So, uh, I haven't... I haven't tried TikTok yet.

[cube_drone@mastodon.social]

okays, basically every "old person discovers new media" experience is like this, right? "this is terrible, the kids these days are disrespectful young gits, they should appreciate art and literature not this loud noise and trash"

[neilk@xoxo.zone]

@cube_drone That’s how long I lasted. IMO Tiktok is the closest thing we have to a malevolent demon. It’s a superhuman entity whose one goal is to find what weaknesses exist in your soul and then to turn you into its slave. Most social media has this now, but Tiktok is so much worse.

Incidentally if you turn off history on Youtube, the Shorts feature no longer enough information to do the infinite suggestions thing

[cargot_robbie@urbanists.social]

@cube_drone All terrifying points. It's also difficult to make TT users aware of the issues. IIRC you saw the early-algorithm shotgun spread that gives them info about you. Mid-stage TT is curated so folks only see the stuff chosen for them, so it becomes possible to pass by somebody else's entire feed without seeing anything in common, like ships in the night. Everyone thinks their feed is the good one

Fedi does this too, but it's participatory, visible, and grassroots

[ajh@indieweb.social]

@cube_drone

Don't forget MAID if you get a hangnail.

[apike@mastodon.social]

@cube_drone Yes! For what it's worth, you can prod TikTok to give you a pretty wholesome high-quality feed by reinforcing what you want (swipe away or "not interested" and certainly don't comment or spread the bad stuff). But that doesn't fix the fact everybody else is getting the bad stuff

[noodlemaz@mstdn.games]

@cube_drone I've never made a go of it either. And I'm not in the US, though, so it's a bit different
Friends share fun ones on elsewhere. There's good people on it too - as with just about everything. Doesn't mean I want its claws in me, Meta has ruined the technojoy I once had for socials

[moreentropy@chaos.social]

@cube_drone I remember the „early days“ when TikTok was new (here). It was lovely, it was creative. Mostly people lip syncing to other sounds and innocent skits from all around the world. No influencing at all, just creativity. It was fascinating. It’s long gone.

[jake4480@c.im]

@cube_drone yep

[jigmedatse@social.openpsychology.net]

@cube_drone@mastodon.social I'm so sorry you had that experience. I mean, I was going to say, "yeah, you're a grown ass adult, that's why you haven't tried TikTok." But um, well I guess, now you know.

[lp0_on_fire@social.linux.pizza]

@neilk @cube_drone, hah. I've completely ignored Shorts for the trivially simple reason that what I briefly saw of it was entirely portrait-layout video. (If it were landscape, I'd probably be ignoring it because the content was not of interest…)

[virtuous_sloth@cosocial.ca]

@cube_drone Interesting. My wife is on Tiktok (read-only) and I see a representative selection of what is in her feed and she has none of those things. I suppose there is a default raw feed that is garbage but she would have curated her follows a few years ago and whatever is algorithmically shown maybe is based on that?

[bignose@sw-development-is.social]

@cube_drone
> I'm a grown-ass adult

This simple statement is strong justification for *not* using TikTok

[neilk@xoxo.zone]

@apike @cube_drone

I don't think I am a good enough person to survive microseconds of reaction time being scrutinized. I will take 0.3 seconds more to swipe away when it's something I'm vulnerable to, and TikTok is there, going "noted. you want another one of those?? how about another? another?"

That's the stuff I'm _consciously_ avoiding. There are more subtle traps, like feeding my rage addiction about legitimately bad things, or entrancing me with brainrot splitscreens

[ethicalprofessor@mstdn.social]

@cube_drone
I *knew* there was a reason I am avoiding TikTok, you gave me several.

Thanks.

[virtuous_sloth@cosocial.ca]

@cube_drone We live in Canada, mind you, maybe they also do geographic-based algorithms?

[praetor@mstdn.social]

@cube_drone my psychiatrist believes that that is also why ADHD cases have exponentially grown. She's like "do you use TikTok?" I laughed and said "I'm a grumpy millennial. I have more sense than that"

[lmk@infosec.exchange]

@cube_drone It's as if a foreign adversary made a "Trojan horse app" that simply amplifies our online culture as its secret weapon.

[torontowill@mastodon.social]

@cube_drone And there you've hit on why I quit TikTok. You can curate it to content that is genuinely very good, but only if you expend significant effort teaching the algorithm what you want to see. And even then, you can't rest, you have to be constantly vigilant not to engage with the wrong thing, because just beyond the walls of your happy garden is a zombie horde stretching into the horizon. Same reason I quit Threads, and never bothered at all with a bunch of other algorithmic feeds.

[the_moep@mastodon.de]

@moreentropy @cube_drone That was the zombie corpse of Musical.ly though. Bytedance killed that to push TikTok as an all-encompasing short video social media platform.

[the_moep@mastodon.de]

@cube_drone
Technically you can stop it (as the EU's Digital Services Act requires large social media platforms to have a toggle to turn off algorithmic feeds), however TikTok hides that multiple layers deep in their settings to not hurt their profits. (While in the process violating EU laws)