Technology

Never downloaded it...

You can't uninstall that which was never installed.

More enshitification. Whatever the current "administration" touches turns to shit, dies, and rots.

Boycott everything you can that's from the US. Even if you are IN the fucking US. Nazis are not your friends (and if they are, fuck you, you're a Nazi too).

If you are uninstalling, you can try the federated alternative: loops

Good. Fuck TikTok.

Up 150% sounds crazy... but like, what's the rate of installs vs uninstalls here? How has the rate of installs changed?

Should be higher, save your selves

I just recently deleted my account and uninstalled the app. I'm not going to lie, it was hard because I had finally curated my algo to some pretty decent content that wasn't just brainrot trash.

But I'd rather be bored than give Oracle anything.

EDIT: Also Loops is neat from a technical standpoint, but it feels like a ghost town coming from TikTok.

This is now a right wing propaganda machine. I deleted awhile ago.

Several social media posts pointed to language in the new policy that describes the types of data TikTok may collect, including sensitive information such as “your racial or ethnic origin” as well as “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.”

Despite the social media uproar, that language does not appear to be new. An archived version of the policy from August 2024 includes the same provisions.

at least it won't be zuccerslop

I understand TikTok to be the bastion of communication and community for Gen Z.

But so much of the content is uncreative. The same songs and sound effects to some stupid reaction video.

That said, I do hope TikTok crashes and burns so the new owner loses on their bid. And I do really hope Gen Z can collectively find a new platform to communicate on freely because TikTok has been a force for them just as Twitter and Reddit was for Millenials.

For anyone looking for new alternatives, I'm sure most Lemmy users can suggest more open-source pubfed options, but for anyone trying to generate a bit more presence (not that there's much) I did find a YouTube video highlighting some "indie social media" sites, mostly focusing on nostalgia of simpler versions of the historically popular ones.

Having the whole world operate off of publically-owned shared systems is probably an ideal, but having them at least in tight competition, with easy destinations to abandon off to, is still quite a bit better.

Ok, but what are the counts for uninstalls generally? 150% sounds like a lot, but if it’s only a thousand uninstalls a week then it’s only jumped to 1,500 uninstalls. When there are millions of users, that’s…not very much.

I’m not arguing against progress. I’m just saying they are making it sound like this big exodus when it might be minimal in reality.

I am classically conditioned to hate autoplay videos from the era of auto play ads on websites.

Careful on your uninstall, once my wife uninstalled from her phone*, all of a sudden her account can't re-connect to delete her data. There's lots of talk about this on the forums. Delete your account and uninstall all at once.

• my brain said the work i was thinking it wasn't

I find it funny that millions of people had no problem with an evil foreign government like the CCP, that's well known for collecting data for military purposes and spending mind boggling amounts on propaganda campaigns, controlling the app, but now draw the line at some Silicon Valley billionaire doing essentially the same thing.

I never liked the short content format so I never had an interest downloading TikTok, but I knew that I would never, ever download it when I learned that this Chinese app is actually banned in China. They a have a separate clone of this app that's exclusive to China that uses a different algorithm that promotes positive and educational content. The fact that billions of people use this shitty weaponized piece of Chinese spyware is depressing, especially when the Fediverse exists.

Lmao amount of ppl defending TikTok in the comment is funny af

I feel old every time I share that I’ve never installed TikTok and don’t have an account.

In many ways, I feel a bit like I am still forced to ambiently and peripherally use the app when interacting with the rest of social media and society. Because the damn format, and culture, and way of thinking and producing videos has seeped so deep into all aspects of our lives.

The whole mode of consuming media in an algorithmic flipbook like that weirds me out. I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy being enticed to watch videos in the way TikTok promotes.

Vine used to be so fun and simple.

That was fucking eons ago.

Its replacement has so many issues on many levels.

psst hey kids. wanna try out some fediverse?

I hate how percentages from 100% and up are used ambiguously.

e.g. 150% vs +150%

We will see 100% of tiktok users uninstall. Even 200%, 300% 400% up to 500% and more including 600%. Percents like no one has seen.

I don't understand the hype about TikTok anyway. I installed it few weeks ago, and uninstalled few days later because how boring and useless the app is.

I must be old.

It was an almost perfect medium for sharing cooking videos and recipes, can anyone suggest a replacement?

Don't worry I've already uninstalled it (months ago when Ellison bought a majority stake) but I haven't found a replacement short-form video platform for recipes yet

Meanwhile https://joinloops.org/ and https://joinpeertube.org/ keep getting better and better

Hopefully more creators will take notice and at least crosspost their content on better platforms too.

My siblings were debating issues with it and about how willing they were to just deal with it.

I'm just shocked at how addicted everyone is to it that it could probably say "Trump is watching all users' front cameras while the app is open" and kids would still be like "hmmm what are the odds he watches me though?

But everybody's a zombie.

I mean I downloaded it, back really early, to take a peek. After 15 minutes, I decided I hated the short format, and peaced out.

It seems to largely be a generational thing. Millennials are (in my perception) mostly on it just to make money, zoomers just want that crack IV drip.

Obviously this is just a trend, and there are counter examples everywhere, but that seems to be more true than not. At least from the outside looking in.

And given it's totally obnoxious censorship rules, now I have to deal with hearing about people getting "unalived", or "adult fun time", and "p 3 dee oh" from creators that multistream. Even without being there, I'm forced to experience the cancer secondhand.

That's my main problem with it. None of the other problems affect me directly much since I've always avoided it, but that is smeared all over my shit.