A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse
www.theverge.com
Loops promises to bring the TikTok experience to the fediverse.

Signups opened this week for Loops, a short-form looping video app from the creator of Instagram alternative Pixelfed, reports TechCrunch.

    • Waryle@jlai.luEnglish
      203·
      3 months ago

      ITT: People in their mid-twenties or later, who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media.

      You’re just waving away an important fact, which is that shorts and their equivalents are notoriously known for killing attention spans and disrupting the management of dopamine in the brain, causing depression in particular.

      We are no longer simply in the traditional custom of the elderly who despise the activities of the younger generations, we are talking about health.

        • ugjka@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          I made a rule that i only do social media on desktop pc. Phone is only for emails and rss feeds. Seems to work

        • Waryle@jlai.luEnglish
          11·
          3 months ago

          While true, how is that any different to the arguments that were used for TV?

          Television is bad because it is a passive activity, but it is less harmful than the continuous ingestion of micro-videos. But I don’t see what it has to do here.

          Additionally, Lemmy is a social network in the same way that Reddit is. Is this not also dangerous?

          What’s the connection? I didn’t mention Reddit.

          As has been the recommendation for practically everything for the four decades I’ve been on this earth, moderation is key. Instead of hating new media, either regulate it (if the evidence is truly that great) or treat it with healthy moderation.

          This would be to ignore the particularly addictive nature of this kind of content. It would be like comparing apples to Snickers: both are sweet, yes, but one is much more problematic.

          Let’s be blunt here. Most of the people in this thread aren’t worried about health

          That could be a point, but I’m pretty sure that if you ask anybody, the main reason given would be that it makes you stupid. But I can agree that this opinion would not necessarily be based on anything other than the eternal contempt for novelty as video games or manga were, for example, before they became popular.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      3 months ago

      A distributed service is much less vulnerable to being bought up by a single narcissistic billionaire who can ruin the online experience of millions of people at once.

      A distributed service like Lemmy is spread out over 600 Instances in countries all over the world. If someone buys the most popular Lemmy Instance and wrecks it, those users can simply move to the same communities on the second or third or fourth most popular Instance and the original Instance will wither and die. This also works for communities with power tripping moderators. You can quickly find out through a search which community is the “real” one by the number of subscribers it has.

        • NutWrench@lemmy.worldEnglish
          131·
          3 months ago

          Well, you should care about it because that’s how online communities get ruined. Case in point: Twitter has become a propaganda tool for an apartheid-loving fascist since he bought it.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              Why should a person who goes to the park care about the park?

              If people are dumping trash everywhere and all the plants and animals are dying, I assume you wouldn’t like to spend much time there anymore.

              Sure another park might be opened, but constantly changing parks isn’t what you want to do long term. If someone buys up the basketball court and turns it into a cesspool of hate, you can unsubscribe from that court and remove it from your park. Adding another one that is nicer, without completely going to a new park.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user?

          You have more control over your front-page content. If you don’t want to get a particular feed, you unsubscribe from it.

    • minstrel@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      Federation can solve the danger zone content for you, how about a federation network with just kids content, other with more adult ones, etc to the just nsfw isolated from each others?

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I don’t think they’ll be able to do any type of direct competition for TikTok with a lack of advertising and payments You’re not going to draw quality creators. Decentralized algorithm sounds like a nightmare to manage.

      However one place they will have some advantage is censorship. Anything that’s not explicitly illegal Will be a hell of a lot harder to stamp out. Moderation will probably be very light.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      Authwalls, data sovereignty, self controlled open source algorithms for finding content without manipulation by corporations, etc

    • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      the benefit i can see is that instead of having to share out to other social media, you can just see it in any fediverse account you have thanks to activity pub which eliminates one of the barriers to being viral.

      that said i don’t think it will get mainstream appeal.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      43·
      3 months ago

      who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media

      I don’t watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.

      What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?

      I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.

      But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You’re still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you’re going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.

      But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you’ve got a degree of control (I don’t have to listen to Rogan if I don’t want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.