TikTok is finally on the decline
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If you can't moderate yourself then it's good you're not on those platforms, I have them and only use them when I poop.
TikTok is where all of the content is. Its algorithm is designed to optimize for exactly what you want to see. That's why they're the biggest.
If you're into 3D zbrush art, that's what you're getting. If you like hardware hacking, HDR birdwatching, stem cell culturing, and Blender node exploring, guess what? You're getting that content.
Do you want to learn everything there is to know about kettlebells? You're in luck.
All of the creators, many of the best, are on there putting great stuff out all day.
You're sleeping at the wheel if you think everyone is equally logging in and just doomscrolling through dance videos.
Your FYP must be very different than my mine. My FYP is filled with 30+ male nerds, many of whom have entire rooms dedicated to TMNT toys.
TMNT = Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
which one of those aren't on TikTok?
Shadiversity for example produces content that you would think fits tiktok, but he gets an order of magnitude more views and subscribers on youtube than tiktok. Same goes for the other channels I checked. It makes sense for them to upload on tiktok as well since it is cheap to hire an editor for it, but I don't see them focusing on tiktok since the market for tiktok nerd videos seems to be much smaller.
If you look at channels that are a bit smaller, like half a million subscribers, they don't seem to even bother with tiktok, don't think it is worth it then to even have an editor fix it for that format.
So to me this looks a lot like "nerds aren't on tiktok", sure some big channels also uploads there but it doesn't look like they consume tiktok content.
If someone like marcus hutchins can get a half million followers or cryptoknight can get a million likes, there must be a significant number of consumers for their content.
The gender skew on steam is larger, but not much larger, and that is enough that you basically don't want to release on steam with a game made for women, instead you target mobile or similar because your target demographic basically isn't found at steam.
That maybe what you're discussing but I made no such claim. The two examples I used aren't even youtubers. Cryptoknight only post on TikTok and Marcus only has 88k subs on YouTube compared to his almost half million on TikTok. Professional YouTubers will never migrate from YouTube to TikTok, its impossible to make a living with TikTok's creator fund.
> [T]here’s also the sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year
Which means that it's still growing. But apparently the app is getting worse, and more monetized.
> TikTok is finally concave down
Tumblr has been dying for a whole decade and I bet most people don't even know LiveJournal still exists.
For example, my answer would be "because the CCP wants to (among other things) emphasize the worst of America, so the algorithm boosts FAS trailer trash". Is that actually true? Can we know? Does it matter? Either way, it's hilarious.
It doesn't have any value at all and I'm happy to see it's finally waning, perhaps the next generation (Alpha, Beta or whatever) will look at TikTok and cringe hard and avoid it.
(Is what I think they’d say :)
Yes, now that it is number one in these categories it is "mature" and its growth rate as not as fast as it was as it was climbing to these numbers. I don't see how being #1 in the world for app downloads and sales means it is "in decline".
I hope this doesn't catch on. It makes the world wide web feel a lot less world wide.
They're the perfect combination of addicting and entirely useless.
That, but also how fake it is and has been for years now. I feel bad for all those influencers who fell off or can only do one thing because they created a "niche" and are known for doing that one thing.
Also how sad it is that it ruined many families because fame got in the way of values.
The opposite could probably be said, but as Carl Sagan warned, this medium has done more harm than helped us.
> The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
I don't have hard evidence but I feel like the uprise of the advertisement monetization model is much to blame for this.
We were the ones who turned politics into a 24 hour sports competition. If the kids are watching shitty dances and worse AI generated nihilist absurdism, I consider that a leg up on the permanent "five minutes hate" that takes up too much of the older generation's entertainment.
We managed to survive what Sagan warned about and I bet they will too.
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
Even if TikTok ceases to exist it has contaminated every other major platform
On the whole I now get a mix of interesting factual content that aligns well with my taste - and a frictionless UI that I prefer to most of the alternatives.
Admittedly a fair chunk of the content is ripped from YouTube but it's a great discovery mechanism and you can later subscribe to the source.
Genuine question - have you tried it or are you going on reputation?
No, I haven't tried and I won't. Yes, I'm sure it has things that interest me. So what? The point is it's another one of these time sinks that profit off your need for entertainment. Ill entertaint myself, thank you.
Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?" Bad argument, focused too narrowly on personal experience.
Is "tired" here a less polite way to say "you're not the first person to say this and I disagree"? I'm trying to understand whether I need to feel insulted here or not.
> I don't care if you agree
Well you kinda do or else you wouldn't have come back four days later to post this.
> I'm just not ok with the amount of data being collected, and the party that's collecting it, regardless of what that data actually is.
Which strikes me as a fiercely absolutist policy - possibly to the point of being irrational. I actual presume you do care about the amount and type of data collection or else you'd be raging at - I dunno - the national park service tracking aggregate visitor counts. So I'm going to presume that this is a rhetorical flourish, rather than a statement I'm meant to take literally.
The trouble with rhetorical flourishes it that it leaves me in the dark about what you actually do mean and it's therefore hard to respond.
> Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?"
No. My argument is remarkably different to that.
If TikTok actually declines or dies, it's not going to be because of where the software is made.
A social media algorithm is a much scarier thing than an inert object, and one controlled by a totalitarian enemy government even moreso.
We all live with some uncomfortable amount of dissonance on who's collecting our data. I personally take great issue with just opening the door to my life to China by installing TikTok. I don't have other social media (not interested in a semantics debate about what constitutes social media, my purpose in saying this is that I try to avoid data-hoovers in general), but I'm not perfect at avoiding unwanted data collection. I just don't see a need to make it so easy.
So you don't watch any media? TV? Documentaries? I'm not clear what distinction you're making between "good" media and "bad" media. I've never been geek shamed on watching Tom Scott before.
I stopped using that word on HN because whenever I suggest that "screens are addictive" I get down voted (and it's not as much that it bothers me to lose imaginary points, it's that then it gets hidden and people don't get to see it, at which point I'm just yelling into the vacuum).
You know - after all that exercise, skill learning and art creating...
I suppose it rests on what is meant by "completely different" but I've been relatively satisfied by the variety.