There were vibrant communities, subcultures.
Real issues were aired there. Real people connected. From the early days of Covid it provided a window into a broader world.
While platforms dominate, instead of content dominating (see podcasts where this seems to be happening), you will always be a prisoner to what happens on the platform.
As one of those people, I definitely hope I can find somewhere else. It's essentially the only way I can play live anymore
If you are an "influencer" build a following on multiple platforms.
If you are a business owner engage in marketing on multiple platforms.
If you need a video to tell you how to bake cupcakes or clean a kettle, learn to use Google.
If you are bored, learn to read.
If Hacker News disappeared, people would be sad because it was a unique place. And others would say "just go on Reddit it's the same thing."
And those people would be mistaking functionality for community.
Yes, all things pass. But if you read what I said at the top, it's not that we should expect things to last forever. It's that people are flip about TikTok in part because they don't seem to have more than a surface level understanding of it — or a completely different idea of what it was than the people who really used it.
Luckily they're comprised of humans (mostly? Probably another discussion), and the ability to migrate is component to their nature; the good ones find greener pastures and adapt as necessary to define their next generation.
A lot of those people have actively tried to build communities on those other platforms, but those platforms algorithms actively work against the emergence of the types of groups we've seen on TikTok.
And I think most people here understand that.
I truly feel a loss. I have changed aspects of my daily life for the better due to TikTok.
And I also watched too many cute animals and "don't talk to cops" videos.
Music accounts like Rare The Nanas who put me to sleep many nights with amazing VHS finds of obscure 90s music performances.
Tons of music theorists, weird quirky bands and musicians who built huge followings there, film makers, game devs, and on and on and on.
TikTok may have been too effective and addictive, but it undeniably worked. I started watching many niche and interesting content creators that the other platforms wouldn't recommend to me.
This sounds great at first. Now imagine you are not just into wood working, indie bands or travel logs, but instead slightly interested in right wing or islamist ideology. Within a short time you are flooded with political or religious propaganda. In Europe that has been a real problem. See for example https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000231964/auf-tiktok-re... or https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/tiktok-afd-100... (Sorry, German only.) The right-wing AfD politician Maximilian Krah became so "popular" on TikTok that the platform had to artificially limit his reach! (Kudos to them, but it shows the extent of the problem.)
To be clear, FB and YT have the same problem of creating filter bubbles, but the algorithm is less effective and therefore less dangerous (but still dangerous enough!)
What's so good about tiktok is that it keeps my interests thoroughly mixed. I'm bilingual and I see content from multiple countries about different interests and it keeps me in touch with all of them plus presenting topical and trending content. It also seamlessly measures my interest so if I naturally skip a couple of videos about a topic I'll see less and less until I see none.
That's true. I got pretty frustrated by YT's recommendation algorithm. The front page got pretty bad and repetitive. However, there's always some good stuff in the right column when you select "similar".
But you know what you can also do? Actively search for stuff! I wouldn't feel comfortable putting my media consumption behavior into the hands of some addictive algorithm. (HN is already bad enough :)
> It also seamlessly measures my interest so if I naturally skip a couple of videos about a topic I'll see less and less until I see none.
Sure, but while you are interested it keeps feeding you the same stuff, like YT on steroids. This is all fine when it comes to hobbies, music, travel logs, etc., but it gets dangerous with other content. People don't really think "I'm not really interested into this right wing or IS propaganda videos anymore, I'll give it a break".
Success on one platform doesn't always mean success on all.
How much money has MrBeast made outside of YouTube? (excluding Amazon)
I agree whole heartedly, along with a horrendous dearth of empathy but unfortunately I find very common in Hacker News comments. Regardless of whether or not you feel that 170 million Americans all fell for Chinese propaganda, there is still a profound sense of loss.
For me personally, I've been writing and performing music on TikTok for about 3 years now and frequently found community and collaboration the likes of which I've not even come close to seeing anywhere else except maybe YouTube 10 or 15 years ago. Community they gave me the confidence to release music for the first time and folks who would actually listen to it.
I had a rather small following, but orders of magnitude of more than anywhere else IRL or on the internet
People say "you can just post on xyz" and yet none of those places surface these kinds of creators.
Many of the other sites are either pay-to-play at this point, or surface content that aligns with something they're looking to surface.