The loop of watching a short video then being tossed to the next before you have time to realize what’s going on is sucking people’s time and getting them addicted. With YouTube, you have videos...
The loop of watching a short video then being tossed to the next before you have time to realize what’s going on is sucking people’s time and getting them addicted. With YouTube, you have videos of varying length and generally have to make a conscious choice as to what to watch next. It can, of course, also be addicting, but TikTok seems to be on another level.
I’ve avoided TikTok for that reason. The other day I watched a YouTube Short (their TikTok clone) because I knew the creator and was interested in the topic, but then I realized six videos in what was happening—I only intended on watching the one video.
The videos have a time-limit designed to keep your attention-span then get you onto the next one before you lose interest, and it works.
My uncle, who is not a heavy social media user and not fucking crazy has become addicted to TikTok, and its peddling him dangerous conspiracies. He’d watch them knowing that these people are crazy as a means to mock them, but slowly the exposure is getting to him and he’s starting to believe them.
I’ve been trying to cut out social media, and all I use now is Reddit (and Tildes) with a 30-minute time limit. With TikTok, I don’t think people could stick to a 30-minute timer.
I remember when my parents had this level of alarmism over the new things I spent my time on. When I was a teenager it was MySpace and Grand Theft Auto that were "ruining kids these days". I get...
I remember when my parents had this level of alarmism over the new things I spent my time on. When I was a teenager it was MySpace and Grand Theft Auto that were "ruining kids these days".
I get it now that I'm older and these new things are foreign to me, but remembering how overblown the fears were during my childhood makes me skeptical about the fears my peers have today. I think young people are smarter and more resilient than we give them credit for.
Frankly I am much more worried for older people, because they seem to be much more impacted by this general category of things and tend to have greater network effects.
Frankly I am much more worried for older people, because they seem to be much more impacted by this general category of things and tend to have greater network effects.
Moreover a lot of older folk don't have the social wisdom in their friend networks to help them steer out of bad habits. It's as if a new generation discovered alcohol but had nobody at the bar to...
Moreover a lot of older folk don't have the social wisdom in their friend networks to help them steer out of bad habits. It's as if a new generation discovered alcohol but had nobody at the bar to cut them off and call them a cab.
Honestly, the level of alarmism my parents had about my videogame usage was warranted. I'm wary of automatically labeling any parental concern about new things as overblown satanic panic style...
Honestly, the level of alarmism my parents had about my videogame usage was warranted.
I'm wary of automatically labeling any parental concern about new things as overblown satanic panic style mania, because there are a lot of things that kids do that they are right to be concerned about.
For me, it resulted in me barely passing highschool because I was completely dependent on and addicted to video games, something that I still struggle with to this day. Social media was just starting to become a thing when I was growing up, and concerns about the harmful effects of that were warranted in my mind as well. I think there are a ton of social dysfunctions that can be traced to (ab)use of technology by younger folks.
I had a quick go at tiktok to understand what is going on and I agree it can create a very dangerous addiction and time suck. I ended up not getting addicted because I found the content to be...
I had a quick go at tiktok to understand what is going on and I agree it can create a very dangerous addiction and time suck. I ended up not getting addicted because I found the content to be funny at first but quickly boring.
The interesting thing I found is the amount of blatant bullshit posing to be informative or useful. Like one video showed off a bicycle with square gears and claimed this results in 90% lower fatigue. But if you apply half a seconds thought to that, why would pro cyclists all still use round gears if something so trivial had a 90% improvement.
But this video had millions of likes and I suspect most of them just accept this as fact and will later repeat to people that square gears work better
Ah, that's a bummer on two counts! I'd guess a lot of new platforms get a boost by repackaging or "freebooting" content. I looked it up because it reminded me of the sort of reinvented wheel of...
Ah, that's a bummer on two counts! I'd guess a lot of new platforms get a boost by repackaging or "freebooting" content.
I looked it up because it reminded me of the sort of reinvented wheel of Theo Jansen's straandbeests that worked better on sand. Apparently someone did make a walking bicycle.
I suspect most of them just accept this as fact and will later repeat to people
When I was young I think I passed on credulously that North Korea had invaded South Korea with millions of soldiers from some Drudge Report article someone posted. Like you said, a second of thought should have made it obvious that was fake. Maybe things like that were grist for the mill, though, in getting a little bit of media savvy.
What threw me is that tiktok has a large selection of these micro documentary style videos that try to teach some fact in 40 seconds. And this video was in exactly the same style as those while...
What threw me is that tiktok has a large selection of these micro documentary style videos that try to teach some fact in 40 seconds. And this video was in exactly the same style as those while the YouTube one is clearly a joke.
That's an interesting thought actually. If you align non-roundness carefully with when in the pedal cycle most force is available, maybe that could actually work. Then again, someone has probably...
That's an interesting thought actually. If you align non-roundness carefully with when in the pedal cycle most force is available, maybe that could actually work.
Then again, someone has probably already thought of this and it doesn't work for one reason or another.
I'm not sure what you mean by square gears. But whatever the claim was cannot be judged like this alone. 90% lower fatigue might not mean a 90% improvement ... It might just mean the video isn't...
I'm not sure what you mean by square gears. But whatever the claim was cannot be judged like this alone. 90% lower fatigue might not mean a 90% improvement ... It might just mean the video isn't telling you about other drawbacks.
I’m curious about this. I haven’t ever used TikTok directly, but my wife sometimes shows me videos from TikTok that other people post on Facebook. This might only be a Facebook thing, but usually...
I’m curious about this. I haven’t ever used TikTok directly, but my wife sometimes shows me videos from TikTok that other people post on Facebook. This might only be a Facebook thing, but usually she’ll start watching a video and halfway through, she’ll say, “Oh you should watch this!” She’ll hit pause, slide across the couch to show me her screen then realize, there’s no way to rewind the video to the beginning. Sometimes when it gets to the end, it repeats, but sometimes it just jumps to the next video and there’s no way to go back and re-watch what you just saw. You can’t use the browser’s back button because that will just take you to the last Facebook page you visited. If you reload, sometimes the video resets, sometimes it disappears altogether. Usually finding it again takes tons of scrolling to get back to where you were. My question is, who wants this? Is this how their app or website are, too? Or do they think it’s a way to get you to go to their site instead of consuming the video on Facebook? All it’s done for me is made me think that both Facebook and TikTok are horrible experiences that I don’t want to be a part of.
EDIT: And I should add that for years, I thought YouTube was completely broken by design. They used to have some limit on how many times an embedded video could be viewed on another website, after which it wouldn’t play and would give some cryptic error that apparently meant, “Go to YouTube to actually watch this.” So I just never watched any YouTube videos because they were all broken. I didn’t know to go to the site because the error message was so bad, and I probably wouldn’t have done so anyway because I value my time more than that.
My GF uses TikTok and i asked her her opinion of TikTok algos, and she agrees TikTok's algos is way ahead to YouTube, also she highlighted how TikTok is less ad invasive than YouTube, YouTube ads...
My GF uses TikTok and i asked her her opinion of TikTok algos, and she agrees TikTok's algos is way ahead to YouTube, also she highlighted how TikTok is less ad invasive than YouTube, YouTube ads are already way out of the line and TikTok ads do not disturb user experience of using their app.
Also TikTok is already available for Android TV, the app is way better than the official YouTube.
My sister and one of my cousins are addicted to TikTok. They never had great attention spans, but TikTok has completely destroyed the little bit that they had. They will look at TikToks during a...
My sister and one of my cousins are addicted to TikTok. They never had great attention spans, but TikTok has completely destroyed the little bit that they had. They will look at TikToks during a movie.
I also have two other cousins who use TikTok, they're not addicted, but they do use it often. However, all of them have been influenced by the content of TikTok. They're all now talking about witches and really dumb shit. It's kind of unreal.
I wonder how much the algorithm each platform uses affects usage. YouTube's algorithm has failed to introduce me valuable new content/channels and most of my discovery has been done externally....
I wonder how much the algorithm each platform uses affects usage. YouTube's algorithm has failed to introduce me valuable new content/channels and most of my discovery has been done externally. YouTube's algorithm seems to find your interests and stick with them giving you a very narrow selection of channels that get recommended and never expands. While tiktok while mostly giving me things for my tastes, also throws me random stuff from creators that I oftentimes just skip but sometimes enjoy.
YouTube also really insists on recommending me videos that I've already watched, right now my feed has 4 videos that I watched fully yesterday (the have the full red bar under them), and they'll usually come back for a while until I click "not interested" and no matter how many times I mark videos as "Not Interested -> I already watched video" it consistently keep recommending me videos of stuff I watched before.
On tiktok every video I watch is fresh, well some of them are duets/stiches of videos I've watched before but you get the meaning. The value of YouTube used to be it's content discovery platform, and I fear that if you've been on YouTube for too long, it won't recommend you new stuff, unless that new stuff is from the same circle of creators you watch. On mobile I get a button that says "New to You" and it's kinda what I want, but why is mobile only and hidden away? It doesn't even show up sometime having to restart the app for it to show up. It's also mobile only so when I'm most likely to use the feature- sitting on the sofa watching random stuff or on the pc looking for background noise to listen to- the feature is not available to me. Why isn't the "new to you" feed incorporated into the recommendations? I would make more sense if you had 10% of recommendations be "new to you" videos than you having to jump through hoops to find new stuff.
I think the YouTube algorithm is broken right now (unless it's working as intended?), it didn't used to do that maybe two years ago. Before ~two years ago, I remember thinking the recommendations...
I think the YouTube algorithm is broken right now (unless it's working as intended?), it didn't used to do that maybe two years ago. Before ~two years ago, I remember thinking the recommendations sucked, then there was a sweet spot where for months all recommendations were good. Now I'm back to thinking it sucks. Like you it's always showing stuff I've already seen. Or putting stuff that has a 0% chance that I'd ever want to watch.
Right now it seems to prioritize types of content I've just watched in my recent history. If I accidentally watch something I don't care about, it skews the algorithm right away. Have to be really careful what I click on.
I've started being more proactive with my watch later playlist.
TikTok's algorithm is really solid. Like you said, I may skip stuff, but generally it's the kind of content I'm looking for (usually absurdist humor or makers making stuff). And when a tiktoker...
TikTok's algorithm is really solid. Like you said, I may skip stuff, but generally it's the kind of content I'm looking for (usually absurdist humor or makers making stuff). And when a tiktoker posts a follow-up to a video I've seen, the follow-up usually shows up while I'm swiping around.
The one thing that really drives me nuts though is when you follow someone new, your "Following" page becomes dominated by that person's content for a while. To the point where their old content is drowning out new content from the rest of your followed accounts. It's so bad that I'm really reluctant to follow anyone new.
The loop of watching a short video then being tossed to the next before you have time to realize what’s going on is sucking people’s time and getting them addicted. With YouTube, you have videos of varying length and generally have to make a conscious choice as to what to watch next. It can, of course, also be addicting, but TikTok seems to be on another level.
I’ve avoided TikTok for that reason. The other day I watched a YouTube Short (their TikTok clone) because I knew the creator and was interested in the topic, but then I realized six videos in what was happening—I only intended on watching the one video.
The videos have a time-limit designed to keep your attention-span then get you onto the next one before you lose interest, and it works.
My uncle, who is not a heavy social media user and not fucking crazy has become addicted to TikTok, and its peddling him dangerous conspiracies. He’d watch them knowing that these people are crazy as a means to mock them, but slowly the exposure is getting to him and he’s starting to believe them.
I’ve been trying to cut out social media, and all I use now is Reddit (and Tildes) with a 30-minute time limit. With TikTok, I don’t think people could stick to a 30-minute timer.
I remember when my parents had this level of alarmism over the new things I spent my time on. When I was a teenager it was MySpace and Grand Theft Auto that were "ruining kids these days".
I get it now that I'm older and these new things are foreign to me, but remembering how overblown the fears were during my childhood makes me skeptical about the fears my peers have today. I think young people are smarter and more resilient than we give them credit for.
Frankly I am much more worried for older people, because they seem to be much more impacted by this general category of things and tend to have greater network effects.
Moreover a lot of older folk don't have the social wisdom in their friend networks to help them steer out of bad habits. It's as if a new generation discovered alcohol but had nobody at the bar to cut them off and call them a cab.
Honestly, the level of alarmism my parents had about my videogame usage was warranted.
I'm wary of automatically labeling any parental concern about new things as overblown satanic panic style mania, because there are a lot of things that kids do that they are right to be concerned about.
For me, it resulted in me barely passing highschool because I was completely dependent on and addicted to video games, something that I still struggle with to this day. Social media was just starting to become a thing when I was growing up, and concerns about the harmful effects of that were warranted in my mind as well. I think there are a ton of social dysfunctions that can be traced to (ab)use of technology by younger folks.
I had a quick go at tiktok to understand what is going on and I agree it can create a very dangerous addiction and time suck. I ended up not getting addicted because I found the content to be funny at first but quickly boring.
The interesting thing I found is the amount of blatant bullshit posing to be informative or useful. Like one video showed off a bicycle with square gears and claimed this results in 90% lower fatigue. But if you apply half a seconds thought to that, why would pro cyclists all still use round gears if something so trivial had a 90% improvement.
But this video had millions of likes and I suspect most of them just accept this as fact and will later repeat to people that square gears work better
Any chance it was this April Fool's video?
Yeah it actually was that video but with the intro / outro removed and the audio replaced with someone talking.
Ah, that's a bummer on two counts! I'd guess a lot of new platforms get a boost by repackaging or "freebooting" content.
I looked it up because it reminded me of the sort of reinvented wheel of Theo Jansen's straandbeests that worked better on sand. Apparently someone did make a walking bicycle.
When I was young I think I passed on credulously that North Korea had invaded South Korea with millions of soldiers from some Drudge Report article someone posted. Like you said, a second of thought should have made it obvious that was fake. Maybe things like that were grist for the mill, though, in getting a little bit of media savvy.
What threw me is that tiktok has a large selection of these micro documentary style videos that try to teach some fact in 40 seconds. And this video was in exactly the same style as those while the YouTube one is clearly a joke.
That's an interesting thought actually. If you align non-roundness carefully with when in the pedal cycle most force is available, maybe that could actually work.
Then again, someone has probably already thought of this and it doesn't work for one reason or another.
Oval chainrings are absolutely a thing, so your intuition was spot on!
The usefulness of them is very disputed. They sit in the same area as titanium frames where only weirdly cult like people have them.
I'm not sure what you mean by square gears. But whatever the claim was cannot be judged like this alone. 90% lower fatigue might not mean a 90% improvement ... It might just mean the video isn't telling you about other drawbacks.
I’m curious about this. I haven’t ever used TikTok directly, but my wife sometimes shows me videos from TikTok that other people post on Facebook. This might only be a Facebook thing, but usually she’ll start watching a video and halfway through, she’ll say, “Oh you should watch this!” She’ll hit pause, slide across the couch to show me her screen then realize, there’s no way to rewind the video to the beginning. Sometimes when it gets to the end, it repeats, but sometimes it just jumps to the next video and there’s no way to go back and re-watch what you just saw. You can’t use the browser’s back button because that will just take you to the last Facebook page you visited. If you reload, sometimes the video resets, sometimes it disappears altogether. Usually finding it again takes tons of scrolling to get back to where you were. My question is, who wants this? Is this how their app or website are, too? Or do they think it’s a way to get you to go to their site instead of consuming the video on Facebook? All it’s done for me is made me think that both Facebook and TikTok are horrible experiences that I don’t want to be a part of.
EDIT: And I should add that for years, I thought YouTube was completely broken by design. They used to have some limit on how many times an embedded video could be viewed on another website, after which it wouldn’t play and would give some cryptic error that apparently meant, “Go to YouTube to actually watch this.” So I just never watched any YouTube videos because they were all broken. I didn’t know to go to the site because the error message was so bad, and I probably wouldn’t have done so anyway because I value my time more than that.
My GF uses TikTok and i asked her her opinion of TikTok algos, and she agrees TikTok's algos is way ahead to YouTube, also she highlighted how TikTok is less ad invasive than YouTube, YouTube ads are already way out of the line and TikTok ads do not disturb user experience of using their app.
Also TikTok is already available for Android TV, the app is way better than the official YouTube.
My sister and one of my cousins are addicted to TikTok. They never had great attention spans, but TikTok has completely destroyed the little bit that they had. They will look at TikToks during a movie.
I also have two other cousins who use TikTok, they're not addicted, but they do use it often. However, all of them have been influenced by the content of TikTok. They're all now talking about witches and really dumb shit. It's kind of unreal.
App users in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, a new report suggests.
I imagine a significant proportion of YouTube is consumed via the desktop, which is something I doubt of TikTok.
And TV.
Does the TV not count as an app with Chromecast and apple/Android TV?
It's a good question. Maybe for Android tv yes, Chromecast I'm not so sure.
TikTok for Android TV works surprisingly well with a TV remote.
I wonder how much the algorithm each platform uses affects usage. YouTube's algorithm has failed to introduce me valuable new content/channels and most of my discovery has been done externally. YouTube's algorithm seems to find your interests and stick with them giving you a very narrow selection of channels that get recommended and never expands. While tiktok while mostly giving me things for my tastes, also throws me random stuff from creators that I oftentimes just skip but sometimes enjoy.
YouTube also really insists on recommending me videos that I've already watched, right now my feed has 4 videos that I watched fully yesterday (the have the full red bar under them), and they'll usually come back for a while until I click "not interested" and no matter how many times I mark videos as "Not Interested -> I already watched video" it consistently keep recommending me videos of stuff I watched before.
On tiktok every video I watch is fresh, well some of them are duets/stiches of videos I've watched before but you get the meaning. The value of YouTube used to be it's content discovery platform, and I fear that if you've been on YouTube for too long, it won't recommend you new stuff, unless that new stuff is from the same circle of creators you watch. On mobile I get a button that says "New to You" and it's kinda what I want, but why is mobile only and hidden away? It doesn't even show up sometime having to restart the app for it to show up. It's also mobile only so when I'm most likely to use the feature- sitting on the sofa watching random stuff or on the pc looking for background noise to listen to- the feature is not available to me. Why isn't the "new to you" feed incorporated into the recommendations? I would make more sense if you had 10% of recommendations be "new to you" videos than you having to jump through hoops to find new stuff.
I think the YouTube algorithm is broken right now (unless it's working as intended?), it didn't used to do that maybe two years ago. Before ~two years ago, I remember thinking the recommendations sucked, then there was a sweet spot where for months all recommendations were good. Now I'm back to thinking it sucks. Like you it's always showing stuff I've already seen. Or putting stuff that has a 0% chance that I'd ever want to watch.
Right now it seems to prioritize types of content I've just watched in my recent history. If I accidentally watch something I don't care about, it skews the algorithm right away. Have to be really careful what I click on.
I've started being more proactive with my watch later playlist.
TikTok's algorithm is really solid. Like you said, I may skip stuff, but generally it's the kind of content I'm looking for (usually absurdist humor or makers making stuff). And when a tiktoker posts a follow-up to a video I've seen, the follow-up usually shows up while I'm swiping around.
The one thing that really drives me nuts though is when you follow someone new, your "Following" page becomes dominated by that person's content for a while. To the point where their old content is drowning out new content from the rest of your followed accounts. It's so bad that I'm really reluctant to follow anyone new.