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I briefly hosted a Lemmy server on my machine just to see how it works and my god never again. The pictures that were automatically synced to my machine did not only make me lose faith in humanity, but it made me shut down and wipe my machine immediately because I was terrified that some of those images would land me some serious jail time.

So if you choose to host something like this, be very aware that there are some sick, sick people out there.

This has nothing to do with Lemmy, but more with any social media that is just open to the general public. Ask the moderator teams of Facebook, what they encounter day to day. Many of these poor folks work in shitty job conditions and burn out leaving with PTSD.

If you spin up a fediverse app like Lemmy, you spin up a platform. It is platform software. And you get the responsibility, but also the opportunity, to set that up well. Curate the content in your instance. Lemmy and any other fediverse apps comes with a set of moderation tools that allow you to handle this, and there is a strong focus in the developer community to improve them on a continual basis.

This is a huge ask. Most of us are just nerds that find the technical aspects interesting, a hobby during our spare time.

If you create an open club for your hobby in real life, you will also get weirdos joining your group. These people will commit minor offenses like disturb others and serious offenses like sexually harass someone. A club that includes teens will, with non-zero probability, share porn with each other, or even "inappropriate" pictures/videos of their peers - the latter of which is a very serious crime.

You can avoid this in both real life and or the internet by making very closed clubs in which only very trusted people are added.

> Curate the content in your instance

How do i do that without getting PTSD as well? Or is there some magic method that works without me looking at CSAM and gore constantly?

Whitelist instead of blacklist seems like it would work.

How do you know what you can whitelist without looking at it?

Only allow trusted people to upload your content.

But how do you know who you can trust?

Deny by default, allowlist per account. That's what lemmy.ca is doing, you have to apply for an account.

This is speculation; they may look at ips and other fingerprint data to determine if they accept your acc application.

Whitelist what?

We’re probably a year from self hostable video LLM models that can identify sexual content etc. with high sensitivity (but probably poor specificity)

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As much as I try to avoid AI hype, this truly seems like one of the best uses of image recognition tech

how do you pay for that?

There are several services that offer detection as a service. Some have good free tiers.

But if you get popular then you better have a monetization strategy.

Imgur is a good case study I think.

By boiling the ocean

This was why I canned a potentially useful image project a long time ago that could resize and manipulate images from any URL to optimise for mobile use. It's also why I've not dipped my toes into the murky pool of self-hosting any of this and rather use services moderated by someone else. It's just too toxic to handle, and dangerous to my career, and I don't know how I'd contain it beyond never hosting ANY image data and making it text only.

This reality alone has made me severely curtail my own social media use and reach. I really only care about a handful of forums attended by (at least... seemingly) people who actually care to think, or have some basic intact humanity and want to converse.

So despite the fact I am very interested in the federated social media to keep my intelletual property out of the cashflow of businesses whose actions are much louder than their pretty sounds in court, it's still one-shot-and-out digital graffiti. I don't think it's worth it.

What's fucked up is that entities like Meta and OpenAI are likely to already have tons of "other people's snuff" in their datastores. Yet they're not the ones at risk of being swatted; individual rebroadcasters are.

Even though you want nothing to do with those images in the first place, while Big Social is intentionally keeping the stuff around "for science", yeah right.

Consider how some Muslim cultures have sidestepped this issue by banning representational imagery altogether; while the Russians just sent telegrams.

.. ah, yes, "completely unmoderated free speech system that supports images" does mean "may contain CSAM". Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to.

I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though.

I've been hearing talk for years about a "web of trust" system, that could filter spam simply by having users vouch for eachother and filtering out anyone not vouched for. However, I haven't seen a function system based on this model yet.

Personally I'd love to add in something like the old slashdot comment model, where people would mark content as "helpful", "funny", "insightful", "controversial" etc, and based on how much you trust the people labeling it, you could have things filtered out, or brought forward.

There is the simpler version that is approximately "you can only get in if someone vouches for you. If a person you vouch for misbehaves you get punished as well". That's effectively a "tree of trust" with skin in the game. And it's incredibly successful, used in lots of communities, crime rings, job recommendations, etc.

Any attempt to generalize this by allowing multiple weak vouches instead of a single strong one, or allowing people to join before getting vouched for, or removing the stakes in vouching for someone, etc. always end up failing for fairly predictable reasons. No matter how much cool cryptography you add

Wouldn't that be easy to bypass by just adding one or two proxy accounts? Say person A invites me (a bad actor). I could invite a second throwaway account, with which I invite a third throwaway account. I do bad things on my third account. Could you reasonably punish person A for this? You'd first have to prove that the throwaway accounts all belong to me.

No one has to proof anything. If A invites B and B invites C who acts openly bad, you can remove all parties at once and maybe revoke on appeal. All up to the community. Otherwise it would be indeed simple to defeat. But before banning A, one can also just give a Warning. No restrictions here in principle, but I am also open for concrete implementations that work well.

The point is that either there has to be a limit for how much you get punished for the acts of your grandchildren, which leaves room for motivated abusers to work around your system, or people can expect to be banned for basically no fault of their own if they ever invite anyone, in which case your system is DOA.

The point is, it is a balance each community has to find on their own. In reality this means adjusting depending on incidents. But if A invites B who openly does bad things, it very much is the fault of A to drag this person into the community.

Create some sort of score that goes up when a "child" misbehaves. The further the child the lower the increase but at some point you get banned anyway

I think the last one of those I saw was Advogato?

Some of the social media systems, including Bluesky, started as invite-only, but that was only ever really for rate-limiting and in particular there were no negative consequences for inviting someone who was subsequently banned.

>I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though.

That's pretty much how it works on the federated Internet.

There are large open-access services run by communities with sufficient moderation capacity (to not get themselves nuked, anyway.) Turns out many "impossibilities" are trivial when you're not trying to abuse 1 billion active users at the same time through the power of their own (distr)actions - but instead you are simply trying to run a board for messages.

And then there plenty of private servers, where publishing either is by invite, or does not have outsized reach in the first place. Those also defederate each other a lot, and many don't show you stuff from the big publics at all.

There've been "bad people out there" always (or at least that's what the "good people in there" have been broadcasting, for about as long as I remember). The design/engineering problem here is how to figure out and deploy a relational dynamic that keeps hostiles at a safe distance.

The practical problem stems from a technicality of how federation currently works: to display content from other services to your users, you have to mirror it on your storage.

This mode of federating hazardous data is a real problem, and also it's exactly what some cheap-ass subcontractor of current-gen social media incumbents would be doing if said incumbents had the amount of good sense that they've demonstrated having (see e.g. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series). Yeah cuz... it's war out there.

I don't expect things to get better until everyone's phone is their personal server and cryptographic root of trust, and this is exposed to non-technicals in a way which neither scares them nor screws them over. Once civilization accomplishes that, I reckon things will be fine once again.

EDIT: "Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to." I don't think I've heard about this before, but I must admit I find it completely hilarious - besides obviously sad and horrifying.

I mean... reddit also defended that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19975375

> Social news site Reddit will not censor "distasteful" sections of its website, its chief executive has said.

jailbait, upskirt, etc. were all huge subreddits back then.

Yes. People that run these things often start from a libertarian presumption that everything should be allowed. Then they find out what's actually illegal. Then the stuff that's not strictly illegal but incredibly antisocial, causing pushback. Then the age verification wave as various countries and states get fed up with the easy availability of porn to minors. And so on.

I found this YT vid from back when CNN was covering these subreddits. Ohanian gives this interview where he says (paraphrasing) that there's nothing they can do to police this stuff (they ended up just banning those communities) and it was human nature. We're again talking about some especially abusive content, subreddits targeting minors.

I wonder what he'd say about this today, because it comes off as extreme naivety, and I even held similar views, though I don't get how your mindset could be so extreme that your first instinct would not be to disallow content which is this distasteful. It really shows how deeply "free speech" was embedded into net culture of the time above all else.

Not to misuse this argument, but I really really wonder how he feels given 1) who he's married to 2) how he presents himself today and 3) that he has a daughter now. I'd guess this is NOT his view of running Digg,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE

I think the only way to host social services is so that any free form content that touches your servers is encrypted with a key you don't have.

The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.

> federated, self-hosted casino

Good news: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually

That's what a friendly neighborhood poker game is. There is no house take. I am not a lawyer, but have been given the distinct impression by one that in US jurisdictions the house take is what makes gambling go from entertainment amongst friends to illegal racket.

no, it's different because if you were a shareholder in a cooperative, you could lose every game you play but still get something back

Isn't this somewhat like how these new crypto prediction markets work? There is no house taking a cut, all of the winnings get paid out.

with their 5 minute crypto thing, its almost gambling at this point but there is still the point of dakolli which I myself couldn't have written better.

My point is that maybe federated casino where there is no casino but sort of p2p on a completely fair 50/50 dice of sorts similar to how casinos operate would be more beneficial than casinos existing with their 3% cuts and the house3% always winning.

At the very least, its possible to do so and similar to Kalshi/Polymarket I feel like its definitely possible.

I don't want to EVER touch gambling but I think its addicting and maybe it can atleast help the addicts if they are in a fair game compared to a rigged game towards the house.

Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers.

Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time..

The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.

>so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time..

Isn't that entirely the point? I've heard some arguments about insider trading but even there i've heard it argued that that's part of the point.

When self-host OnlyFans?

Is that not crypto?

Federated tattoo parlors

It's not "things we hate". It's "things we didn't think of capitalizing on".

The proprietary nature of tiktok, particularly the opaque recommendation algorithm, is only part of the problem with tiktok. I think the whole short form video medium is the bigger problem, it's not a medium that lends itself to nuance.

It's also very detrimental to brain development.

Similarly, the problem with Twitter is not strictly who runs it. Short form content is brain rot. It requires you to eschew nuance and reason and complexity, dumb things down, handwave or ignore criticisms, parrot cliches, and will always prefer a short but nice sounding thing to something that requires more effort.

Short form communication like that is inherently bad.

Absolutely. I think the proof of this is in the toxicity of the twitter alternatives. Despite being federated instead of centralized, they produce the same kind of toxicity. It's the medium itself which is corrupting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

There is a lot of naivete behind the whole idea that some alternative is better because it's open source. You can clearly tell it's a project made by software developers, not by behavioural analysts, psychologists, or really anyone who has talked to another human being in the past 30 days.

The only real alternative to TikTok is a big dumpster fire.

It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers.

You can see the recounting of his hostility at https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/

(I'm not a signature of the open letter)

This comes up here and there to discredit the developer but having followed all the drama for many years now I just want to add that Dansup has apologized multiple times, and has been far more open about his process. His communication has also changed for the better over the last two years especially. Its not easy being human, and I think its a good sign to see that he takes this seriously.

Unfortunately, I can second this, both as a developer and a user. His IMHO childish behavior has ruined his image for me, and is not a good lighthouse for the Fediverse itself. Also, as a OSS veteran myself, I see it extremely critical that he is starting new projects all along, denies to get proper help and build up a maintainer team, and leaves older projects in the dust. Pixelfed is the one product he might should focus on, jet it feels like the platform is in maintenance only mode. Pixelfed is a wonderful addition to the Fediverse and deserves to be on good hands.

Maybe, and this is a very personal opinion, his product success and the Kickstarter campaign raising over 100k made him feel like he's better than everybody else. And one can see the effects.

yeah he has a long history of saying dumb shit in public and then trying to cover his tracks.

also, having had to figure out some of the Pixelfed code for previous projects, i wonder if he's up to the task of maintaining any of this once the next shiny thing comes along. Fedi software has a lot of quirks in general (comes with the nearly nonexistent budgets) but as a representative issue, the dude managed to build a photo blogging service with no way to export or back up your photos and that hasn't been fixed in seven years.

ultimately, though, if we ignore software quality and developer reputation, Loops is going to live or die based on whether anyone on Fedi actually wants to make short-form video. given existing Fedi culture, plus how expensive it can be to produce and how the RoI is basically zero, i don't think we're going to see much native to Fedi. some might get crossposted by TikTok/Shorts/Reels creators that want a backup location that won't get erased the second someone makes a spurious copyright claim, but i suspect we're just going to see a few months of stolen TikToks and then not much after that.

> given existing Fedi culture, plus how expensive it can be to produce and how the RoI is basically zero, i don't think we're going to see much native to Fedi.

Yeah, actual adoption will require getting the actual people to come onboard who want to entertain/influence others, plus the viewers (two-sided market problem). When weighing that against network effects of the big players, the chances look a little slim.

Probably need another more low-effort or attractive angle to grow the Fediverse, tbh.

the thing is anyone can already host short-form videos on many other fediverse/activitypub apps like Mastodon.

Same for image, I never really understood the point of pixelfed as other fediverse/activitypub apps can already host pictures.

that's pretty much correct: these apps all do the same thing under the hood. the difference is UX. Mastodon's built for text and the media features are really barebones. no filters, no crop, no EXIF metadata, no albums. so that was Pixelfed's pitch.

And this needless drama is relevant why? Can we keep that on the fediverse please?

Quick question: even if this is/was true, do you think isolating him is the correct response? or maybe engaging and taking some of the pressure off him might actually help.

People love to bully people who slip up... dudes a hot mess but I think he needs community more than being openly attacked.

In my honest opinion, I think the correct response is to stop using anything that dansup makes until he realizes he has to give up some of the control, or the project stops being developed.

While it's nice if people want to help take some pressure off, it only works if the main developer (dansup in this case) is willing to accept that help. And based off the link I gave, and some of the comments here, it doesn't look like dansup is willing to accept help.

Neat, looks like ActivityPub based. My only nitpick is the website and app look a little too much like Tik Tok, they might want to tweak it to not be a blatant rip off, I could see Tik Tok having a valid lawsuit due to how insanely close it looks. I could see myself getting confused as to which site I'm on if I had this open in a browser, which is probably enough for a valid lawsuit.

Great to see this progressing. Tried it out just now after last testing it over 6 months ago.

I’d say the main “feature” id want to see added is a mandatory field on upload to tick if it’s AI content. Then a tag on videos that are Ai and at the account level to filter out AI content.

Otherwise it’s going to be a slops fest.

What is the incentive for people producing AI slop to tick the "This is slop" box? Reminds me of the evil bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit

The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product.

These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes.

They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.

As is the incessant stream. If there is a pause at all in the next video loading the addicted user can break free.

One of the issues with federated anything is that there will be good servers and bad servers.

Good servers get hammered, and if you're popular you might end up perversely paying for people to watch your videos having to fund your server to maintain its performance.

This happened with mastadon, matrix and will be far worse if they want to deliver tiktoks insane performance.

Birth rates took a dip with broadband, smartphones, and TikTok.

Dopamine and attention sinks are pulling society in directions counter to evolutionary programming. Our runtime algorithms optimize for different things.

No value judgment, but it's interesting. I haven't had kids (yet?), and I feel the internet (and the career that revolves around it) is the biggest reason why.

> No value judgment, but it's interesting. I haven't had kids (yet?), and I feel the internet (and the career that revolves around it) is the biggest reason why.

How exactly the internet and the career prevented you from having kids? Have you discussed this with your partner?

Citation needed

I actually looked at several graphs before posting. Wasn't easy to share crude data so I didn't link it.

Now that I'm googling for more deliberate correlations, I see other people are talking about this:

https://roytriggs.medium.com/internet-use-and-birth-rates-an...

https://fortune.com/well/2025/03/28/phones-declining-birth-r...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/dating-marriage-c...

"The phone killed babies" tracks with my intuition about this. Data correlates.

Finances aren't keeping me from having kids. The internet is. Smartphones are. Weird as that sounds. I can unpack more and expand this into a conversation.

This is completely ignoring the most common reason for not having children that I've heard amongst friends and family: "I can't afford a house, I'll never be able to afford kids."

Actually poor people don't seem to have that problem.

I really don't buy that argument at all.

My parents lived in apartments.

Parents for all of human civilization and history have lived in worse.

The fastest growing populations have less money and safety nets than middle class folks.

It's the dopamine and time suck.

Men and women aren't bored and looking to fill the void and boredom with children. (Kids also can't work as free labor on the farm anymore, either, but that just adds to this argument.)

Kids keep you from nights out with the friends, dating, concerts, fortnite, girl gossip, phone time, etc.

People are choosing "I don't have time for kids (now)" and continuing with their dopamine filled lives. House purchase planning is orthogonal.

> My parents lived in apartments.

In much of the world, the most expensive real estate is apartments.

I'm not talking expensive apartments.

People might have the faux preference for ideal conditions, but it's an artificial mask for not having time.

Severely resource constrained people have kids. People with other things to do, don't.

So you think trudging through life with kids is somehow more virtuous than trying to enjoy limited time you have?

This is not an honest question

yes obv

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To be fair, you don't need to slay giants to be a viable product.

"nicotine free cigarettes" are a product too.

We have limited time on earth, so many tend to evaluate things on how big of an impact they make or how large of a demand they satisfy.

It's okay if not everything is big, but it's also okay for people to use scale as a criteria for sizing things up.

I guess there is an argument that every food product should add opium to their ingredients to make sure it's bought by as many people as possible and eaten as frequently as possible

But I don't think that's healthy for either the product or society

Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.

Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction.

There's no comparison.

Discord is designed to gamify communication. It has 'features' like likes, reacts, gifs, roles, badges, etc. Many communities add bots that enable profile leveling, quests, challenges. These things are designed to reward and drive engagement, and lights up the reward centers of the brain. Between an IRC user and a Discord user, the Discord user's going to be much more addicted.

Clearly discord has more of a vested interest in boosting engagement - especially now that they are showing people "quests". What a quirky and fun way to say "ads"!

But at the same time I don't necessarily buy the idea that all of their reactions/roles/badges/etc are exclusively malevolent engagement-driven design decisions meant to hook people. I do think that some of them are legitimate improvements to chat communication, and as a result many of those features have proliferated across other messaging platforms. Hell, most of them didn't even originate at discord at all but were cribbed from their competitors.

To be clear, I 1000% agree with you that IRC is less addicting. Even just by simple merit of not having multi-device push notifications. Those pull me back into the app. But push notifications across devices are also just objectively useful. I name that one in particular because it's one of the biggest and most notable features that prevents me from returning to IRC, where I happily did most of my chat until the mid 2010s. I'm actively shopping for a discord alternative as a regular user who is fed up with discord's march toward enshittification, and matrix looks like it gives me most of that convenience without the worst parts of discord.

Social media is its own problem . It’s got nothing to do with the algorithms and everything to do with being able to trivially broadcast to the entire planet.

Even with no algo the people posting want maximum exposure and have every incentive to try to get it.

I wonder if it'd be possible for the host to use custom algorithms, that way you can have instances with very limited recommendation systems or ones with something more tiktok-like

happiness is addictive. Solution is to replace with something completely different. Why not free hacking challenges / courses for teenagers?

This project would love some additional support. If you're a developer who is interested in building this... please get in touch with them, the team is VERY small so you can do some good by just supporting them.

No disrespect to the project, but it is a bit hard to find motivation to contribute to something that will most likely end up being used by like 100 people who'll all just post videos about how they're better than Tiktok users

This looks like a shallow dismissal to me.

Saw this comment about developer hostility first, is there a response or critique out there?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118328

The UX should be more "mass user" friendly if the goal is to attract mainstream users. Sign in with Apple/etc.. selecting a server is technical language and not end-user language etc.

Also why not have the homepage be a feed, let me scroll for a bit before forcing me to sign up

You can, but you need to be on an instance, go to https://loops.video for that experience. joinloops.org is more of an onboarding site it seems

Selecting a server is one of the reasons the fediverse appears to have not seriously challenged incumbents. As soon as a non-technical user sees this, they bounce.

Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.

But users are not mindless drones. Even the least computer-savvy is aware that they're being asked to make a choice and is probably unpleasantly reminded of the dark patterns in user agreements etc., so they'll feel like they're being guided down a sales funnel immediately after installing the app/signing up on web.

What percentage bounce at that stage? It's probably large. I did so, and although I later relented and created a Mastodon account I've felt emotionally biased against it ever since and barely use it. When I have used it I don't experience any tangible benefit to overcome my reflexive dislike. The network effects aren't anything great, the timeline/feed mechanism and presentation are not fundamentally different from other social media offerings, the QoL improvements are marginal. If I cared about architecture and ideology above all else it would be great, but what I actually care about is being able to get news faster than any other source and being able to find more people there than anywhere else. I can only think of 1 or 2 people who I check in on periodically via Mastodon because there's no other place to find them.

It's not about users being mindless drones, it's giving them a clear path they can follow to succeed without thinking. The book "Don't make me think" is a classic design reference that makes this point really well.

I'm not sure what sales funnel you're talking about. If you have an aversion to monetization, I'm not sure what social media you'd use except the fediverse.

This does solve the problem, although I do hope it doesn’t turn into another Bluesky this way.

I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all

I think this got much better than on the early days. Nowadays it's not much different than picking your Discord server, which is already something everyone is aware of.

There's also the problem where selecting the server is quite a consequential choice which users who are brand new have no way to make a proper choice on. The owner of the server you choose has access to all of your data and the ability to delete your account or shut down the server at any time.

This is the same for every internet service, and the primary experience when signing up to big centralised services like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. If they think your account is suspicious in any way, instantly gone with no way to appeal, I've seen a number of friends experience this recently and they're not even outliers using a VPN or 'unusual' email or anything. At least with federated services, you have the opportunity to keep backups of your profile and sign-up with another instance whenever you want.

A sensible default should be preselected. E.g. the geographically closest, not overloaded server.

Technical users like myself bounce too. It's why I build and play in the ATProto ecosystem ("the atmosphere")

This is the same philosophy as the creator, the sign-up flow does not ask you to select a server it defaults you to loops.video Maybe the app is different? I haven't tried it yet

My naive thought is to NOT have these platforms, not to build an alternative.

Exactly, the idea that we can "fix" social media is a completely false premise and not a technology problem

That may be true, but I'm still trying with one of my side projects.

If for no other reason than it's a difficult problem and fun to hack at.

The timing feels right for this. TikTok's regulatory uncertainty, Instagram Reels being algorithmically hostile to small creators, and YouTube Shorts still feeling like an afterthought.

The real test for federated social media has always been: can you solve the cold start problem? Mastodon survived because Twitter kept shooting itself in the foot. Loops needs a similar catalyst or a genuinely better creator experience to pull people over.

One thing I'd watch: how they handle content moderation across federated instances. That's been the thorniest problem for every decentralized platform.

> Instagram Reels being algorithmically hostile to small creators, and YouTube Shorts still feeling like an afterthought

The average consumer doesn't care about these things, they will go to the technically inferior product that they already use (YouTube) or use IG Reels that are basically identical to TT and share a lot of the popular creators already. If the platform is hostile to small creators isn't really something that people care about, as can be seen by the popularity of Spotify.

I've been casually daydreaming about possible paths an "AI augmented" newsfeed experience could take.

I'm imagining an initial group of agents scraping the web for events (twitter/x, science/eng/business publications) that could potentially translate to stories that their end users (humans) might be interested in.

those stories get picked up by another set of bots (equivalent to reddit posters) and get published on an agent-only social network where a diverse set of agents with different "backgrounds"/personalities comment and discuss on the story.

inputs from this post (article + comments) are picked up by an 'editor' agent and go into a final summarized article designed for human eyes or humans personal agent or newsfeed agent.

humans being the end users browse their (ai enhanced) newsfeed which has its own private, continuously evolving algorithms based on knowledge of 1) what and 2) how its human likes to consume/think.

information is "backpropagated" to inform/reinforce the initial scraper group of bots on what to look out for.

How about you just _don't_ contribute to the slop pile? Also, that sounds like a machine that generates self-reinforcing echo chambers.

I would argue that:

1. "slop" doesn't come from just AI. Take a look at the headlines on your daily newsfeed. Carefully crafted by humans.

2. This is an application of AI that serves human values by what it attempts to preserve.

Some humans produce slop sometimes, but AI produces slop basically always. I don't see that as an argument to just add more into the system because humans do sometimes.

Your application also doesn't "serve human values". It just statistically gives someone content it thinks they'll want to hear/read, and hides content that might make them uncomfortable or question their own views. A self-reinforcing echo chamber, like I said.

I know AI is all the rage and everyone is trying to come up with something actually useful for it, but this isn't it.

This is actually pretty exciting. Excited to see how this turns out. But I am wondering how to keep it financially possible to operate the platform. Also, 95+% of the users probably don't care that much about censorship and privacy enough to switch platform.

I would have thought that the point of federation is not to require centralized servers that cost a lot to operate.

But sure, something like this probably requires a fundamentally different revenue model. Maybe even the one where people donate to server operators.

centralized servers cost less to operate, that why data intensive applications centralize over time. That's division of labor. The higher the complexity the the higher degree of specialization. And a video service is very demanding.

And you need to solve the economics first because otherwise your decentralized service is simply going to centralize over time to deal with demands for a more reliable and higher quality service. (and how to compensate creators)

This so much, the Tiktok clones in ATProto face this same issue and several rely on Bluesky CDN & VC funding to have an acceptable UX (in terms of just delivering video content)

Aw man can we not flip the script and maybe build less of these things? It’s saturated and not really helping society but rather creating more addiction machines.

Based on what I have seen, read and experienced, a tech doesn't just go away. It evolves (unless you know one company was building it and then got shut down). Social media in the current form if it went away, would get replaced with something even worse.

From what I’ve heard, people burned out on TikTok are switching to more mindful alternatives. Perhaps what Loops could do is try to capture those people as well?

They’re addiction machines because of how they’re built.

See: custom Facebook apps that only show the part of the service you ask for - not force-feeding you whatever they want.

I want to see the Venn diagram of people who care about open source, care about federation, and want to use something like TikTok

Is this 'federated' as in ActivityPub? Or 'federated' as in ATProtocol? Or 'federated' as in some custom thing?

I did not find the site very enlightening about what's actually going on under the hood

It's federated as in ActivityPub.

from the site:

> Built for Pixelfed & the fediverse

> Loops speaks ActivityPub, so your videos can reach people on Mastodon, Pixelfed and other compatible apps — while you stay in control of your home server.

I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.

What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid?

https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg

We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.

Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.

HN is generally the place you come to to hate anything new in tech. No new piece of tech released in is ever liked here. Everyone nitpicks, strawmans, and complains that the v1 of the product is not perfect. It’s honestly so tiresome

Unhelpful nitpicks and people complaining about them get downvotes.

At this time the top comment on this post is complaining about the rest of the comments. This is not how things should be around here.

Recently released on the Appstore https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/

Not sure how the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative because of its design complexity, will get the video market, a lot less geek.

Let me present my take on why the federated alternatives struggle to replace X:

Twitter didn't succeed because it was a particularly good solution - it really isn't. It succeeded purely on the back of the network effect.

When every open-source alternative simply copies the existing restrictions without adding any unique value, why would users switch to an equally flawed version where none of the accounts they actually want to follow are?

People did fly to Bluesky. Some accounts there have 1 million followers.

Bluesky got the decentralisation UX right.

My take is that Bluesky got the network effects right, with hyping and gradual release and careful curation of who seeded the network and that is - IMO - the important thing they got right.

What do you mean by 'the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative'? I thought Mastodon is the Twitter alternative. Sorry; I didn't het it.

Bluesky became that, while Mastodon had months of head start.

I guess I don't get why all of these don't target better user experience goals - one login / trust plane and full distribution for decentralization.

The way I'd look at it is more like Bitcoin where everyone can decide how much compute to give to the pool to verify people or posts and maybe everyone shares chunks of the whole pie with copies like freenet.

Maybe I'm (likely) too dumb to get why this isn't what things in the fediverse is but they all are an awful experience and having so many hosts makes critical mass non existent so I can't be bothered to participate.

Good that they have a web version.

But the most basic functionality of going to the next video is only available via scroll (no keyboard arrow down?) and it has a really long animation and delay?

Just feels awful to use.

I feel if you wanna win in this space, especially with people who prefer more "free" platforms, then the non-app version should be a bigger priority IMO.

It's open source? Make a PR.

how good is the For You feed? the tiktok secret sauce is the creepy algorithm, who's clamoring for "crack but not addictive?"

It sounds like you’re suggesting federated crack…

is it really a tiktok alternative if there's no crack?

locally sourced, organic, ethical

[south park clip] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOzp9pR6iE

LOOPS, on the other hand, is an object-oriented programming environment in Interlisp-D, and one of the predecessors to CLOS.

I like the app but it really needs a mute function (ideally an option by default).

One thing that's awesome about this and is 100% better than TikTok:

No burned-in branding. No trailing brand screen. No trademark brand noises.

----

Tiktok videos have omnipresent logos burned-in and a full-screen trailer with an annoying Tiktok brand sound. The few random loops that I looked at had none of these. I hope this doesn't change and, if it doesn't change, I hope loops displaces TikTok. I despise being constantly bombarded with branding.

Bombarding with branding is how TikTok got people on, and I don’t think it’s a bad strategy per se. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to overcome network effects with a product like this (word of mouth would be the best, but you’ll need a ton of creators first).

Vandalizing every video posted on their service may have helped TikTok spread brand recognition. One can only hope that a service that doesn't vandalize the content they deliver will find a way to pull ahead.

I do hope we¹ can figure it out, too.

There’s a middle ground solution here. TikTok does (naturally) have a version of each video without watermarks which they show in-app. They don’t let you download it, but external tools can generally help with that. What Loops could do is default to a watermarked version, but allow downloading original as well. This way, person sharing the video can decide whether they want to help promote Loops or not.

¹ – as a humanity; I’m not affiliated with Loops in any way

the format isn't inherently bad, it's the algorithm optimizing for engagement over everything else that's the problem. short video is actually great for tutorials, explanations, behind-the-scenes stuff. i make AI-generated video content and the short form works well for documentary-style clips where you're mixing stills with selective animation.

the real question is whether federation changes the incentive structure enough. if the recommendation algo is still optimized for watch time, you just get tiktok with extra steps. if instances can tune their own ranking, that's actually interesting.

Counterpoint: The format is bad. The constant stream of videos, skipping between videos at (relatively) your own pace, the anticipation about the next video; it's similar to electronic gambling machines.

>electronic gambling machines.

Gambling is bad because it wastes people's money. Short-form videos just waste people's time, the same as the hours of television that older generations spend watching every day but with more diversified propaganda.

At least you have to go a casino for gambling. Short form video wastes your entire life away.

"just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. people wasting time staring at screens is the prevalent problem of today. with TV it was not as bad because there was/is only one in a room so it becomes shared experience. phones are worse.

Go a little further. Think about "how." How do slot machines get people to waste their money for hours-on-end? How does TikTok use short-form video to get people to scroll for hours-on-end? What is the mechanism?

"just" waste people's time? their most valuable resource?

It's OK to waste time. All art and entertainment is a waste of time. Most of what people do on HN is waste time. Arguably anything besides eating and procreative sex is a waste of time.

Sure, everything is just like a anything else. Rick and Morty is my favorite show too

Case in point - your comment was a waste of your time to write and a waste of my time to read, yet here we both are.

To use the analogy of other vice industries like gambling or alcohol, would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities?

That’s the type of analogy we might make in this case.

Obviously many people (literally billions) like this format and use it in relative moderation to unwind and kill time. Hell, I’ve even gotten productive helpful information out of the format on occasion.

It’s also taken a critical role in journalism and current events.

Unless you’re advocating prohibition, the cat is out of the bag.

Being able to find a short form video alternative that isn’t owned by commercial/government interests is a positive thing.

> would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities?

Some people are saying Las Vegas died when it became corporate pandering to rich people, and they preferred the good old days when the Mafia ran it, because they wanted you to come in and gamble.

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Question: how many people do you think would watch your short form ai videos if they had to actually seek them out and choose to watch them? The reason why the format is problematic is because it feeds off the dopamine hit of scrolling to the next piece of unknown content.

It’s well known that if people need to be intentional about what they consume they consume far less. Something tells me 15 second AI videos aren’t at the top of most people’s lists.

The less ai generated video I see the better.

There’s a reason why we don’t want to show kids fast pace videos with cuts that are less than 4s: it’s not good for the brain. The format is just not good for us

It's not just bad, it's the worst format that could exist, if radio and TV have already ruined the attention span this one seems to have the aim of doing just that by showing short content with almost no effort to understand it, a lot of context switching every 10-15 seconds and videos designed to attract as much attention as possible.

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> if the recommendation algo is still optimized for watch time

"people don't want to watch my AI slop, it's the algorithm's fault!!"

I can appreciate the effort, but the UI is indistinguishable from tiktok.

This looks interesting, but if you don't have creepy and opaque admin controls and algorthimic manipulation that create a thousand little tinpot Larry Ellisons, you should highlight that.

Because that's why no one I know uses Mastadon.

Could you please explain exactly why you think no one you know uses Mastodon? I'm trying to figure it out. I, personally am hesitant to use it first and foremost because Mastodon (and many of its lesser known alternatives) is a variant of micro-blogging (I'm appalled how extending character limit beyond 500 apparently counts as a feature in Fediverse!)

No, nothing cute like that.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079

The instance owner has absolute anonymity and absolute power to snoop with no access logs and no known identity. CCPA? GDPR? Access controls? Good luck! You can leave the instance, but you're leaving all your data behind for them or any future owner of the instance to do whatever they want with... forever.

And even if you trust them and everyone they will ever meet, people can and do store their server logs unencrypted.

Then argue they can't help it and you don't "get it" because that's just how the architecture has to work in order to... well it's not clear why this is a good design for the user or any better than other social media.

1) You still don't own your data 2) You still don't have any privacy 3) Every single part of the user experience is inferior or confusing and the people making it don't care because they're focused on doing what they can to connect kids with anonymous instance owners.

Good luck, projects like these either end up getting sued or going to acquisition. Open source != morally on the end result

this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem.

These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value.

so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride.

Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.

On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.

It's not necessarily the case that Loops is just as addictive as TikTok. Because TikTok is more than just short term videos. It's also a recommendation algorithm that slurps up as much information as it can about you to predict what you'll want to watch next. This recommendation algorithm plays a big role in making TikTok addictive. And as far as I'm aware, Loops does not have this functionality. It will just show you videos based on a much simpler algorithm that takes into account how recent a video is and how many likes/comments it has, or something like that, which will make it less addictive.

I’ve started wondering if I want a smartphone at all lately. The whole paradigm gets creepier by the day and the global corporate expectation you have one makes me not want it.

The unfortunate truth is that TikTok is just a dopamine hit machine. There's no puzzle here, this project is just "we built an open source slot machine that you can install in your own home". Replacing the casino is addressing a pointless problem.

There's nothing tricky about this - the only winning move is not to play.

I enjoy watching TikTok, especially local or niche creators who have just a couple hundred followers. This is not going to be a problem as you imagine.

One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified.

Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.

The incentive is still there.

If there is an algorithm putting stuff on people’s faces then there will always be an incentive imo.

"we need to rethink how we interact online"

I don't have a TikTok account, never have and I doubt I ever will. Am I missing anything?

I gave up fags (cigarettes) around eight years ago. Would you like some ideas for coping and abstention strategies?

Well said, thank you.

Yep. Anything similar to what was Vine (i.e., TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels; e.g., very short videos with infinite scrolling) is ultimately too consuming literally a drug that robs one of the ability to concentrate and patience.

I think we need to encourage long form videos from 5 minutes to 1-2 hours and organize stuff around metadata (title, keywords/tags, lists, unique identifier) to mesh with a living, standardized ontology in a curated, sensible fashion that disallows proliferation of slop, too low quality stuff, and spam. From there, choose your own recommender and related algorithms/plugins.

The big gotcha of decentralized video platforms is content distribution that doesn't hug a self-hoster's server with barely any traffic.

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I want this to be succesful so much, but almost nothing works in the mobile app

Needed 2 tries to sign up, and uploading a video from the camera roll failed (5-7 tries)

yeah, there's a consistent pattern of overpromising across this and other projects by the same person

Problem will be growing the user base. YouTube Shorts will be a big competitor.

How is this a problem in your opinion?

Is this using ATProtocol? I wasn’t clear from the site.

Congrats!

Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place.

What am I missing?

TikTok has ~1.59 billion global active users, if you go to Cambodia you will have a hard time not seeing it in the wild. It is painful that this is still seen as some teen trend.

People enjoy short form video, people should be able to enjoy things they like with dignity, which is in extremely short supply on algorithm and advert driven social media.

Loops is nice because it isn't algorithm oriented. You can follow folks and just see their things if you like, or see whats on the instance.

Loops doesn't need to 'slay tiktok' Loops just needs to grow organically and support the niches that feel like using it, and it can take the time to do that at any pace. Its success is not determined by user numbers or series rounds.

I don't like to produce short form video, but its been nice to now follow a few people on Loops from Mastodon. Its nice that the Fediverse allows multiple forms of expression.

> People enjoy short form video, people should be able to enjoy things they like with dignity, which is in extremely short supply on algorithm and advert driven social media.

People “enjoy” heroin, crack cocaine, fentanyl too, should they “enjoy” them with dignity too?

Yes, of course. That’s what Portugal’s drug policy did. By allowing a path for doing hard drugs safely and with dignity, you also allow a path for conversation, getting help, and leaving them behind.

So the argument here is like a harm reduction argument, as in the decriminalization/legalization of hard drugs?

That seems a little uncharitable, though it does get me wondering... Imagine if benevolent hackers took over The Algorithm. What might they achieve?

They could promote high quality educational content, as is done in certain other nations.

They could utilize the companies' infinite knowledge of Skinner box mechanics to discourage and even break screen addiction, rather than cultivate it.

The possibilities are endless.

Any volunteers? ;)

yes, a lot of the issues around this come because of the lack of dignity.

Both in the case of drugs and short form vertical video.

There's a lot of stuff which may loosely be termed "vices", e.g. alcohol and gambling, which have the property:

- many people never touch

- many people indulge without significant harm, getting enjoyment from the process

- some people over indulge messily

- a few people get their lives completely ruined, or ruin the lives of those around them

Then there's an uncomfortable, unreconcilable tension between the desire to punish/prevent the last group by banning the thing, versus the second group entirely reasonably saying that it's not a problem for them.

To be fair, sobriety has the same property; so does feature-length landscape-oriented cinema; so does involvement in religious and political affairs.

Many things that people get up to ostensibly "of their own accord" have these four groups of outcomes, in different proportions. Makes you figure.

I'm of the opinion that the main problem has always been the increasing powerlessness of the individual in the face of mass social phenomena that camouflage as "your life now" but are instead someone's viral PR campaign. In Germany this stuff passed in 10ish years, in Russia it passed in 80ish; California still countin'

Yes.

Would you prefer that they do it without dignity?

I would prefer they don't do it at all, unless there's a medical urgency.

Ah yes, a reply in true hacker fashion, if people only were that binary. Just don't use, then addiction wouldn't be a thing! Problem solved. We can see it all around, the now 55 years war on drugs has been a great success!

I'm not sure if you ever had to deal with someone addicted close to you, but it is heartbreaking. They are already ashamed of themselves and suffer. The last thing you want to do is take away their dignity, because that shuts them out and puts the path to recovery even further. They are still humans you know, just with a problem. They need help, not a trashing. That they are already doing to themselves.

That’s what I said, though? If they’re addicted and working on their addiction – there’s a medical reason why they do it. If they’re shooting heroin for fun, then they’ll get nothing but scorn from me.

> heroin ... with dignity

That discussion is already over since, what... 20 years? Heroin addicts get their fix from the state, with tax payer money, in many many countries these days. I can see the line waiting in front of my pharmacy every day in the morning...

I love love love how you deny people both their enjoyment and their dignity. You are a truly moral person; I hope you have numerous progeny.

> I love love love how you deny people both their enjoyment and their dignity. You are a truly moral person; I hope you have numerous progeny.

Only enjoyment from drugs, they're free to do it with dignity without enjoyment.

The point is, you don't have a say in this.

Sure I do. I don’t have a say in how they spend their time, but if I catch a whiff that someone is doing hard drugs for fun then I’m going to treat them differently than someone addicted and going through a rehab.

Yes.

It is seen as some teen trend because... brankly... most users are rather infantil.

Maybe it could be what prescribed Methadone is to Heroin addicts.

Watching all these open source, federated versions of social media platforms is like if you found out your favourite drug was actually manufactured by some really bad people and made people around the world suffer. So you make an open source version of the drug. Similar formula, just this time the people can own it.

Sure you cut out the bad people, but is the situation improved now?

There are projects where long term addicts are given pure medical heroin (Diamorphin) in a controlled environment, and they do considerably better than their control group who does not receive their drugs like that.

E.g. https://patrida.de/

Their drug is rage, thirst and cute trap videos generated by AI and selected for maximum engagement.

If it's not harmful it's not the same drug. Unlike diamorphine, a medical grade supply does not reduce harm; it's more like sniffing glue, inhaling poison to escape reality.

The harm from social media is at least in part caused by the feed suggestion algorithm being optimized for screen time (aka addiction). Potentially open social media where the suggestion algorithm is not that could be a big improvement.

That's no way to talk about Open-Cola.

Heroin is illegal, so the first step to make this analogy work is to criminalize TikTok.

Long overdue in fact. But then perhaps heroin wouldn’t be illegal if it was big pharma was producing it in large quantities. It just got barred early enough. Besides why we always forget how addictive and damaging is the well available alcohol?

Alcohol has fucked up more lives than any other drug in my sphere. People who have had their life fucked by drugs has mostly been because of inhumane government intervention.

// Sweden

Yeah the legal thing used by people many magnitudes more than hard illegal drugs had an effect on more people than something used by a relatively small minority will impact more people you know.

How many heroin users do you know who manage to only have 1-2 hits a week socially though and hold down a career.

The most apparent addictions that ruin precious lives everywhere around us, in every country, are freely available because "eyes wide open" and most of the times - intentional misinformation (you can think of it also as tradition).

These are:

Alcohol (+the prescription benzo combo) Gambling Sugar

Add to these tobacco if you want. Nicotine on its won as a standalone agent is perhaps no more damaging than caffeine, but is used in a form-factor that really grills one's lungs.

for example - Russian influenced Balkan areas all take drinking of vodka as something super normal.

Heroin or similar compounds are in fact produced by big Pharma in large quantities.

Heroin was produced in huge quantities and it was a very popular drug for many ailments, including cough, asthma, insomnia and calming down children. It declined only after the 1912 International Opium Convention. In Finland it was a popular cough suppressant until the 1950s. In e.g. UK it's still used for severe pain.

Heroin (diamorphine) as a molecule isn't really substantially more problematic than e.g. oxycodone or fentanyl, which are in widespread medical use. The specific ban of heroin is more a historical contingency.

That was the Purdue Pharma scandal: legal opiates.

I don't think that's a good analogy. You can't "hospitalize" someone into Loops for rehabilitation. Don't fight the symptoms, fight the cause.

Hackers sometimes create things not to actually use them, but because they are curious how something works and to see if they can

dansup, the guy behind this, is the same guy that runs Pixelfed (a federated Instagram alternative)

Yeah I can make a dropbox clone in a one-liner bash command too

Outright dismissal like this should be judged as harshly as the comment itself.

The parent comment explained why they dismissed this in clear language. Yours is a random weird comparison to Dropbox (how is it related to this post? Which side is Dropbox, TikTok or Loops?)

I believe GP is referencing this classic comment from 2007 on Drew's original Show HN post for Dropbox:

> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It’s a new trend to shoehorn any random shit into this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224.

I think this is a reference to when Dropbox was first introduced. I recall posts dismissing it as “just something that could be done as well with a bash script”.

And who is dropbox in this situation? A federated implementation for me looks more like the bash script while tiktok would be the dbox

> Yeah I can make a dropbox clone in a one-liner bash command too

Jesus, is this the only argument you people have now? Some decade old comment of a non-business guy?

Parent is right, loops removes precisely what makes TikTok addicting. It’s like removing heroin high for addicts – what’s the point of the injection, then?

At least dropbox isn't addictive brainrot lol

Even the peers I know that use TikTok admit they should really be using it less and that it's total slop.

It's truly the purest interpretation of junkfood in internet form

What you’re missing is that there’s maybe a bigger crossover between people (and age groups) who use TikTok and people who might prefer it if they weren’t tracked and monetised, than you are imagining.

My experience is that TikTok’e algorithm is so good it largely reflects the individual user. My feed is 99% wholesome - presumably because that’s how I’ve trained it over time. I’m amazed by other people’s stories of bad TikTok - just not my experience.

> it if they weren’t tracked and monetised

I think that group of people if very small, but overrepresented on sites like this. Regular people just don't care. They _might_ pay to remove ads, but because they are annoying not because they are afraid of tracking or being monetized.

I agree that HN is not representative, but amongst my definitely-not-tech-aware friends, there's certainty awareness about privacy and social media. This might manifest in avoiding specific apps (for example, I have a friend who refuses to install TikTok, despite being active in Instagram) or strict controls of their children's use.

There's another group who don't necessarily take any action immediately, but might switch if there was a competitive alternative. But of course there's a network effect: being an early adopter of Signal (over Whatsapp) was lonely but eventually enough people came along. Bluesky is doing okay vs. Twitter. Without people trying to offer an alternative, nothing will ever change.

The world could do with a decent, privacy focused, YouTube competitor.

Maybe this could grow into that?

Who is going to pay for the video bandwidth?

WebTorrents make it work so that everyone shares the cost of distribution.

This comes up every time someone posts a PeerTube link...and it's never as good of a user experience as videos playing from YouTube.

If it would work well for every user streaming services wouldn't spend millions on CDNs and streaming infra.

PeerTube currently seems like the best bet for that

A lot of older (even elderly) people watch TikTok and other short form video streams, e.g. Instagram or YouTube shorts. But I wouldn't put past kids caring about such things either.

I noticed that some lemmy instances and channels are managed in the same way Facebook and Reddit groups are - by corporations, using many bot accounts that fake user behavior/anctivity and make echo chamber environment.

So if corpo approach was compromised why not migrate the plethora of experience and knowledge to another platform to continue brainwashing disguised as marketing strategy and facilitation.

TikTok is brainrot the same way YouTube is brainrot is the same way TV is brainrot is the same way moving pictures are brainrot. The medium is not the message. (I.e. TikTok is damn good)

> Each instance admin has full control over their server's moderation policies, allowed content, and federation choices. Loops provides the tools; communities set their own rules.

Yeah, but how do you maintain quality? Are users expected to shun instances that have poor quality? Quality doesn't just mean spam and unwanted content, it means hiding poor quality posts in feeds. You end up with users that are willing to invest time in curating the app to meet their needs. But that means you miss out on most people out there who expect a curated and engaging (read:addicting) experience.

I am not concerned about market shares on their own. But this is a good idea, and tiktok and youtube short videos are doing lots of harm to the world. Having a viable alternative would be amazing.

I'll suggest that a very strong and well funded "main" instance server exist? I'm sure there is one now, but I'm concerned this will go the way of lemmy and mastodon.

I would much rather prefer a centralized social media with a sanely constructed governance and corporate structure and a clear and non-conflicting revenue generation plan. The guardian's incorporation structure is what I consider a good example. That news organization is managing to be fairly independent, prevalent and significant when all others are caving to walled gardens and billionaires. social media in general should be viewed similar to journalistic organizations in terms of governance structure.

it is nice to be able to take your data elsewhere, it is nicer not having the need to begin with. In principle that sounds great, but in practice it is similar to forking software if you don't like it.

Lastly, how do they plan on making money? At least to the level that sustains their operations?

Let me also register my disinterest in another platform that mimics TikTok.

Brainrot is brainrot regardless of whether it's "federated and open-source" or not. And BTW, 95% of the people on TikTok don't care about either of those two things.

What is the actual usecase?

It's interesting, I doubt it'll ever be successful.

Look, the reason a lot of content makes it's way to Youtube, tiktok, and twitter, etc is because the creators can earn money from the platform. On youtube and tiktok, you can send gifts to your favorite creator. That incentivizes creators to create content.

loops will never have that feature. It's really hard to legally distribute money like that. But further, the decentralized nature of it means that you'll never know if your funds ends up in your creator's account or the instant account.

Without any sort of path to make money, the only content on the platform will be works of passion. Maybe that's a good thing, but it means these people will ultimately burn out.

But on the plus side, it means you probably won't end up with an endless stream of AI slop.

Instagram pays hardly anything. I don't know anyone doing it for that reason. It's more advertising for their other services. Like onlyfans, selling physical stuff, lectures, events etc.

And of course the people who do it for fun, usually the best content. It doesn't matter they'll eventually stop. There's always new ones.

I'm not sure about tiktok, but I doubt they pay much more than insta.

Congrats. All that remains now is spending $$$ on some D-level celebs to lure in the users...

two hardest problems for a platform like this.

1. users and initial flywheel. 2. content moderation.

How is it decentralized? Decentralized as in bitcoin?

Decentralized as in not needing a central server.

I don't know about Loops specifically, but generally [Fediverse][0] projects tend to:

- Not rely on a central server.

- Allow you to set up your own server.

- Connect to a web of other servers through the Activity Pub protocol.

- Allow you to modify policies on your server (including restricting which other servers information is shared with.)

Many are also open source.

The creator of Loops also built a different project called [Pixelfed](1) with a focus on decentralized photo sharing (although it can also host video.) Because all these projects speak the same protocol, it's possible that at some point, Loops could show content from Pixelfed. Apparently Loops content is already appearing in Mastodon.

Meta's Threads also has Activity Pub support. Hypothetically, Threads content could appear on Loops and vice versa, if the UI is built to accommodate that style of content and a server admin doesn't block the Threads server (many servers block Threads specifically.)

TL;DR: A web of servers using different pieces of open source software to share social media, without a centralized server.

- [0] https://fediverse.info/

- [1] https://pixelfed.org/

Just a side note, reading through some of the other comments, it sounds like Loops specifically isn't currently open source and the intent is to open source it at some later date.

we need a platform that is not addictive. there is a simple solution. pass a very strict law: that every social media company is required to allow their user from turning off their feeds.

I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean that users should be able to switch off feeds? Does that mean you would have to select a user first to see content? Or just not see any content?

Ew. The content problem on TikTok was never the protocol, it's that 99% of short-form video is brainrot slop regardless of who hosts the servers. Slapping ActivityPub on it literally solves nothing for humanity.

I'm hopeful that the decoupling of algorithms (feeds) in ATProto can change this equation. For the tiktok clones and all the other apps.

If TikTok was decentralised then the instance that you are a member of could de-prioritise videos from those instances that were allowing the brainrot slop.

the brainrot from tiktok amplified with the brainrot from mastodon, what's not to love?

Lack of content

I do not know how to phrase this politely. I like the platform and the concept is interesting. But the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals.

You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I havent used Loops but im assuming its the same crowd as on Mastodon.

While I'm not interested in "short form" videos I had the same curiosity regarding the userbase and wanted to check myself.

The only way to look at the web view is to sign up, so I did. I completed E-Mail verification, then the account was disabled immediately with a pop up message to contact support. Not worth the effort.

I just tried exactly the same (at https://loops.video ), but I was able to watch without account, and registering afterwards also worked. Guess it's something on your side.

I can too, now. I wonder if any changes were made or if it was just a problem on my side.

Checking loops.video now, these were the first 5 videos I saw, in order:

1. Left-Wing American Politics

2. Promotion of the Fediverse and Loops

3. Left-Wing American Politics

4. A Non-English Play

5. Left-Wing American Politics

6. Stop Motion Flipbook Thing

7. Advocation for Loops Itself and Decentralization

8. Loops Promo

9. Left-Wing American Politics

So out of the first 9 videos, 4 centre around American politics, 1 I couldn't understand, 3 were promotion for the service I was currently using and only one was interesting and understandable.

I don't have a Loops account, but check multiple sites for news and information, landing on the loops homepage several times. I haven't needed a login to see videos appear for some time.

If it's anything like the rest of the Fediverse applications, it's meant to give you a full chronological feed of people you subscribe to. While several of these sites seem to have a simple trending page, one of the themes of the Fediverse seems to be getting away from overly predatory algorithms and leaning into letting people curate their own feeds and interactions again.

It sounds a lot like a "be the change" situation. If you want to see other stuff, follow people you like instead of drinking from the hose. It's still a small site, so if you don't see the content you want, then make it or build the community there.

These sites can also have basic interoperability. I don't know if the Loops UI supports subscribing to people in other Fedi networks yet, but I've seen people say Loops videos have started trickling onto Mastodon.

I have no interest in guns, and only a minor interest in sports and cars; but if you set up an instance devoted to these, and got your friends to use it (just to talk to each other), I reckon it would only be a few months before you'd seeded a community. (There is plenty of comedy on the Fediverse, so I think that's a bad example.)

The design of the Fediverse is receptive to niche communities. If other communities are hostile, you can just pretend they don't exist, and the things they post won't appear on your timelines. "The people on it" is not as much of a thing as you might be used to from social media like Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, or HN. (As everyone's so very fond or saying, ActivityPub is like email.)

If your niche is a popular niche (which sports most certainly are), then it should get quite big, quite quickly, provided the people who'd participate in it are (or can be) present.

I disagree because you dont just want "twitter for MMA" you want the whole network. So you want to be a good citizen and have instances federate with you. But most wont because of the nature of the content. So users would prefer platforms where they can follow all content from a single account.

You can still have those instances federated with you. Consider the various language communities on the Fediverse: there's little overlap between them, except where speakers are bilingual, but their instances do federate. You can do the same thing with interests.

There is no advantage to centralised systems in this regard: they have all the same problems.

> You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.

What are you talking about? Sports, cars, and comedy are present everywhere on the internet. Guns are more of a niche and not without controversy, and it's certainly true that the incumbent networks place restrictions on some gun related content.

I know they're everywhere on the internet. I'm specifically talking about loops/mastodon. I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

I think a lot of Fedi people want that, but the community is still small. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.

I'm not a Loops user atm though.

> so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.

There are hidden reasons behind centralized solutions, that make decentralized solutions unpopular. If anyone suggests "just go out and make it better", it's missing the point. That's like saying: "don't participate in society, just start your own". In theory it makes sense, in practice it's just ignorance and lack of awareness on how difficult and complex task it is.

Centralized solutions are often just a business, they're not transparent, they're not cooperative, they're not ethical, they're there to conquer market and there's big money behind them, they're part of surveillance capitalism.

These are just examples, but there's lot more, so in context of social media, it's intertwined with the rest of simulation called "real world", so almost no one is going to know what you're talking about, when mention Loops/Mastodon/Bluesky, people know dominant platforms and stick to them and they may do so as part of social pressure and because they compete for status. In this society, you won't gain status by using Loops. People are buying iPhone for status, even though something like Samsung or Fairphone would be good as well. People are buying luxury frames for glasses, because they want to show brand, they don't care that it's more expensive and quality is basically they same.

I don't know why your dragging centralization/decentralization, business model, Fairphone, etc. into the conversation now. It sort of feels like you're overthinking this.

I often talk to people about Signal irl, most download the app but some folks do. Some people actually want a For You feed and will bounce off Loops, Mastodon, or whatever. That's all fine. These spaces can have content about cars or guns or whatever else without eating the entire world.

You said:

> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

Again, I think lots of people who are already in the Fediverse want that. But, if everybody who likes cars decides they won't join in until somebody who shares content about cars does, that car community may never show up.

You seem to have interests that you feel are undeserved. Just... regularly share things about what you think is cool. Just do it for funsies.

If you really feel strongly about wanting to make a diverse space, cross promote your stuff in spaces with other people who have the same interests. Share a post, share a video, ask them to follow you. Maybe even start an instance dedicated to the topic if that's your vision.

I'm not overthinking it, if you were right and everything was simple, statistics on popularity of decentralized platforms would look different. That's empirical proof. It's science, you can read what Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Shoshana Zuboff or Tristan Harri wrote about media, you can notice that right now it's all global Skinner box experiment or you may ignore all that and go with "vibes" on why decentralized platforms fail to gain real popularity.

One approach is based on science, other bases on unfounded feelings. Some people will use these decentralized platforms, but that's not the point. My point is that it's not as simple as just telling people around you "just use this". There are systemic reasons why most people don't use them and serious analysis starts once you get it. Without that it's just wishful thinking, so sure, you will get something on these platforms, but it's like one commenter here mentioned, he tried Loops, used it for a while and it's mostly trash for him, while better community will never appear there.

To get real traction and user base on such decentralized platforms, we would need to change the way society functions first. That's why it's impossibly hard challenge. Without foundations, such projects are doomed to fail, they just can't compete with mainstream, centralized platforms.

It doesn't feel like you can stay on topic here. I'm not trying to discuss the general viability of these platforms vs. centralized ones, or other social networks. Your complaint was:

> the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals.

Okay. If you don't want to participate, don't. But, if your other comment about wanting to see a more diverse audience join was honest, then do. Either way.

There's traction. There's a user base. There are people enjoying and getting use out of it. There's plenty of communities and relationships that will go on just fine regardless of what you decide.

You seem to be frustrated about something, maybe that the fediverse isn't matching Facebook in size? It won't. It probably can't, since the commercial incentives aren't there. But, at no point does that invalidate what exists.

That's all I'm going to say about it.

This identity politics/virtue signaling seems off topic.

> I havent used Loops

I think the worst repercussion of consuming short form content is that it gives the _consumer_ a false sense of engagement. That their passive consumption endows them with knowledge and credibility, leading to the deluded belief that a display of disintirest such as this one is 1) appropriate and 2) a profound condemnation rather than the petty, irrelevant whine that it is.

>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.

I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.

I posted a cool clip from the UFC and got banned even though the content had a warning. It wasnt even that violent just a clean headkick ko.

If I started an instance it would get defederated because people would take one look and assume its toxic. But its not, Im not, I've spend years in the leftie techie activist spaces and cause no issues.

You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.

I do think its a popular niche but currently no one on the fediverse enjoys that stuff. But how can it grow when its rejected?

The whole point of federation is that you can build communities that share common values. I'm not sure what more you want. We can't force everyone to like the things you like.

However, it is a little silly to suggest that UFC is not extremely popular. I myself have wasted hours flipping through UFC reels.

This is about the fediverse not about the rest of the internet.

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What. What if I just like cars though. Am I a performative male?

No. Cars are amazing pieces of engineering and fun to drive. The people who vapidly flex supercars are an irrelevant fraction of the community.

I like guns and cars, but not sports. How exactly is it performative? Both are engineering marvels and fascinating to watch videos about, and they also happen to be a load of fun.

I watch hours of videos on both with nobody else around and don't really talk about those topics with others much. So in the spirit of HN, I'm actually curious to know what about those interests is performative?

Of the three, I only like cars.

I'm from Canada, and I like cars for many of the same reasons I like programming. They're complicated, fickle, and go fucking fast when you get everything right. It's like mainlining adrenaline and validation at the same time.. who wouldn't like that?! They're just fucking fun

New Zealand. I dont own any guns or flash cars but I still think they're interesting

> The rest of the world sits back snd takes just one guess as to which country you’re from.

Are football and F1 not immensely popular in Europe and the rest of the world?

> Modern masculinity has lapped femininity in how utterly performative it is. This shit is so tiring.

People like what they like, big whoop.

Football and F1 have become more popular by being less performatively male. Drive to Survive is The Real Househusbands of Oxfordshire (and Monaco).

Disgusting.

For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14).

And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time spent in game without having to create content, which is expensive.

Thing is, players of this genre don't want PVP. Even in WoW, I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase actively engages in PVP activity. So, by focusing on PVP, you're actually cut your potential market by 90%. Before you've written a single line of code or created any artwork. Put another way, you're spending valuable development effort on features only a tiny minority of players care about or even want.

I'm reminded of this whenever somebody on HN talks about federation. The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. It greatly complicates the implementation. The last successes of federation are POTS and Email. It's quite literally never succeeded since. And the problems with federation that POTS and Email continue to have to this day should be an object lesson in why it's a bad idea.

Choosing federation from the start is choosing to lose. I'm sorry but it's true.

Great analogy, especially considering the extent to which people play social media (especially Twitter, and derivatives) as a PvP game. Which has the "Trammel problem", from Ultima Online: nobody wants to be on the losing side.

This didn’t go where I thought it would. You made me chuckle. Thanks!

completely agree. Every time I see a "fediverse" on a project, I know its not going anywhere.

> The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users.

Until enshittification happens. Example: the fall of Freenode.

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Glad to see more platforms on the Fediverse. Couldn’t be less interested in this particular one since it’s short form video. Those who like this medium: enjoy.

I may find short form video distasteful, but it’s less distasteful than those who want to dictate the media formats that others consume. Get a grip, people.

The site is buggy, when you enable 2FA, you are given the qr code option only, no option for manual entry. When you sign up and the username is taken, you next button goes into infinite loop even after changing the username, you cannot click next, and clicking back doesn’t fix it.

The TikTok users are not conscious humans to think like "oh, this app is bad for me, let me find a clean alternative". Nice try, but missed the target by a mile.

Finally, federated, open-source crack!

Open source meth is still bad in absolute terms even if it’s better than the alternative meth

Another TikTok alternative https://upscrolled.com/en/

"Everything you love about short-video"

Ha

haha

"Open-source TikTok" is like reading "open source slot machine". Not something you should be proud of, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with "All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control"

Short form content is a medium that isn't going away. Short form content is not inherently harmful, although short form content replacing or displacing other important mediums arguably is. When I think about the issues stemming from short form content, I don't think about the inherent medium, I think about the providers and their capabilities to use the sum of all consumed content by a user in the name of a ulterior motive at scale. While I haven't investigated it too deeply, Loops seems to be an effort in patching that. Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?

Short form user generated content being served in our faces in a constant and ever updating feed fucks up our brains. It does not matter if it's proprietary or FOSS or non profit.

>Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?

I think saying it's like an open source slot machine is pretty much self-explanatory

There have already been some TikTok alternatives that have become popular after it got bought by the Trump / Oracle / Silver Lake group of buyers.

One alternative I’ve heard of that apparently became popular is Skylight: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skyligh...

We do not need another tiktok.

Censorship.

No, health advocacy (societal and mental). Better formats exist

This format is present on all video platforms, an "open" version is definitely a step in the right direction

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Small minority? What about all the studies and statistics both from third parties and from the social networks themselves showing a direct effect on the _majority_ of users? Not that I expected a better argument from someone that crams in "leftists" as an unwarranted snide remark

The anxious generation is a best-selling book for no reason then.

Your kind is the braindead target audience for this digital crack. The audience that has a 5-second attention span and jumps on the opportunity to try the paint-huffing challenge.

This form of content is bad regardless of platform.

The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer).

There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.

Here's a study showing an immediate negative impact on prospective memory from switching context repeatedly on short-form video platforms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107...

Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.

Scrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video?

Or browsing shelves in a bookshop. I've noticed I forget what I was doing ("prospective memory impairment") while looking for a good book. Also sometimes I annoy myself because I want to quit but I can't because I haven't found anything good yet. Whoops, where did the time go? So, ban bookshops.

you would hope that comments in a thread would stay in context, ideally.

The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.

As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".

It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.

Yeah that’s what memeing is. What is this, 2000s internet and we start discovering what memes are or something.

Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...

My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names.

The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?

I'm not convinced this is specific to the format (or the platform). Whenever I try to search for a specific meme or gif on google, I find huge numbers of basically identical copies that come from separate sources. I've seen complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution.

Out of curiosity, I asked my wife about this trend specifically, and while she was familiar with the joke, she has yet to see any instance of it on her page. I have to wonder if people who are experiencing stuff like this are mostly just getting stuck in a bubble and not pushing through to other content. There's an argument that learning how to interact with the app to make the algorithm work for you isn't a great experience, but there's a large volume of people who use and enjoy the app without complaining about this issue. I'm not particularly convinced that all of these people have gone numb to brainrot to the point that they enjoy seeing the same joke 20 times in a row compared to them just having a better experience from seeing a wider variety of content.

I liked seeing the same meme because it was fun seeing the same thing be done by different people. Not everyone likes that type of novelty I guess.

> complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution

This feels like a reflection of what the person feels posting on the internet signifies. Are you publishing something, and thus you should attribute sources etc, or are you just having a conversation?

You would never attribute sources when making a joke in real life. I guess you could but it would be a pretty dorky thing to do.

> Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?

Exactlym that's the feeling I get with it.

I noticed a lot of "creators" are constantly repeating the same skit over and over and over too. With different backgrounds etc. Clearly a way to try and get noticed by the algorithm. But also a great way to get them blocked by me of course.

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You can use youtube and never come across a "meme" like that.

I used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested.

And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.

>And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.

And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century.

This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_sitting

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_marathon

It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.

Memes were usually funny though. And just pictures so easily ignored if they weren't. I feel like this is just attention seeking.

Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos.

Weren't memes always just that? I think we're just old

Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part.

>The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.

congratulations on discovering mimesis

They've made it into an actual skit now? I remember when it was just a regular old meme.

I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey..

edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.

> I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women…

Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Is that also short form?

How would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex

Short form video is the brainrot.

This. If people are looking for freedom, the thing to do is to stop using TikTok or anything like it, not to make a federated version of it.

A federated version could provide a path away from addictive and polarizing content, and endless viewing.

Exactly, BlueSky demonstrates that it's not the form, but the engagement-at-any-cost feed algorithms without user-controllable knobs.

Bluesky proved no such thing. Merge bluesky with truth social and you’d be back to the same thing again. Both platforms are just full of people retreating into smaller bubbles, the underlying issues are still there just less common.

I'll come at it from another angle. Some of the most popular podcasts (and YouTubers) produce hours of long-form video (an acceptable format) daily. Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes.

The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters.

(And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.)

Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions?

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This seems like (probably) harm reduction, the approach to dealing with drug addiction. It's not great, but better than at least some alternatives.

This. It is just mental drug.

so is love

this level of reductive thought termination goes nowhere

Everyone keeps saying this

But no one will say why

Alcohol is bad, regardless of the spirit you consume. Look at how prohibition worked out.

It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles.

There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system.

Sure but there are like 5 layers of bad with tiktok, this undoes at least 2-3 of them

Why?

https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-litera...

This is a great writeup on why short-form content is overall a net negative for us with a human brain.

I feel justified turning this around on you and asking what is good about it? It's disposable media. In and out of brain in seconds. There are any number of better ways to waste time let alone ones that don't show you ads.

Better ways to waste time.

If I'm on the toilet not having a fun time, pardon me for wanting to see some cat videos instead of solving a Rubik's Cube, I guess?

You're pardoned, but I have much more fond memories of magazine baskets in bathrooms. Today you should at least have a Switch in there ;)

But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom.

The Economist app and Inoreader are higher on my front page than Instagram is, so I am being slightly tongue in cheek.

But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice.

But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back.

Oh ya, I did not mean to rag on mindless time killing! I just mean, I used to doodle or play guitar or drums far more often than I do now when I was looking for mindless distractions (which is not to say that any of those things can't also be mindful, which is maybe my point? I dunno). And of course I watched a lot of TV which, back then, was more limited so at least had the benefit of being able to use it as common ground when meeting new people. Nowadays it's a viral video that a million people have seen has not been seem by billions. Any even so, we could have a much more in depth conversation about Star Trek than an 8 second video we both happened to see.

Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me.

Magazines are exactly the same type swipe-every-few-seconds crap.

They are absolutely not the same! I mean, they come in all forms so yes, they are overlaps, but many magazines have long form articles that you can take in over several, uh, sessions. You can re-read them catching new things each time. As a guest, bathroom magazines had that funny specialness to them in that they were curated by the host. You get "recommendations" far outside of what The Algorithm would ever give you (this is actually how I learned about Scott Pilgrim comics 25 years ago). You're basically "forced" to read/look at something the host actually cares about which, if you were interested in the material after having some private time to digest it on your own, made for more meaningful conversations, way better than, "Hey! Check out this video I like! I'm going to watch with you and eagerly await your reaction!"

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Oh dear god, another fediverse service.

I mean, I love the idea behind the fediverse, but the problem is, as long as you got federated instances of anything, instance admins will use their userbase for petty bxtchfights and purity contests.

and no, selfhosting is not an alternative, anything Fediverse requires a lot of resources, is ripe with exploits and exposes you to significant legal risk from griefers (e.g. you get DM'd CSAM by someone, your server automatically downloads it => congratulations, you are now a pedo under at least German law).

The platform is filled with so many AI generated slop

I signed up and had a look, its full of garbage

I didn't deep dive into this, but just for context and comparison, here are some other tools which are building TikTok like tools on Bluesky-

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling...