It's bonkers to me, but I guess my patterns of information lookup have just calcified with age.
At first, it was all about the novelty: lip-syncing and dance videos. Over time, though, my interests evolved. I started following creators for travel vlogs, occasional financial advice, health tips, yoga and exercise—and last but not least, singing, which I only began at age 55.
I don’t have many viewers, and that’s perfectly fine. My account isn’t about chasing likes or comments. It’s simply a way for people to see who I am rather than engage with a random, unknown profile—if they’re curious enough to look. It also helps avoid mixed signals: when you know who I am (even though you never truly know someone), you can usually tell whether something is meant as a dad joke… or a Daddy joke
As a result, my consumption of TV, Netflix, and HBO has dropped significantly. I find it far more engaging to follow real people and see what they’re doing with their lives. And here’s the irony: aside from the first two or three seasons of Survivor, I’ve never been into reality TV—yet somehow, I’m completely hooked on this one.
[ Wordsmithed by AI ]
Ps: I think my joke has been taken badly by someone. The point is internet with few hundred million or just few million people is a minefield and like now somehow jokes don't click and knowing the person behind the joke, being able to if not ID them at least have them semi public is a credibility bridge that anonymity does not provide. By being public, you are more accountable than you normally would be
They are a replacement for TV. You know, the thing that people used to watch for hours upon hours a day?
Can you tell me what exactly THE ERROR when I want to find a single good thing about TikTok when I don’t understand it?
For your view point, you logic is the following for the good reason using TikTok:
“Addiction is bad, but many people are using it anyway, just like any media back in the days.”
Are you really sure you have answered A GOOD REASON of using TikTok? Sounds like a horrible argument for me. Addiction is a bad habit to begin with, it won’t magically validated just because the media has been changed.
My wife loves TikTok to a point that she will take it personally when I complain about it, but I absolutely hate the "vertical short form video" crap that's gotten popular. I'm probably just showing my age, even with my admittedly-quite-flakey attention span, I feel like TikTok and YouTube shorts are just kind of irritating. So much stuff on there is either low-effort crap with lip syncing to some clip from a movie, or shit yelling at me with burned in giant subtitles, both of which are almost certainly part of my own personal hell.
You know perfectly well that a question-mark does not a question make.
And, apparently you also see the utility in posting very short, dumb sections of content.
So, by your own standards, you should be able to do the math and answer your own so-called question.
Heck, how does that person think people read books? Six to ten hour sitting marathons?
The answer to this is the same as the answer to your first question.
I don’t see this is a good reason to use TikTok.
It introduces her to new fashion, new restaurants, new places to visit. Local, hyper local and hidden, and her favorite travel destinations.
It's full of bite size tutorials. Tips and tricks. Genuinely useful stuff. Blogs and websites you'd find this stuff on are not as visual, not as well edited, and are hard to find or full of SEO spam.
It's introduced her to all kinds of hobbies. Gen Z is all about finding old consumer digital cameras from 2000 or even older Kodak one-use disposables and transplanting the lenses. TikTok nucleates these interests and trends.
The news breaks almost immediately on TikTok, and there's immediately insightful community commentary - why would you ever need CNN talking heads?
Every day there's a new "fad". It changes fast, on a day to day basis. Just a few days ago, there was this "an owl but from [x]" meme that was really cute/funny.
TikTok is genuinely everything. It's amazing. Much of the old internet it replaces doesn't hold a candle to it.
Not arguing against the rest of your comment, but I find the concept of "breaking news" to be generally terrible for society. News outlets should wait until they have enough information to present an event as accurately as possible, but the rush to be the one that gets there first means this is often not the case.
And I expect this goes double for randos publishing on TikTok.
The only valid use for “breaking news” imo, are disasters.
For example, one day she came over and showed me a short where this lady was warning women the Rs were starting their discrimination campaigns up, because Kentucky was looking to pass an amendment making women get certified doctor letters on if/the status of their pregnancy.
I called out how ridiculous that was pretty quickly and she told me this is 100% real and the lady in the video wasn't lying. I looked it up, and it was a real proposal[1]... Made several years earlier by a Democrat as a satire bill that was never under true consideration.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/kentucky-democrat...
This is the reason why I have raised this question, as I don’t really understand why people are so into this platform since I don’t enjoy short form contents.
Perhaps just because it is short, with properly use, TikTok can discover many niche topics that we probably don’t know.
Does it change my decision of using this platform? Probably not because I prefer longer and slower paced contents, but I could at least know that TikTok is not just about brainrots or random people dancing like many people as claimed, at least now I know there are people finding their passion in this platform or discovering new place to explore.
Don't get me wrong, I like instagram for the political commentary; but the vibe is different, Instagram is a supplementary source and not a primary one. It's still not a perfect system either, for example Instagram doesn't allow clickable links which can really hamoer organization and spreading important information.
Your situation is similar to why I have quit Pinterest. Memes and jokes are fun, and some of the images are inspiring, but it simply wastes too much valuable time which I can learn something new or take a deep rest.
For most people, it's a distracting little jolt of dopamine and a way to get quick news or commentary.
It's definitely not good for our brains for that to be the main kind of content we consume, but it's not useless.
You don’t need something to have a point at all, just make something apparently cool or trendy, and there always a crowd rush into the trend. Could you find the point of Labubus or Stanley cups besides its popularity?
I am not going to against the news part, as you could see my other replies from someone who find niche hobbies with it.
Would not put it past them to influence what content people see on TikTok either.
There's also the issue of the algorithm being used for propaganda, which (again) is also terrible in the hands of either party, but with potentially very different outcomes.
Sure, a political party is not a government, but surely capitalism-flavored mass surveilance has the same capabilities, and the buyers seem to have similar incentives to good 'ol government surveilance and propaganda.
Private surveillance however has the possibility to be much worse than government surveillance. We are already seeing collected data being used by the government to carry out enforcement (see period app subpoenas and the cameras that track where everyone drives), but the private actors have a perverse incentive to surveil as much as they can and make as much actionable data on it as possible. They can then show up at the governments door and offer it.
That is, private surveillance has the potential to surveil in ways governments don't even know they want, and they have an incentive to find any hole in the surveillance market and fill it.
> The Joint Venture will secure U.S. apps through software assurance protocols, and review and validate source code on an ongoing basis, assisted by its Trusted Security Partner, Oracle.
So the new team will be in charge of content moderation, training, and "review and validat[ion]" of source code. Not actually a new app.
Chinese ownership as a security threat is currently in between reality and conspiracy realms but the US govt meddling as a threat is a proven reality worldwide.
China is currently providing weapons for Russia to wage large-scale war in Europe, while supporting a dictatorship in North Korea that regularly launches nuclear-capable misiles in my general direction.
For extra fun, this doesn’t even determine if I live in Greenland or Canada - let alone adding ”Abducting a foreign head of state to lay claim to natural resources”, which could make me Venezuelan!
North Korea is a fire down the block; America is a grease fire in my kitchen, and I hope you'll forgive me for prioritizing the immediate threat
Since controlling these platforms is probably the best ROI for swinging public opinion, I'm sure it's a matter of time before they get seized (one way or another) and redistributed to reliable political allies.
>Chinese ownership as a security threat is currently in between reality and conspiracy realms but the US govt meddling as a threat is a proven reality worldwide.
There is nothing stopping any country from doing the same to US companies' local operations five years ago, today, or next year. The difference is that the US is not China. Your comment assumes that a US company is as dangerous as a Chinese company. As felipeerias said, China is (among other things) actively backing Russia in Ukraine.
US law did not require TikTok's divestiture to a US owner. If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.
Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so.
New: US censorship, US surveillance, US narratives (patriot approved)
I feel like this outcome is so much worse than just banning the platform.
This is the status quo for a lot of US media, but TikTok is actually much worse. The "US narratives" in this case are in service of Trump, possibly behind closed doors as table stakes for the purchase agreement.
How is TikTok user data more private today than it was a year ago?
My husbands TickTock feed is full of things like “10 things Americans do that Chinese think are weird”, “10 reasons Chinese cities are in the 22nd century” etc etc.
I personally don’t think that’s propaganda - most of it is factually true and would be pushed to the front of any fair algorithm because it is engaging. But I can kinda see the concern, even though I disagree with the outcome.
... live tracking by ICE
All the other American controlled social media platforms are exactly like your China description from my point of view: it’s American agencies and data brokers mining it and American interests pumping it.
Do you think a reasonable course of action is for us to force the sell of American platforms? I have no sympathy for what China is doing but I have no sympathy for what America is doing either.
Why do you think one’s more acceptable other than “it’s my country doing it”, assuming you are American that is.
> Do you think a reasonable course of action is for us to force the sell of American platforms?
Yes, absolutely. If your country's people believe that WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a threat in the same way, they should take the same action.
(Mind you, I don't believe for a second that this was the real motivation behind what's gone on with TikTok, but I think it's a reasonable course of action to take if you think there is a threat there, regardless of what company or country we're talking about.)
I think one better way would be to make it so there are consequences for actions. And consequences should start flowing from the top but I know this is a dream and we live in a world where consequences for their actions are no longer a thing that exists if you have enough money.
Personally, I worry more about the platforms and data brokers themselves, as I think everyone should and does. They hold disproportionate power and their incentives drive us all in the wrong direction.
So there’s obviously a level of general skepticism here that I consider to be healthy.
That said, the simple fact that lobbying is a thing and the government can be influenced by the use of money is a sign that the A relationship of some level exists.
Now, I personally am on none of those platforms. I use the bare minimum I need and even in that case, as a paying customer of those companies, I don’t expect them to treat me nicely.
Because money seems te be the only thing that matters at this point and morals are way further down the line.
All that said, from an outside observer, seeing the China argument coming from America, considering everything that’s happening in plain sight, it’s ironic to say the least.
Do you think it will be different with TikTok US, being owned by Trump's friends (and family?) ?
The definitive factor here is whether the Chinese company wants to put themselves deep in the American political water. To any company, living under a crosshair alone is difficult enough, it becomes even more so when the company is foreign-owned.
The sell was a strategically correct decision by ByteDance, they made money out of it and they secured some future income, at least for a short while. But no app or service lives forever anyways, so it's still a good trade.
Whether or not the sell could benefit actual American users was never mattered.
Just put the political stuff aside, they are often too short for any details over any topics if not straightly brainrot, ending up making people get distracted and lost patience easily. I never a fan of YouTube shorts and instagram reels either because of the same reason.
Perhaps they are good for promotion, but as a user perspective, can anyone really point out one good reason to use these platforms?