Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place.
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
People enjoy short form video, people should be able to enjoy things they like with dignity, which is in extremely short supply on algorithm and advert driven social media.
Loops is nice because it isn't algorithm oriented. You can follow folks and just see their things if you like, or see whats on the instance.
Loops doesn't need to 'slay tiktok' Loops just needs to grow organically and support the niches that feel like using it, and it can take the time to do that at any pace. Its success is not determined by user numbers or series rounds.
I don't like to produce short form video, but its been nice to now follow a few people on Loops from Mastodon. Its nice that the Fediverse allows multiple forms of expression.
People “enjoy” heroin, crack cocaine, fentanyl too, should they “enjoy” them with dignity too?
There's a lot of stuff which may loosely be termed "vices", e.g. alcohol and gambling, which have the property:
- many people never touch
- many people indulge without significant harm, getting enjoyment from the process
- some people over indulge messily
- a few people get their lives completely ruined, or ruin the lives of those around them
Then there's an uncomfortable, unreconcilable tension between the desire to punish/prevent the last group by banning the thing, versus the second group entirely reasonably saying that it's not a problem for them.
Many things that people get up to ostensibly "of their own accord" have these four groups of outcomes, in different proportions. Makes you figure.
I'm of the opinion that the main problem has always been the increasing powerlessness of the individual in the face of mass social phenomena that camouflage as "your life now" but are instead someone's viral PR campaign. In Germany this stuff passed in 10ish years, in Russia it passed in 80ish; California still countin'
I'm not sure if you ever had to deal with someone addicted close to you, but it is heartbreaking. They are already ashamed of themselves and suffer. The last thing you want to do is take away their dignity, because that shuts them out and puts the path to recovery even further. They are still humans you know, just with a problem. They need help, not a trashing. That they are already doing to themselves.
That seems a little uncharitable, though it does get me wondering... Imagine if benevolent hackers took over The Algorithm. What might they achieve?
They could promote high quality educational content, as is done in certain other nations.
They could utilize the companies' infinite knowledge of Skinner box mechanics to discourage and even break screen addiction, rather than cultivate it.
The possibilities are endless.
Any volunteers? ;)
That discussion is already over since, what... 20 years? Heroin addicts get their fix from the state, with tax payer money, in many many countries these days. I can see the line waiting in front of my pharmacy every day in the morning...
Only enjoyment from drugs, they're free to do it with dignity without enjoyment.
Sure you cut out the bad people, but is the situation improved now?
E.g. https://patrida.de/
If it's not harmful it's not the same drug. Unlike diamorphine, a medical grade supply does not reduce harm; it's more like sniffing glue, inhaling poison to escape reality.
// Sweden
How many heroin users do you know who manage to only have 1-2 hits a week socially though and hold down a career.
These are:
Alcohol (+the prescription benzo combo) Gambling Sugar
Add to these tobacco if you want. Nicotine on its won as a standalone agent is perhaps no more damaging than caffeine, but is used in a form-factor that really grills one's lungs.
for example - Russian influenced Balkan areas all take drinking of vodka as something super normal.
Heroin (diamorphine) as a molecule isn't really substantially more problematic than e.g. oxycodone or fentanyl, which are in widespread medical use. The specific ban of heroin is more a historical contingency.
Outright dismissal like this should be judged as harshly as the comment itself.
Even the peers I know that use TikTok admit they should really be using it less and that it's total slop.
It's truly the purest interpretation of junkfood in internet form
> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
Jesus, is this the only argument you people have now? Some decade old comment of a non-business guy?
Parent is right, loops removes precisely what makes TikTok addicting. It’s like removing heroin high for addicts – what’s the point of the injection, then?
My experience is that TikTok’e algorithm is so good it largely reflects the individual user. My feed is 99% wholesome - presumably because that’s how I’ve trained it over time. I’m amazed by other people’s stories of bad TikTok - just not my experience.
I think that group of people if very small, but overrepresented on sites like this. Regular people just don't care. They _might_ pay to remove ads, but because they are annoying not because they are afraid of tracking or being monetized.
There's another group who don't necessarily take any action immediately, but might switch if there was a competitive alternative. But of course there's a network effect: being an early adopter of Signal (over Whatsapp) was lonely but eventually enough people came along. Bluesky is doing okay vs. Twitter. Without people trying to offer an alternative, nothing will ever change.
Maybe this could grow into that?
If it would work well for every user streaming services wouldn't spend millions on CDNs and streaming infra.
So if corpo approach was compromised why not migrate the plethora of experience and knowledge to another platform to continue brainwashing disguised as marketing strategy and facilitation.