this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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Short videos are dumb. Are people really that addicted? I have it and go on it sometimes. And by sometimes I mean like 10 minutes per week. The videos are OK at best, but half of them are ads or live weird shit and the search function for relevant topics are trash.
I stay the f away from it. You haven't spent enough time to properly train it. As you watch, it tracks time spent on each video, interactions, passive and active choices and slowly builds a dossier on you.
As you keep going, it occasionally throws adjacent stuff in. It starts tossing you stuff that other people with your likes watch. If there is content on there that you'll appreciate, it will eventually find it. If there is enough, it'll stream it to you non-stop.
They'll find people who share your political alignment and say precisely what you want to hear. If you like brunettes with flowy blouses or redheads who are gym rats, you'll get them. If you like skeptics or preppers, you'll get them.
My wife gets a lot of her news from it, I find probably 1/3 of it to be suspect and 90% of it biased toward what she wants to hear. Nothing there is telling both sides of any story. (to be clear we have the same political/ethical views, but I'm a touch more skeptical about journalism and random influencers, especially popular influencers)
Wow, that's scary. I'm guessing a surprising number of people do this as well.
For my wife, it never occurred to her that she could trust tiktok influencers far less than even corporate journalists. They have to ethical requirements on tiktok, no verified sources or corrections or redactions, or any accountability at all.
I had to point that out over multiple videos, although to be fair some of the people on there do put up a front like they are legit to trick people into taking them seriously.
The same nonsense happens on YouTube and Instagram. Just look at the motivations, these "content creators" get paid via ads (so views) and corporate sponsors, so they don't get rewarded for truth, they get rewarded for saying things their spomsors and viewers like.
I'm not saying they're intentionally misleading people, but journalism is hard and clickbait and copycat "journalism" is easy, so they'll tend to do more of the latter.
I think its the mentality in america of, "whatever I need to do to get 'mine' is good".
Theres a reason people ask "was it worth it" about nearly everything here. I dont know how to convince people theyd be happier if greed didnt drive their values.
Why is it shocking that people hear about topics through social media? Seriously? Why? I heard about the UHC shooter through TikTok. And it's not necessarily just memes, there are "real" news accounts on TikTok. The same way I hear about new on Lemmy because people post links to stories. Like the literal platform and thread we are currently discussing.
It's not shocking that they hear about news through social media, it's shocking that people trust it anywhere near as much as traditional journalism.
There's no incentive for someone on social media to fact check or tell any more of the story than will get them views.
Did you fact check this article?
Not personally, but it's from a media org I trust, and they generally do a good job citing sources.
If the BBC got caught lying, it would be big news. If a random influencer got caught lying, people would shrug and say, "that tracks."
So how is it different if someone sees a news story from BBC's TikTok account? https://www.tiktok.com/@bbcnews
That's not at all what I'm talking about. I also don't use TikTok, so I don't know how their reporting differs there vs other media.
For all its bullshit, YouTube is the same. I've found myself on it more lately precisely because of the reasons you're saying. It's amazing how much niche content there is for any taste, even ones you don't yet realize you have.
Youtube at least realizes when its suggestions are in a rut and gives you that little popup offering to show you stuff slightly outside of your current echo chamber. Just how different it actually is I can't really prove.
It's about xpntrolling the narrative. Tiktok is one of the few (if not the only one) popular social media apps that doesn't censor everything that the US government decides. Just look at how much Palestine stuff goea around there compared to anywhere else.
I actually really like short-format videos for recipes so you don't have to watch somebody chopping onions for ten minutes. Also, Ronaldo highlights set to Brazilian phonk are kinda cool. Other than that, the format seems pretty worthless.
Most videos on my feed are 3 - 10 minutes, they are ttending less short.
I like tiktok, it's the only "social media" I use other than Lemmy. I normally hate finding video content, YouTube sucks, and their shorts are even worse. But on Tiktok I get served all sorts of interesting videos, I will stumble upon some cool topic that has been chopped up into five 10 minute videos and then find the video or a similar video on YouTube or something.
It's an excellent way to discover things fast. You just can't use it as a good source, need to do external research.
My biggest gripe is as you said, they have really seemed to amp up the ads and stupid live crap.
I'm guilty of using tiktok half the people on here have never used it. But you're exactly right a few years ago it was actually not too bad, but these days every other video is an advert for some AliExpress level shit.
Ive tried to use it, my wife is on it a lot. I can get through a few videos before the constant changing bothers me and I physically feel a need to get away from it. Its to quick, too short, too shallow. My brain is wired nearly the opposite.
Yes with the attention span of a ground squirrel.
Why do you think they all talk vast with stupid ADHD inducing shit on one side. (Minecraft parkour, GTA V driving or subway surfers)
Because people will scroll away if you don't jingle keys in front of them
As someone who never uses this platform, this comment made me chuckle.
I was on tiktok and even created for it for a bit, but it did get exhausting quickly after getting flooded with a painful amount of ads. I do like short form content though, I've been enjoying Loops!
Framing this as people being pouty because their favorite social media is being banned is a shit tier take. This is a problem of censorship and government overreach.