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Comment by b00ty4breakfast | Hacker News Reader

this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem.

These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value.

so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride.

Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.

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On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.

The unfortunate truth is that TikTok is just a dopamine hit machine. There's no puzzle here, this project is just "we built an open source slot machine that you can install in your own home". Replacing the casino is addressing a pointless problem.

It's not necessarily the case that Loops is just as addictive as TikTok. Because TikTok is more than just short term videos. It's also a recommendation algorithm that slurps up as much information as it can about you to predict what you'll want to watch next. This recommendation algorithm plays a big role in making TikTok addictive. And as far as I'm aware, Loops does not have this functionality. It will just show you videos based on a much simpler algorithm that takes into account how recent a video is and how many likes/comments it has, or something like that, which will make it less addictive.

I’ve started wondering if I want a smartphone at all lately. The whole paradigm gets creepier by the day and the global corporate expectation you have one makes me not want it.

There's nothing tricky about this - the only winning move is not to play.

I enjoy watching TikTok, especially local or niche creators who have just a couple hundred followers. This is not going to be a problem as you imagine.

One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified.

Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.

The incentive is still there.

If there is an algorithm putting stuff on people’s faces then there will always be an incentive imo.

"we need to rethink how we interact online"

I don't have a TikTok account, never have and I doubt I ever will. Am I missing anything?

I gave up fags (cigarettes) around eight years ago. Would you like some ideas for coping and abstention strategies?

Well said, thank you.

Yep. Anything similar to what was Vine (i.e., TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels; e.g., very short videos with infinite scrolling) is ultimately too consuming literally a drug that robs one of the ability to concentrate and patience.

I think we need to encourage long form videos from 5 minutes to 1-2 hours and organize stuff around metadata (title, keywords/tags, lists, unique identifier) to mesh with a living, standardized ontology in a curated, sensible fashion that disallows proliferation of slop, too low quality stuff, and spam. From there, choose your own recommender and related algorithms/plugins.

The big gotcha of decentralized video platforms is content distribution that doesn't hug a self-hoster's server with barely any traffic.

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