4 ms·

Fitting, my wife showed me Instagram yesterday, and I was like "So this is TikTok?", "No, it's instagram", "Ah I though Instagram was about pictures from people

Fitting, my wife showed me Instagram yesterday, and I was like "So this is TikTok?", "No, it's instagram", "Ah I though Instagram was about pictures from people, this is just short, "funny" movie swiping, I thought that was TikTok's thing", "IDK, I never used TikTok".

mysterydip 4y ago
A lot of what's "viral/popular" on instagram is just reposts from tiktok/twitter. If you don't curate a following of actual people, that's much of what the algorithm feeds you.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
FB, IG and now YouTube are becoming indistinguishable from TikTok, thanks to the former all copy-catting and heavily promoting video "shorts".
- webo 4y ago
  +Snapchat. Twitter also is experimenting (experimented?) with endless video scrolling.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Twitter needs to figure out how to render video in general, before trying to scrap with the big boys.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  I accidentally started an fb vertical video and thought "Why does tiktok suck today?" until I realized the hole I had fallen into.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    "Today?"
  - Thlom 4y ago
    Was it a video that was 27 minutes long teasing the big reveal for 26 minutes and 30 seconds and the big reveal was ... nothing?
    - avereveard 4y ago
      Watch this simple trick that only requires a chain, a paperclip and an arc welder I swear five minutes craft copycats on Facebook are spiraling out of hands.
      - Avicebron 4y ago
        Or my favorite (I've watched probably too many). How to refurbish old rusted gadgets at home* fast. *industrial machine shop not included.
    - mysterydip 4y ago
      "wait for it!!!!!" "LOLemoji watch to the end! LOLemoji"
- the_only_law 4y ago
  The YouTube shorts really piss me off, because, afaik there’s no way to seek (and some of them are a bit long for a “short”), at least from what I’ve seen in the mobile UI. It may be behind a gesture or something though.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    That's the copycat behavior. It's forced engagement analytics. You either care (and it's boosted for some people) or you don't (and it's devalued for some people). All in the pursuit of perpetual doomscrolling.
  - texasbigdata 4y ago
    Hard to save to a playlist too. Find a useful life tip? Forget about being able to find it later.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      I wonder how much noise this adds to their algorithm. The other day my wife wanted to show me some "short" from a content creator she likes, and had to rapidly scroll through ~30 of other "shorts" in her feed until said creator popped up again and she could click on her profile pic. Whatever way YouTube rated those other 30 vids for my wife is completely wrong, unless they happen to have a classification category called "rapidly scrolling down because of your stupid ass UI that doesn't allow backtracking or searching previously seen content". At this rate, in a few years, even non-tech-savvy people will get fed up with increasingly nonsensical and confusing UIs of social media products.
  - gbear605 4y ago
    Sometimes you can drag along the bottom to seek, but it only seems to work on some shorts. You can sometimes tell if it will work because it’ll show a progress bar at the bottom. I’m not sure what distinguishes those though, since I’ve seen long shorts (hah) with and without them.
  - ta8903 4y ago
    "Youtube Shorts" is just an alternative frontend, you can replace any url from youtube.com/shorts/XYZ to youtube.com/watch?v=XYZ to watch them with the original UI.
- texasbigdata 4y ago
  And TikTok has a BeReal copy :) Everyone’s just trying to survive. In one corporate biography type book the author asserted Zuckerberg would institute “lockdown” when he thought they were behind features. I believe the instagram book had a similar claim about Sidstorm (sp?). I guess when network effects are life you can’t afford to not be the network. Google was smart to nab YouTube. And android. Meta was smart to grab instagram and WhatsApp (and that same logic, after missing out on making a phone, I bet is why they’re rushing to own VR). Innovate, copy, or die, basically.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    I feel there's a difference between copy-catting an upstart vs. a competitor that already outclassed you. The latter is kind of admitting defeat :). But regardless, what's really annoying here is that this new mode of interaction is pushed so hard that it hides away and starves out the "traditional" one. It's like these companies don't understand we're no longer in an era of a single social networking platform. I don't come to YouTube or Facebook to get more TikTok - I'm fine with getting TikTok on TikTok, I come to YouTube for actual longer-form videos, to Facebook for posts and groups, etc. Seeing YT, FB and IG pushing "shorts"/"reels" in my face only makes me visit them less.
  - MockObject 4y ago
    > In one corporate biography type book the author asserted Zuckerberg would institute “lockdown” when he thought they were behind features. Can you explain what this means? I don't know what a lockdown is. Thanks!
    - texasbigdata 4y ago
      From what I understand they would other drop other projects or literally not leave the office until the new feature was built. Again, from a book, you might want to fact check this.
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  I installed TikTok last year when the company I worked for switched all of their ad spend from FB to TikTok. I found it addictive in the sense that it was a time waster, yet fun… I have now installed TikTok 3 times. Each time for a week I find it fun, then after about another week I uninstall it because I value my time to create my own stuff (writing and open source). I find YouTube Short to be different. Somewhat fun, but not enough to pull me away from the YT material I watch, like philosophy ‘think’ content, Playing For Change music videos, and minimal political stuff. Using https://Freedom.to https://Freedom.to tools to monitor and limit viewing times is almost always a good idea. Latest macOS/iPadOS/iOS also has very good support for limiting app and specific web site use. These are great tools, at least for my digital life.
RicoElectrico 4y ago
The correct spelling is right in the submission title.
- teekert 4y ago
  Fixed :)
edouard-harris 4y ago
Yep. This is the same strategy Instagram used a few years ago in copying Snapchat's Stories format, and likely has the same goal. The idea is not that Instagram can take back TikTok's audience — those users are well and truly lost — but rather that it can deny existing Insta users any reason to even try TikTok in the first place. (Because they can get the same form factor without downloading a new app.) From what I've heard, the Stories copying strategy did successfully contain (but did not roll back) the Snapchat threat to Insta. So there's some reason to believe they can hold the line against TikTok with this approach too, even absent the possibility of a government ban. I expect this sort of convergence will continue in the future. Whatever one might think of fast-following as a strategy, scale plus rapid copying of features does seem to work.
- UltraViolence 4y ago
  Facebook is being paranoid and by integrating TikTok-like algorithms into Instagram they're alienating the majority of their users.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Perhaps. Or they have A/B tested the new alternative and found it superior (e.g. Instagram users exposed to that new experience come to the app more often, stay for longer).
    - UltraViolence 4y ago
      I usually stop scrolling after I see the check-mark which indicates I'm up to date. Below that there are TikTok-type short reels with all sorts of stupid things.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    It’s a separate feature within IG. People who aren’t interested in short form video scrolling don’t have to use reels.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
agumonkey 4y ago
it's been a subconscious trend since vine I guess vine, snap, insta, tiktok, youtube shorts the notion of time is gonna be a new neurosocial topic
TrueGeek 4y ago
My wife does this too and I've noticed that a large percentage of the Instagram videos she shows me have the TikTok logo on them. People are just copying them and reposting from one platform to the other.
XCSme 4y ago
This is the reason I deleted Instagram. It was better than Facebook for keeping up to date with friends, but after an update they added the "Suggested posts" that automatically show as you scroll, after you finished the new posts from friends. They offered no way to disable suggested posts (and simply have, as before, the static feed of your friends post in reverse chronological order).
tennisflyi 4y ago
Eh. For me IG is pictures from people (sometimes friends) and then short, movie swiping.

mysterydip 4y ago

A lot of what's "viral/popular" on instagram is just reposts from tiktok/twitter. If you don't curate a following of actual people, that's much of what the algorithm feeds you.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

FB, IG and now YouTube are becoming indistinguishable from TikTok, thanks to the former all copy-catting and heavily promoting video "shorts".

webo 4y ago
+Snapchat. Twitter also is experimenting (experimented?) with endless video scrolling.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Twitter needs to figure out how to render video in general, before trying to scrap with the big boys.
Zigurd 4y ago
I accidentally started an fb vertical video and thought "Why does tiktok suck today?" until I realized the hole I had fallen into.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  "Today?"
- Thlom 4y ago
  Was it a video that was 27 minutes long teasing the big reveal for 26 minutes and 30 seconds and the big reveal was ... nothing?
  - avereveard 4y ago
    Watch this simple trick that only requires a chain, a paperclip and an arc welder I swear five minutes craft copycats on Facebook are spiraling out of hands.
    - Avicebron 4y ago
      Or my favorite (I've watched probably too many). How to refurbish old rusted gadgets at home* fast. *industrial machine shop not included.
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    "wait for it!!!!!" "LOLemoji watch to the end! LOLemoji"
the_only_law 4y ago
The YouTube shorts really piss me off, because, afaik there’s no way to seek (and some of them are a bit long for a “short”), at least from what I’ve seen in the mobile UI. It may be behind a gesture or something though.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  That's the copycat behavior. It's forced engagement analytics. You either care (and it's boosted for some people) or you don't (and it's devalued for some people). All in the pursuit of perpetual doomscrolling.
- texasbigdata 4y ago
  Hard to save to a playlist too. Find a useful life tip? Forget about being able to find it later.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    I wonder how much noise this adds to their algorithm. The other day my wife wanted to show me some "short" from a content creator she likes, and had to rapidly scroll through ~30 of other "shorts" in her feed until said creator popped up again and she could click on her profile pic. Whatever way YouTube rated those other 30 vids for my wife is completely wrong, unless they happen to have a classification category called "rapidly scrolling down because of your stupid ass UI that doesn't allow backtracking or searching previously seen content". At this rate, in a few years, even non-tech-savvy people will get fed up with increasingly nonsensical and confusing UIs of social media products.
- gbear605 4y ago
  Sometimes you can drag along the bottom to seek, but it only seems to work on some shorts. You can sometimes tell if it will work because it’ll show a progress bar at the bottom. I’m not sure what distinguishes those though, since I’ve seen long shorts (hah) with and without them.
- ta8903 4y ago
  "Youtube Shorts" is just an alternative frontend, you can replace any url from youtube.com/shorts/XYZ to youtube.com/watch?v=XYZ to watch them with the original UI.
texasbigdata 4y ago
And TikTok has a BeReal copy :) Everyone’s just trying to survive. In one corporate biography type book the author asserted Zuckerberg would institute “lockdown” when he thought they were behind features. I believe the instagram book had a similar claim about Sidstorm (sp?). I guess when network effects are life you can’t afford to not be the network. Google was smart to nab YouTube. And android. Meta was smart to grab instagram and WhatsApp (and that same logic, after missing out on making a phone, I bet is why they’re rushing to own VR). Innovate, copy, or die, basically.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  I feel there's a difference between copy-catting an upstart vs. a competitor that already outclassed you. The latter is kind of admitting defeat :). But regardless, what's really annoying here is that this new mode of interaction is pushed so hard that it hides away and starves out the "traditional" one. It's like these companies don't understand we're no longer in an era of a single social networking platform. I don't come to YouTube or Facebook to get more TikTok - I'm fine with getting TikTok on TikTok, I come to YouTube for actual longer-form videos, to Facebook for posts and groups, etc. Seeing YT, FB and IG pushing "shorts"/"reels" in my face only makes me visit them less.
- MockObject 4y ago
  > In one corporate biography type book the author asserted Zuckerberg would institute “lockdown” when he thought they were behind features. Can you explain what this means? I don't know what a lockdown is. Thanks!
  - texasbigdata 4y ago
    From what I understand they would other drop other projects or literally not leave the office until the new feature was built. Again, from a book, you might want to fact check this.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I installed TikTok last year when the company I worked for switched all of their ad spend from FB to TikTok. I found it addictive in the sense that it was a time waster, yet fun… I have now installed TikTok 3 times. Each time for a week I find it fun, then after about another week I uninstall it because I value my time to create my own stuff (writing and open source). I find YouTube Short to be different. Somewhat fun, but not enough to pull me away from the YT material I watch, like philosophy ‘think’ content, Playing For Change music videos, and minimal political stuff. Using https://Freedom.to https://Freedom.to tools to monitor and limit viewing times is almost always a good idea. Latest macOS/iPadOS/iOS also has very good support for limiting app and specific web site use. These are great tools, at least for my digital life.

RicoElectrico 4y ago

The correct spelling is right in the submission title.

teekert 4y ago
Fixed :)

edouard-harris 4y ago

Yep. This is the same strategy Instagram used a few years ago in copying Snapchat's Stories format, and likely has the same goal. The idea is not that Instagram can take back TikTok's audience — those users are well and truly lost — but rather that it can deny existing Insta users any reason to even try TikTok in the first place. (Because they can get the same form factor without downloading a new app.) From what I've heard, the Stories copying strategy did successfully contain (but did not roll back) the Snapchat threat to Insta. So there's some reason to believe they can hold the line against TikTok with this approach too, even absent the possibility of a government ban. I expect this sort of convergence will continue in the future. Whatever one might think of fast-following as a strategy, scale plus rapid copying of features does seem to work.

UltraViolence 4y ago
Facebook is being paranoid and by integrating TikTok-like algorithms into Instagram they're alienating the majority of their users.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  Perhaps. Or they have A/B tested the new alternative and found it superior (e.g. Instagram users exposed to that new experience come to the app more often, stay for longer).
  - UltraViolence 4y ago
    I usually stop scrolling after I see the check-mark which indicates I'm up to date. Below that there are TikTok-type short reels with all sorts of stupid things.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  It’s a separate feature within IG. People who aren’t interested in short form video scrolling don’t have to use reels.
johannes1234321 4y ago

agumonkey 4y ago

it's been a subconscious trend since vine I guess vine, snap, insta, tiktok, youtube shorts the notion of time is gonna be a new neurosocial topic

TrueGeek 4y ago

My wife does this too and I've noticed that a large percentage of the Instagram videos she shows me have the TikTok logo on them. People are just copying them and reposting from one platform to the other.

XCSme 4y ago

This is the reason I deleted Instagram. It was better than Facebook for keeping up to date with friends, but after an update they added the "Suggested posts" that automatically show as you scroll, after you finished the new posts from friends. They offered no way to disable suggested posts (and simply have, as before, the static feed of your friends post in reverse chronological order).

tennisflyi 4y ago

Eh. For me IG is pictures from people (sometimes friends) and then short, movie swiping.