Welp thars a hard no.

What a great way to build trust in a newly born platform! And how respecting to the people that are using the platform! Way to go!

TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful

TikTok is profitable because it is addictive. But the idea that short-form video is less useful than print or radio is flawed.

I don’t understand why anyone would use this.

For the same reason someone would turn on the TV, download a podcast, or pick up a magazine.

If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It seems like an idea worth trying. What is there to lose?

it drains our energy and motivation

All this time, I thought the daily grind of employment - consuming 8-12 hours of my day for someone else's profit - was what exhausted my free time, limited my opportunities for socializing, and drained my enthusiasm for local organizing. Turns out it was the fifteen minutes of free time between meetings checking current events that was to blame.

It’s like digital weed

So its palliative care for our lack of comprehensive healthcare, but even less effective at the job?

That's a problem. Absolutely. It's not the problem though. I'm not sure the problem can be summarized so succinctly. This is the way I've been putting it:

These are the top reasons humanity needs successful, decentralized, open social media platforms:

1. Collecting and selling user's private data is dangerous and unethical.
2. Using that data to intentionally and directly manipulate user's thinking is even worse.
3. All of the major centralized social media companies have been proven to either allow these illicit information campaigns or coordinate them directly. TikTok is the focus right now but Sophie Zhang exposed Facebook for doing exactly what TikTok has been exposed for recently. Can you recall any meaningful consequences for Facebook? Do you think Facebook is now safe to use?
4. It's clear that most political leaders are either too ignorant, too corrupt, or too inept to meaningfully legislate against these problems.
5. The concerned public can't shut Pandora's box. No one is coming to save us from big tech or the monied interests and nation-states that wield it.
6. The concerned public can't easily and legally audit the platforms big tech builds because they are closed and proprietary.
7. Personal choice is not enough. Not using centralized social media increases personal safety but does little to curb its influence otherwise.

These are listed by order of intuitive acceptance rather than importance. I find it aids the conversation.

The best reasonable answer to these problems I've seen proposed is for the public to create an open and decentralized alternative that's easier to use and provides a better user experience.

Will that kind of alternative be a force for pure good? I'm not sure. To your point: I'm not convinced social media of any kind can be more than self-medication to cope with modernity. Then again I've had incredible and meaningful conversations with close friends after passing the bong around and spent time on Facebook/Reddit, and now Mastodon/Lemmy/etc, doing the same. Those interactions were uplifting and humanizing in ways that unified and encouraged all involved.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We need to take care of each other, refuse pure hedonism, and protect the vulnerable (and we're all varying degrees of vulnerable). At the same time: humans aren't happy in sterile viceless productivity prisons. Creating spaces for leisure which do no harm in the course of their use isn't just a nice idea... It's necessary for a functional and happy society.

Nah man, Social Media Companies are at an evil genius level of greed. They are the ones creating the feeling of consuming a "digital weed," as you call it. Blaming the users is tantamount to saying the world is polluted because people love cars, as if the oil and gas lobby isn't cultivating that and profiting massively off of it.

Barkbarkbark

TikTok is designed to make you consume and not meaningfully engage. As complex as the algorithm is, users' ability to participate in discussions is severely limited.

ByteDance is capable of writing software that predicts what you want to see next, but it can't write comment sorting, or basic threading like Reddit?

The severe limitations in communication are deliberate. You're not supposed to engage meaningfully, you're supposed to look at it, feel something, and then scroll.

One of the reasons I like seeing new social media startups (like Lemmy) is that the current offerings are harmful to us, and any challenge to them as the potential to make positive change.

Bark

who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media

I don't watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.

What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?

I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.

But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You're still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you're going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.

But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you've got a degree of control (I don't have to listen to Rogan if I don't want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.

A distributed service is much less vulnerable to being bought up by a single narcissistic billionaire who can ruin the online experience of millions of people at once.

A distributed service like Lemmy is spread out over 600 Instances in countries all over the world. If someone buys the most popular Lemmy Instance and wrecks it, those users can simply move to the same communities on the second or third or fourth most popular Instance and the original Instance will wither and die. This also works for communities with power tripping moderators. You can quickly find out through a search which community is the "real" one by the number of subscribers it has.

ITT: People in their mid-twenties or later, who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media.

You're just waving away an important fact, which is that shorts and their equivalents are notoriously known for killing attention spans and disrupting the management of dopamine in the brain, causing depression in particular.

We are no longer simply in the traditional custom of the elderly who despise the activities of the younger generations, we are talking about health.

Moderation

I don't think they'll be able to do any type of direct competition for TikTok with a lack of advertising and payments You're not going to draw quality creators. Decentralized algorithm sounds like a nightmare to manage.

However one place they will have some advantage is censorship. Anything that's not explicitly illegal Will be a hell of a lot harder to stamp out. Moderation will probably be very light.

the benefit i can see is that instead of having to share out to other social media, you can just see it in any fediverse account you have thanks to activity pub which eliminates one of the barriers to being viral.

that said i don't think it will get mainstream appeal.

Federation can solve the danger zone content for you, how about a federation network with just kids content, other with more adult ones, etc to the just nsfw isolated from each others?