
I don’t think TikTok community is compatible with the idea of fediverse
TikTok exists to give you large floods of endorphins via either an algorithm trained to your interests or by giving you big numbers. And this is not exclusive to TikTok, this is just how modern “social” media works, it’s the sole reason why bluesky succeeded more than mastodon
Modern social media is mostly a hive mind of people affirming each other driven by algorithms. Fediverse on the other hand, always boils down to a old fashioned usenet style network made just so people can talk with each other. You can’t really get addicted to fedi
I wasn’t really alive during the wild west internet (im 19). I got into the net during the transition from forums to modern social media and reddit was my first social. I tried getting into facebook and instagram because everyone else was there but I just didn’t like it much.
I don’t know why but “the algorithm” is really boring for me. I only tried algorithm driven feeds on reddit (after u/spez) and on tumblr but the recommendations were always extremely “fake”. Other sorting methods like “new” or “by most active” just feel more like as if there was someone on the other side of the keyboard
An interesting point, that a lot of younger people might not know: social media wasn’t always like this.
When I joined facebook around 2008-09, it wasn’t algorithm driven, there weren’t even ads. You had a chronological feed of your friends’ interactions, so you could see if someone posts a photo, comments something, or shares a stupid quiz. It was a very-very different feeling compared to what we have now. It was useful and practical, but the enshittification killed it.
I would never sign up for something like this today, absolutely useless - only reason I’m still there is the messaging app, which I use daily with most of my friends/family.
I have been so happy since I’ve adopted the “intentional browsing” concept. It means I am the only one choosing what I want to see so I use NewPipe instead of YouTube, Mastodon instead of Twitter, Lemmy and a RSS reader instead of Reddit. My life has improved so much I am not even kidding. I feel ‘clean’
I don’t think anything is un-addictable (making up words here). I do agree that the social media mindset and fedi are not compatible though, basically because of the algorithm concept.
At the end of the day I hate all social media because they feed me what they think I want to eat. Regardless of how well they do that I hate the concept because I want to decide for myself what I want to partake in. Fedi allows that without getting in my way.
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a bit more subtle than that. While the medium really facilitate the behavior that you describe, I’m pretty sure that it also hosts sane usages, creative content and positive communities.
They don’t have to sell or provide videos to third parties, because they can just do it themselves.
That’s the nature of actual federation. It’s not private.
Yes, and it will still be brainrot.
My attention span is just fine. I don’t need to see it ruined by short format nonsense with about as much intellectual value as the nutritional value of a McDonald’s cheeseburger.
I never installed TikTok or Snapchat on my phone, not because I had privacy concerns, but because I hate everything about the format.
It’s not the format that is the problem. It’s that old rich people from the broadcast industry decided that since they couldn’t compete with the communications and community industry they’d instead turn the communications platforms into broadcast platforms and tear down all of the community aspects. It happened to all of social media including more long form media as well. So if this project can avoid selling out or being manipulated by spammers into becoming yet another broadcast platform, it might have a shot.
It’s absolutely the format. The old rich people just have the incentive to drag everyone into it, to make it something to get “hooked” on. But the format itself is already cancerous.
Omg😱. Round of applause for Mr. Superior here!!!
I’ll take it. Thank you.
How can you hate something that you’ve never tried?
Cultural osmosis.
Just because I never installed TikTok or Snapchat, doesn’t mean I’ve never seen or heard anything from it. Snapchat used to be big, TikTok is even bigger right now, it’s completely impossible to actually avoid seeing anything from it. And then there’s YouTube with their shorts.
for example by being aware that the format is harmful to psychological health
Ignoring the myriad of other issues listed in this thread, the bit about training AI is pretty misleading. It’s not hard to scrape webpages for whatever kind of data you like, even if loops doesn’t outright hand things over for third parties for that purpose.
And the kind of people who are downloading the entire internet to train AIs are the type to be willing to just scrape without permission.
TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful, so I don’t understand why anyone would use this.
TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful
TikTok is profitable because it is addictive. But the idea that short-form video is less useful than print or radio is flawed.
I don’t understand why anyone would use this.
For the same reason someone would turn on the TV, download a podcast, or pick up a magazine.
If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. It seems like an idea worth trying. What is there to lose?
Anyone actually got an email? I have signed up and haven’t gotten one all week :(
Thought I put in the wrong email or something and was super confused for a while myself 😁
Haven’t gotten mine, either. Email said I’d get an invite like that night, but one never came.
ITT: People in their mid-twenties or later, who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media.
Elitism aside, I don’t really see what federation solves here. What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?
A distributed service is much less vulnerable to being bought up by a single narcissistic billionaire who can ruin the online experience of millions of people at once.
A distributed service like Lemmy is spread out over 600 Instances in countries all over the world. If someone buys the most popular Lemmy Instance and wrecks it, those users can simply move to the same communities on the second or third or fourth most popular Instance and the original Instance will wither and die. This also works for communities with power tripping moderators. You can quickly find out through a search which community is the “real” one by the number of subscribers it has.
But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user? They don’t give a fuck about billionaire ownership, moderation, or where an “instance” or server is located.
Well, you should care about it because that’s how online communities get ruined. Case in point: Twitter has become a propaganda tool for an apartheid-loving fascist since he bought it.
Why should a user care about the health of an online community? To them it should “just work”.
(I’m being purposely facetious here, because the average person really doesn’t care about this shit. When Twitter no longer serves its purpose to them they just leave and go to the next place)
Why should a person who goes to the park care about the park?
If people are dumping trash everywhere and all the plants and animals are dying, I assume you wouldn’t like to spend much time there anymore.
Sure another park might be opened, but constantly changing parks isn’t what you want to do long term. If someone buys up the basketball court and turns it into a cesspool of hate, you can unsubscribe from that court and remove it from your park. Adding another one that is nicer, without completely going to a new park.
But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user?
You have more control over your front-page content. If you don’t want to get a particular feed, you unsubscribe from it.
Moderation
I don’t think they’ll be able to do any type of direct competition for TikTok with a lack of advertising and payments You’re not going to draw quality creators. Decentralized algorithm sounds like a nightmare to manage.
However one place they will have some advantage is censorship. Anything that’s not explicitly illegal Will be a hell of a lot harder to stamp out. Moderation will probably be very light.
who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media
I don’t watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.
What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?
I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.
But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You’re still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you’re going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.
But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you’ve got a degree of control (I don’t have to listen to Rogan if I don’t want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.
You may see shorts in lemmy in the near future because of that.
Awesome! This sounds like a much better way for me to share the occasional video of either or both of my dogs being super cute on c/dogs (and on other non-Lemmy forums) than relying on an anonymous YouTube account.
(I may have partially used this post as an excuse to share a video of one of my dogs being super cute.)
Who is going to pay to host all this content?
Also wish it were 5 or 10 minute limit rather than 60 seconds.
Yeah, was my first thought as well. As far as I can see it’s the same problem PeerTube is having and last I checked, were still trying to solve. (For context: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/5783 )
My thought was that the video loading probably isn’t going to be nearly as fast as TikTok because of the money behind their servers and optimization.
Bröthër, whërë ärë my lööps?
big Pete why are you so BIG
Headline should say coming TO the Fediverse.
“It’s coming for you!” has a more aggressive meaning.
It’s comin’ right for us!
anyone actually get an account? i signed up as soon as it was announced a year or so ago and haven’t heard a peep.
This is pretty cool. I’ll check it out.
I signed up for Loops the first day. I didn’t get an email confirmation until two days after, and I still haven’t been given a way to sign in.
