I was fine with memes over the past few years … sure they are a quick dopamine hit that make you laugh or think
But now when my friends send me tiktok videos … especially when someone has been watching these video streams for hours or days … they start sending out the most random, inane, mindless content … it’s the kind of material that keep a monkey occupied.
it’s the kind of material that keep a monkey occupied.
I think that’s kind of the point. There was an article a while back that said the CCP/Bytedance intentionally serve up braindead content to everywhere outside China, while promoting educational and uplifting content at home.
that sounds way too bizarre to believe without seeing a source. and i know there’s gonna be people replying saying it’s not that bizarre, because China, but really…?
Absolutely reasonable thing to ask.
Grep for “Companies like TikTok” to find the relevant portion.
The guy talking isn’t exactly a scientist and this ain’t a rigourous peer-reviewed study, but it does seem like he knows at least a little about what he’s talking about. Take it with a grain of salt.
I want to see a sampling of this “educational and uplifting” content.
I have one 50 year old friend with very little tech know how and his kids set him up with a good smartphone. I saw his family about a year ago and his kids noted that their dad often sits up until about 2 or 3 in the morning at the kitchen table just scrolling through tiktok videos. He sent them to me about once a day until I had to block him and tell him directly to stop sending me this stuff. He’s since become ‘aware’ of his addiction and stops sending out videos as often as he did before. He still scrolls through thousands and thousands of videos a day.
It would all be funny if it wasn’t so frightening at the same time.
No kidding. I just find it ironic that the generation that kept saying “TV will rot your brain” is now completely consumed by social media.
Share -> Save Video
Have you heard about our lords and saviors the alternative frontends?
This but it’s instagram
My wife created an Instagram account in my phone so she can send me videos.
It’s both. So annoying when the first bit is muted and you can’t replay.
As always I like promoting open source frontends for these pages. For tiktok I use proxytok. For changing any tiktok link to one of these instances use the libredirect extension for firefox, it also works in mobile
Oh shit!
This post actually made me look for a solution and I found one!
Solution to opening tiktoks without using tiktok app or site, not how to stop ur friends sending u garbage.It made me think… mpv player can play basically any link you throw at it (thanks to yt-dlp), and we also have mpv on Android, so why can’t we do it there as well. And sure enough, I found this https://github.com/mpv-android/mpv-android/pull/58, someone baked yt-dlp in mpv for Android, making it possible to open link in mpv (share >> play in mpv)
It works for instagram and all other shit.
So do we need to download something from your link to make that work? Or is it already part of MPV?
Suddenly glad all of my friends are old people like me.
old people like me
The person who sends me far more TikTok videos than anyone else is my boomer dad.
I felt this way with instagram. My phone can barely handle the web app and you can’t even replay the video without an account. Truly garbage UX
i shall retaliate with fediverse links
Tiktok sucks so hard, but then occasionally I find a minor nugget of wisdom or a piece of information so helpful that it makes me keep the app. Just the other day, some said he applies antiperspirant to his feet in order to keep them warm, because then they’ll sweat less, and will get less cold in the socks. I didn’t even really know that was a problem I was really having, but now, I will never have cold feet again. There’s also always eelfeel, so I’m alright with it as a whole.
More broadly I do hate how kind of walled off the app is. I try to share videos on snapchat, oof, snapchat cuts it off so it’s only the first five seconds of a video. Best to send the link, but then, if you don’t have tiktok downloaded, it takes you either to the app store, or it hits you with the shitty web browser. Maybe fine for seeing a single tiktok, on mobile, but it’s pretty bad on desktop since it’s not formatted for it, and overall it, just is kind of ass to deal with, especially on repeat. Hate the modern internet.
Edit: Sorry, nvm, I guess I didn’t understand that we were fearmongering about the evil chinese technology brainwashing our youths with their wiles in this comments section.
Putting antiperspirant on your feet sounds deeply unnatural, chaotic and satanic. It’s the kind of thing that will result in a sock-related early death.
Why don’t they just actually send the video file?
Those apps purposely don’t make it trivial to download the files do they? You probably could but someone who swipes Tiktok all day can not.
Lots of tiktoks can be downloaded easily, but still, they can be large, why send those around when you can just send a link
For better user experience for the person receiving it.
