5 ms·

> Facebook, it seems, is moving away from its traditional focus on text and images, spread among people who know one another, to instead adopt TikTok’s emphasis

> Facebook, it seems, is moving away from its traditional focus on text and images, spread among people who know one another, to instead adopt TikTok’s emphasis on pure distraction. This shift is not surprising given TikTok’s phenomenal popularity, but it’s also shortsighted: platforms like Facebook could be doomed if they fail to maintain the social graphs upon which they built their kingdoms. This. I on occasion visit Facebook to keep up with what friends are doing. If they turn it into TikTok, I will have zero reason to go there any more.

Ekaros 4y ago
It feels that we are thinking all of the social media the same, but in reality some of them are content platforms and some of them are social media and some of them are in between. Facebook trying to become content platform like Youtube or TikTok is killing itself.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  I don’t understand why they don’t launch a new app with a content focus. Why destroy what’s there when you could do both?
  - amelius 4y ago
    Because people will choose the content and use the original app only sporadically, hence it becomes unprofitable.
mrtksn 4y ago
In my experience, FB and others moved away from being about your friends to become content sharing machines long time ago. It’s like reddit but without sub separation + influencer glamour. Tiktok on the other hand came from purely creative angle. It’s not about your friends, it’s about using creative tools to express something. That’s why TikTok dominated the original new content market. TikTok’s editing tools are phenomenal and people are using them so creatively. IMHO, the traditional social media giants optimized for profit only, destroyed any potential competitors and up until TikTok we have been left to terrible state of the social media. If you recall, FB and others were involved in political manipulations and accused of spreading extremism. It might seem like long time ago but American-made social media was riddled with conspiracy theorist and white supremacists and the tech giants were blamed for spreading that in the name of engagement. At some point the place has become so horrible that they started blocking prominent accounts, including the American President.
- ngold 4y ago
  No disrespect, but....Chinese spying company? It's free and you are definitely not the product, but your information and contacts and photos and videos sure look tasty to the CCP.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    I'm not American, most of the people aren't and from our perspective FB and TikTok are exactly the same. In fact, Europeans and British can positively say that FB had a substantial life changing impact due to personal data misuse and political manipulation. It's one of the core reasons most Europeans would like to see their data protected and Tech giants held accountable. Be it American or Chinese or another one. You might argue about EU/US alliance and say that CCP are the devil but the fact is, US is documented to spy on scale, have spying partnerships with US tech giant(Google for Snowden and WikiLeaks), rich history of organising coups and political movements and most importantly the political situation in US is also not stable and it's quite possible for Americans to elect EU-hostile president with questionable ties to Russian oligarchs like the last time. The situation with TikTok might be a new phenomenon for the Americans but it's how the rest of the world has been living in the last 30 years.
    - freshpots 4y ago
      Are you really trying to compare a dictatorship state to America? And I say this as as foreigner....you are creating quite the false equivalency here. But muh both sides....People need to stop looking at things in black and white.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        > People need to stop looking at things in black and white. How saying that USA is the absolute angel and China is the absolute devil is not a black and white but saying that USA and China pose similar risks is black&white? Besides, a large number of Americans[0] are disputing the integrity of American elections, claim that America is ruled by a secret elite, claim that elections change nothing, claim that USA is about to be a dictatorship the moment gun control laws are introduced. Of course I don't believe in any of this BS but the movement of people who believe in this stuff is frightening and very weird things happen on the 6th of January in 2021 and things might change dramatically in near future. So yes, I do compare the USA and China in sense of a risk for Europe. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-biden-election-2020-poll-victory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-bide...
baby 4y ago
They already moved from being this useful tool to keep track of friends and people you meet to being a noisy content platform. BUT, you can still use it (via messenger) to keep track of your friend, so people (including me) still use it for that. It is still a shame that they didn't preserve the old utility of facebook and created the noisy content platform as a separate thing.

Ekaros 4y ago

It feels that we are thinking all of the social media the same, but in reality some of them are content platforms and some of them are social media and some of them are in between. Facebook trying to become content platform like Youtube or TikTok is killing itself.

snoopy_telex 4y ago
I don’t understand why they don’t launch a new app with a content focus. Why destroy what’s there when you could do both?
- amelius 4y ago
  Because people will choose the content and use the original app only sporadically, hence it becomes unprofitable.

mrtksn 4y ago

In my experience, FB and others moved away from being about your friends to become content sharing machines long time ago. It’s like reddit but without sub separation + influencer glamour. Tiktok on the other hand came from purely creative angle. It’s not about your friends, it’s about using creative tools to express something. That’s why TikTok dominated the original new content market. TikTok’s editing tools are phenomenal and people are using them so creatively. IMHO, the traditional social media giants optimized for profit only, destroyed any potential competitors and up until TikTok we have been left to terrible state of the social media. If you recall, FB and others were involved in political manipulations and accused of spreading extremism. It might seem like long time ago but American-made social media was riddled with conspiracy theorist and white supremacists and the tech giants were blamed for spreading that in the name of engagement. At some point the place has become so horrible that they started blocking prominent accounts, including the American President.

ngold 4y ago
No disrespect, but....Chinese spying company? It's free and you are definitely not the product, but your information and contacts and photos and videos sure look tasty to the CCP.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  I'm not American, most of the people aren't and from our perspective FB and TikTok are exactly the same. In fact, Europeans and British can positively say that FB had a substantial life changing impact due to personal data misuse and political manipulation. It's one of the core reasons most Europeans would like to see their data protected and Tech giants held accountable. Be it American or Chinese or another one. You might argue about EU/US alliance and say that CCP are the devil but the fact is, US is documented to spy on scale, have spying partnerships with US tech giant(Google for Snowden and WikiLeaks), rich history of organising coups and political movements and most importantly the political situation in US is also not stable and it's quite possible for Americans to elect EU-hostile president with questionable ties to Russian oligarchs like the last time. The situation with TikTok might be a new phenomenon for the Americans but it's how the rest of the world has been living in the last 30 years.
  - freshpots 4y ago
    Are you really trying to compare a dictatorship state to America? And I say this as as foreigner....you are creating quite the false equivalency here. But muh both sides....People need to stop looking at things in black and white.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      > People need to stop looking at things in black and white. How saying that USA is the absolute angel and China is the absolute devil is not a black and white but saying that USA and China pose similar risks is black&white? Besides, a large number of Americans[0] are disputing the integrity of American elections, claim that America is ruled by a secret elite, claim that elections change nothing, claim that USA is about to be a dictatorship the moment gun control laws are introduced. Of course I don't believe in any of this BS but the movement of people who believe in this stuff is frightening and very weird things happen on the 6th of January in 2021 and things might change dramatically in near future. So yes, I do compare the USA and China in sense of a risk for Europe. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-biden-election-2020-poll-victory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-bide...

baby 4y ago

They already moved from being this useful tool to keep track of friends and people you meet to being a noisy content platform. BUT, you can still use it (via messenger) to keep track of your friend, so people (including me) still use it for that. It is still a shame that they didn't preserve the old utility of facebook and created the noisy content platform as a separate thing.