[whereismyacc]

At least (I assume?) a nice feature of short-form video app algorithms is that every few seconds, the users swipe or like or whatever to reveal preferences. The rate at which that data comes in from users is much higher than for long-form platforms.

I'd be more worried about actually getting content on there? But if Tiktok users are fragmenting onto Instagram Reels / Youtube Shorts etc, maybe the dominant strategy becomes to upload everywhere. In which case, maybe this platform has some semblance of a chance?

Also I didn't get to use it, but I suspect decentralized is going to be pretty tricky for a short-form video app because even minor loading times cause serious friction. If every other video load comes from a different service, it'll probably feel very slow in practice?

[sn0n]

That could be offset by prefetching 5-10 of the current tag/interest and pushing the completes to the top of the que followed by the most complete downloads.. Or something. The initial load could be last cache just to have something present. Lots of options tbh.

[richardw]

I had the impression that TikTok must be pre-loading videos. I would keep 1-n ready to go for startup (depending on storage) and then load whatever is optimal at runtime. Optimise for no wait times, control the selection and distribution. It’s not like YouTube where the client is roaming all over. Video preferences seem local ish so you can keep videos in-country for a lot of content.

[kuschku]

I assume Tiktok loads the initial fMP4 fragment (metadata + 500ms of video) for about 10 videos at once.

If you scroll extremely fast through videos, you'll always get a short moment where it's loading after the same number of videos.