[Damorian]

Yeah, I don't buy it. I've made a few attempts to get into TikTok, because my wife and friends are into it, and I have not been able to find any positive or quality content. It's mostly low quality memes and rude or otherwise vulgar attention seeking. I understand the appeal, given my experience with other social networks, but I definitely don't buy the narrative that it's in any way "good".

[boringg]

I agree with you - it rewards attention seeking behavior and short attention spans.

That said I understand the term of good quality - in that it isn't vitriolic political messaging, conspiracy theories etc. It's mostly devoid of any true meaning - more like entertaining, sometimes hilarious content. I wouldn't say it's enlightening or provides much educational value. As I said early it also probably reinforces short attention span, attention seeking dopamine feed back loops... likely long term damage to brain development.

Just my opinion, no facts here.

[boringg]

It also creates this expectation that your life is a performance for other people or that you produce content for other people to digest to get your dopamine rewards. There's going to be a strange generation coming down the pipeline.

[coddle-hark]

Isn’t all social media like this though?

[leetcrew]

yes to an extent, but there is a spectrum. I would count most forums under the umbrella of "social media", but for the most part I don't find them to have that performative aspect. platforms where your account is more strongly tied to your IRL identity and photos/videos are the main thing shared tend to be a lot more performative.

[joshuamorton]

Tiktok has exceedingly powerful filter bubble effects. As a result, the nearly universally derided "straight-tiktok" (which is where you start and dominated by conventional social media influencers) is fundamentally different than other parts of the app.

My fyp is a combination of good natured dancing, linguistics, crowd sources music, hank green, a few comedy creators who engage positively with mental health and feminist topics, and animals doing silly things, recently a lot of possums. That's interspersed with memes and jokes, but very few that are particularly rude.

[valarauko]

I agree. My fyp also has Dad Green, older LGBT creators, young PhD & postdocs explaining science Qs, lots & lots of dogs, linguists, cooking, trees, lakes, geology, etc. Plenty of light hearted dancing, but everybody seems to be pretty chill and glad to engage with their audience. It's pretty easy to get responses from creators, as compared to YouTube creators.

[rafram]

You have to scroll through for maybe ten minutes and interact with posts that you actually like. Their system very quickly figures out what to show you. The general population of tiktok videos is pretty bad.

[valarauko]

I suppose that's true of all social media. I think the default videos on TT are pretty much like the trending section of YouTube.

[boublepop]

I know I risk sounding offensive but please accept that this is just an honest inquiry. Have you considered that you are causing that sort of content to hit your “for you page” by how your engaging with it? I ask because if someone asked me for a description of what’s most on tiktok based on what is in my feeds, it would be woodworking, cooking, arduinio projects and 3D printing stuff, with a bit of stand-up and DnD. I didn’t set any preferences or such to make it so, it just ender up that way through what I liked and the half a dosen people I follow.

I am in no way under the illusion that this is what most see. But i have to question if people that complain about Charlie Damelio and similar people being shown too much, just aren’t spending a lot of time watching the videos, commenting and liking them. If you scroll past they stop popping up.

Overall the content creators I see content from seem extremely good for these smaller niche communities.

As a plus, the most unbiased source of content for the BLM protests I found was tiktok, because it was just livestreams and videos from the protests with little possibility to editorialize it. Instead of anchors screaming “violent!” Or sternly saying “peaceful!” You got streamers on spot showing exactly how violent or peaceful certain situations were.

[Dobbs]

Yes. Use the search, find a few videos you like on topic X. Interact with them (like them, comment on them, follow creators). There that is most of the interaction needed to influence your feed.

Then as you encounter stuff you like click hashtags that look interesting, explore sounds to find similar videos, checkout a producers other videos.

[beaunative]

In the end of the day, it is entertainment business, that pretty much sums it up. Hollywood isn't better when it comes to attention seeking behavior.