[purple_ferret]

Lurking doesn't seem all that appealing to me either.

I just checked the tiktok homepage and the top two videos I saw were of a woman failing a sobriety test and a guy scaring a drive-through woman with a blow horn.

I realize this isn't the content you might see once your algo is calculated, but it's obviously popular stuff on the platform and it just doesn't seem like very positive content for me.

[lovegoblin]

> it's obviously popular stuff on the platform and it just doesn't seem like very positive content for me.

This is true of everything. If I look at the front page of YouTube in a private browser window, it's all bullshit too, obviously. But there's plenty of quality stuff on YouTube that I do like, ya know?

The point is that the well is deep and broad enough that there is probably a whole community of people making content you'd like, and TikTok is extraordinarily good at finding that stuff for you sooner rather than later. I watch tons of diorama-building tutorials and recipe videos, for example. And I'm better both at painting and cooking as a result.

Look: I'm not a shill, here. I'm not trying to convince you to get into TikTok (I mean? who cares, honestly) but I find a lot of talk about it tends to boil down to "kids these days" dismissiveness.

And yeah I don't post anything there - nobody wants to see my grizzled old-ass face.

[howaboutnope]

> I find a lot of talk about it tends to boil down to "kids these days" dismissiveness

These platforms are the products of megacorps, using incredibly sophisticated technology. Just contrast even a single CPU, versus, say, kids using their language faculties and markers to be funny or naughty, or using a bunch of stuff they found outside to invent a game. And then think of how many CPU and other things are involved in the pipeline. Kids being kids is as far from it as it could be.

During the peak of the outrage about and the being in denial about Elsagate, there were plenty of people actually saying "these videos probably are this way because AI generated them based on the things toddlers like". People getting stabbed, raped, kids in trunks and crying over being separated from their family, endless body horror -- all brushed aside with "meh, they like that".

Pointing to good content that one could pay attention to instead is a bit like saying "ignore the spam email from the Nigerian prince, you obviously aren't in the target demographic for it [let the people who are fend for themselves]". That's what people did with content literally aimed at children who couldn't even speak, why wouldn't they do it for teenagers, and of course for adults. This doesn't affect me, so it doesn't get shown to me, so it's fine.

And while online mobs are certainly not a TikTok specialty, just to counter the general fluffy happy picture that so many comments here are painting based on things being fine for themselves:

https://www.fluentlyforward.com/home4/my-experience-being-ca...

> But let me tell you, reading a hate comment about yourself that’s relatively true (I mean hey, I do have thin lips) said by 1 person stings at a level 1 on the pain chart. But reading hate comments about yourself that aren’t true, and are said by tens of thousands of people is….well, it’s a physical feeling. That’s the only way I can describe it.

And then there is this: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

They weakly claim to no longer use these rules, without saying what rules they use instead. I would bet you that certain political topics are hard filtered though, and some things being censored while fluff being tailored to be addictive is a net negative effect in my books. It's not exclusive to TikTok, but that doesn't absolve it, just like TikTok doesn't absolve others.

[howaboutnope]

Oh, that's nothing. There's also things like "if this $optical_illusion moves, you have $disorder", or people faking DID and showing off their "alters".