Submitted 5 weeks ago by remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
tapping the “there are no good billionaires” sign
remember when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, slapped “Democracy dies in darkness” on the masthead, and a bunch of MSNBC-brained liberals thought it was going to be the newspaper that led the resistance against Trump?
I just woke up from a years-long coma. could someone tell me how that worked out?
I love seeing “democracy dies in darkness” peeking through the paywall/login barrier.
Yeah, no thanks. We have Pixelfed, let’s just make that even better.
Honestly I think that reels in general are toxic to mental health. I say we just move on.
Ok boomer.
Arguably, ActivityPub has its shortcomings. Also, having another protocol similar to ActivityPub creates more competition which drives innovation (and gets people away from corporate-controlled sites like Meta).
And you think Mark Cuban is funding what, exactly? A member’s co-op?
I think the problem is that people aren’t hooked to the short video format of TikTok, which there are already many alternatives for, but they are hooked to the algorithm that feeds them endless personalized content with simple guidance (show me more/less like this).
It’s possible to create curated and algorithm-like feeds on Bluesky, but they don’t allow for easy personalization in the same way.
The thing about the TikTok algorithm seems to be that there are a lot less… fingers in the pudding so to speak, it doesn’t seem to have much preference on what kinds of content users get steered to, responding more actively to what they actually show interest in.
Other systems seem to have strong preferences about what topic and styles they steer users too or away from. Distorting what content users are steered towards tends to flood their feeds with things they’re not super interested in, because what they actually showed interest in is not promoted by the system, or even actively demoted.
I can understand the convenience of these algorithms, but they always have the same subtly undermining goal: to make people addicted. The fact that TikTok’s algorithm is so good at this is worrying to me even if it doesn’t have an overt bias. It’s also why I think people are having such crazy reactions to the pending ban, even the thought of withdrawal is too much.
i donno, tiktok is good for maybe one or two videos before it devolves into doomscrolling. it has the same shortcomings as any other engagement-baitgorithms. even my wife complains that they won’t miss tiktok for how boring it gets.
no more billionaires and no more american run social networks pls
Oh yeah it must be the Trump years again because Mark Cuban is back at it pretending to be the stopgap solution everyone is already bypassing
Tik Tok doesn’t become better just because another one creates the same.
Seems iffy to have any sort of federated system for a video based format. Maybe there are some clever compression or hosting tricks to reduce data load.
LMFAO, coooooool, can’t wait. I’m sure that won’t be the biggest piece of shit ever created.
Luci@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Send Loops/Pixelfed a cheque instead
Hirom@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
He shoudn’t send DanSupp a cheque directly, but help him setup a non-profit or foundation for Pixelfed, then give that foundation a cheque.
Dan his doing a great job developing but Pixelfed looks like a one-man show, and that’s a bottleneck for development.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Only if the cheque goes towards improving the UX of it all. The main thing that prevents normal users from switching is forcing them to learn new concepts like federation, picking a server, and all that entails.
People here are in a bubble where they think everyone else is as tech savvy as them.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
And people beginning the conversation with “blah is a service you can self host” doesn’t help. Such a personal pet peeve.
rozwud@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
Yeah. I don’t use tiktok so this doesn’t affect me, but the only reason I’m here is that during the whole reddit API fiasco (which, to be honest, as a non-tech savvy person I still don’t completely understand), someone posted a link to beehaw and it seemed like a breath of fresh air, so I joined. I had no idea what Lemmy was at the time, and I still really only have a vague idea of what federation actually means.
There are a lot of people on Lemmy who seem to assume that no one worth knowing has a life that doesn’t involve a large amount of time on their computer, and that’s just silly. I’m grateful for the people who do have the know-how to build this space, but a healthy community of people is going to include a large variety of knowledge and experience.
Sorry for the tangent in reply to your comment; it’s just been on my mind for a bit. 😅