I have concerns about the success of this platform. I am convinced what makes TikTok great isn’t necessarily the algorithm (its good, no doubt) but the volume of content. There are so many users producing content that the amount of content you find enjoyable is always more than you could scroll through in a day.
A platform like this will be boring pretty fast when you scroll through the 100 new videos uploaded that day in an single hour, and you skip many of them. It’s tough to generate enough content without enough users, and most of the content will likely just be aggregated from the other short-form sites. Of course that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a more privacy-friendly way to browse that content, which is a plus.
Also, not particularly a fan of more brain-rotting short form content. It’s crazy how addictive it is and I’m wanting less, not more. But if I had to choose a “shorts” platform I’d sure like a federated, free one to be the one to succeed. But it’s got a long way to go
Would be nice if it would pull short vids from PeerTube or other fedi platforms.
Never really used tiktok, partially because I don’t get addicted to video like I do reading text. Video is too slow for my ADHD brain, and you can’t choose your content beforehand.
But I’d still pick up this platform to help it get traction.
@notnotmike @yogthos the addictive characteristic of Tiktok isn’t about a massive amount of quality, but quantity hidden among mid quality content. Just all grade-A content wouldn’t set off the dopamine that getting dud, after dud, after dud, jackpot, dud again, dud, dud, dud, dud, maybe jackpot no, dud, dud, dud… is a clear path to dopamine
Much like a slot machine, the algorithm can intersperse jackpot and near jackpot amongst mostly dud content that makes it very addictive.
I recon bots that are scraping other platforms content might be a way to get things going. What we need to be doing across all federated media is make it profitable for all the content creators to post to federated media as well as mainstream bs. Perhaps we need a standardised donations model I would recommend monero as the currency totally anonymous proven to be a relatively stable currency, and its easy for anyone to implement without all the bureaucratic bs.
