6 ms·
TikTok is finally on the decline
- trs83 3y agoGood riddance to the lowest form of entertainment.
- gregoriol 3y agoIt'll be replaced by something even worse, it's how it has been for the last 20 years
- andybak 3y agoI dipped into TikTok out of morbid curiosity but found it quickly cottoned on to things I like. On the whole I now get a mix of interesting factual content that aligns well with my taste - and a frictionless UI that I prefer to most of the alternatives. Admittedly a fair chunk of the content is ripped from YouTube but it's a great discovery mechanism and you can later subscribe to the source. Genuine question - have you tried it or are you going on reputation?
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y agoNot the person you're asking, but someone who couldve said the same thing as that person. No, I haven't tried and I won't. Yes, I'm sure it has things that interest me. So what? The point is it's another one of these time sinks that profit off your need for entertainment. Ill entertaint myself, thank you.
- quickslowdown 3y agoAside from being a time sink, the thing I'm most surprised to see on this site is that more users aren't incredibly wary of where the app is coming from. We all understand dubious data siphoning, yet so many people here are happy to put TikTok on their phone, connect to their wifi, and let it do its hoovering.
- andybak 3y agoI'm fully aware and I make an informed, conscious decision. If the PLA wants to know how many videos on astrophysics and urban planning I watch then I'm fine with that.
- quickslowdown 3y agoThis is such a tired retort to the point I'm trying to make. It's not about the quality of the data they're collecting, or how interesting it is. It's the vast quantities they collect, in total, I take issue with. I don't care if you agree, leave the app installed, double down and grant it all the permissions it asks for, whatever. The high-level version of this is that I'm just not ok with the amount of data being collected, and the party that's collecting it, regardless of what that data actually is. Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?" Bad argument, focused too narrowly on personal experience.
- andybak 3y ago> This is such a tired retort to the point I'm trying to make. Is "tired" here a less polite way to say "you're not the first person to say this and I disagree"? I'm trying to understand whether I need to feel insulted here or not. > I don't care if you agree Well you kinda do or else you wouldn't have come back four days later to post this. > I'm just not ok with the amount of data being collected, and the party that's collecting it, regardless of what that data actually is. Which strikes me as a fiercely absolutist policy - possibly to the point of being irrational. I actual presume you do care about the amount and type of data collection or else you'd be raging at - I dunno - the national park service tracking aggregate visitor counts. So I'm going to presume that this is a rhetorical flourish, rather than a statement I'm meant to take literally. The trouble with rhetorical flourishes it that it leaves me in the dark about what you actually do mean and it's therefore hard to respond. > Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?" No. My argument is remarkably different to that.
- andybak 3y ago> I'll entertain myself, thank you. So you don't watch any media? TV? Documentaries? I'm not clear what distinction you're making between "good" media and "bad" media. I've never been geek shamed on watching Tom Scott before.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y agoI watch things that I search for based on questions that I ask myself. I don't watch things based on some platform, publisher, media personality, etc, going "look at this aren't you curious?"
- andybak 3y agoWell I'm pleased for you that all your media consumption is deliberate and planned. You're a real outlier.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y agoIf you feel that whatever you're doing is insufficient, you depend only on yourself to change. If not, then I guess we're both happy with ourselves :-)
- burnerburnson 3y agoYou're underselling the problem which is that they profit off your addiction. Time you could be spending creating art, exercising, or learning a useful skill is instead spent watching an endless stream of junk videos hand-picked for you by the Chinese government.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y agoYes, addiction, that's exactly what I had in mind. YouTube, Tok Tok etc, train your brain for craving satisfaction in short bursts and move on to something else. Even the "smart intellectual geeky" content is consumed for 20 minutes, you get satisfied, and then move on with your day/media consumption, and never make the effort to deepen your understanding. I stopped using that word on HN because whenever I suggest that "screens are addictive" I get down voted (and it's not as much that it bothers me to lose imaginary points, it's that then it gets hidden and people don't get to see it, at which point I'm just yelling into the vacuum).
- andybak 3y agoAddiction? I use it for around 30 minutes a day. And sometimes you need to kick back and passively graze content. You know - after all that exercise, skill learning and art creating...
- baubino 3y agoNot who you asked but one reason I dislike this kind of highly curated media is that it obscures the possibility of being exposed to something completely different. I used to enjoy meandering through the library stacks and coming across some cool book that I never would have found otherwise. Highly curated media is the opposite of that experience; it makes this kind of happenstance virtually impossible.
- andybak 3y agoBut it does do the thing you just described (at least to some degree)? I suppose it rests on what is meant by "completely different" but I've been relatively satisfied by the variety.
- baubino 3y agoBy “completely different” I mean something that I haven’t encountered before. Something completely outside of and unrelated to my current interests. The old internet allowed for this kind of random discovery. The problem with curated content is that if you do manage to find something new and different, the algorithm will then start serving you related things. There’s no way to truly “wander the stacks” as it will keep showing similar and related content.
- donor20 3y agoIs it really dying? At least on apples App Store it and temu are the top apps still being downloaded
- demondemidi 3y agoIt’s not even entertainment. It’s just distraction. And then it becomes addiction.
- xnx 3y agoLower than broadcast TV? Lower than most video games? Lower than two people punching each other in the face? Lower than rage-baiting "news"?
- CorpOverreach 3y agoHopefully all of the "me too!" features other platforms (Instagram Shorts, Facebook Reels, etc.) go down with it too. They're the perfect combination of addicting and entirely useless.
- hiddencost 3y agoZombies have a habit of shambling on for a very long time.
- thenerdhead 3y agoI don't know how anyone can enjoy using a platform that throws 20 TikTok shop videos in your face and these "influencers" acting like awful QVC spokespeople of cheap, offshore products. That, but also how fake it is and has been for years now. I feel bad for all those influencers who fell off or can only do one thing because they created a "niche" and are known for doing that one thing. Also how sad it is that it ruined many families because fame got in the way of values. The opposite could probably be said, but as Carl Sagan warned, this medium has done more harm than helped us. > The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
- amelius 3y ago> The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance I don't have hard evidence but I feel like the uprise of the advertisement monetization model is much to blame for this.
- jfengel 3y agoSagan said that a long time ago. I don't see why this generation's vapid crap is worse than my generation's vapid crap. We were the ones who turned politics into a 24 hour sports competition. If the kids are watching shitty dances and worse AI generated nihilist absurdism, I consider that a leg up on the permanent "five minutes hate" that takes up too much of the older generation's entertainment. We managed to survive what Sagan warned about and I bet they will too.
- thenerdhead 3y agoThe beginning of the longer quote sets the context that he was speaking in the future of his children and grandchildren’s generation. I did not include that here as it wasn’t as relevant. > I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
- colesantiago 3y agoTikTok is perpetual never ending trash filled with AI generated garbage. It doesn't have any value at all and I'm happy to see it's finally waning, perhaps the next generation (Alpha, Beta or whatever) will look at TikTok and cringe hard and avoid it.
- barbazoo 3y agoBased (Is what I think they’d say :)
- web3-is-a-scam 3y ago“Next” generations tend to look at previous gen pop culture and hate it, then they fall into their own generational pop culture bubble of their own that the next generation will despise in turn. It happened to MySpace and it’s happening with Facebook/Twitter, it’ll happen with TikTok and whatever comes after it. Social media is not the first thing that comes and goes in cycles and it won’t be the last.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- next_xibalba 3y agoThis article feels like some combination of wishful thinking and motivated reasoning. TikTok, for better or worse, is definitely not on the decline. As this article points out, it is still growing its user base, albeit at a slightly lower rate. In other words, TikTok is reaching diminishing returns at scale. Not quite the same thing as decline.
- keiferski 3y agoYes, if anything, TikTok is more dominant among people under 25, who don't seem to care about Twitter or Facebook at all.
- veunes 3y agoEach generation has its own social network
- aedon 3y agoI refuse to use any social media like Tiktok, Insta, FB as I know how bad it is for my brain. The younger generation doesn't seem to get this yet. I'll stick to my highly curated X whereby I know I will learn something new when I open it.
- keiferski 3y agoI have found X/Twitter to be way more insular and less educational than TikTok, personally. TikTok has a lot of dumb trendy stuff, but also some really interesting niche channels.
- UrineSqueegee 3y agothe service inherently isn't bad, it's the lack of moderation that's bad, and that responsibility falls to the parents to moderate. If you can't moderate yourself then it's good you're not on those platforms, I have them and only use them when I poop.
- candiddevmike 3y agoI can't tell if this is sarcasm
- jckahn 3y agoGood. I hope it’s replaced by nothing.
- andrewflnr 3y agoOne of the reasons cited in the article is that its features are being replicated by other major platforms, so, no.
- odiroot 3y agoIt will be replaced. People need their dopamine hit.
- hackerlight 3y agoMaladaptations gonna maladapt
- n2d4 3y agoFor those who didn't get past the title, most of this article is speculation; numerically, TikTok has only experienced slower user growth (so a negative second derivative): > [T]here’s also the sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year Which means that it's still growing. But apparently the app is getting worse, and more monetized.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- veunes 3y agoTaking into account the fact that they couldn't reach an agreement with Universal Music...
- StevenXC 3y agoCalculus 1 instructors, everywhere, screaming > TikTok is finally concave down
- dxbydt 3y agobut recall the adage - concave up cup concave down frown. frown is definitely something to be concerned about.
- AlienRobot 3y agoAccording to every article on social media every platform is dying simultaneously: Facebook is dying, Twitter is dying, TikTok is dying. Is Reddit dying? Probably in the next few days as it IPOs! Tumblr has been dying for a whole decade and I bet most people don't even know LiveJournal still exists.
- p1esk 3y agoI still use LiveJournal.
- StopTheWorld 3y agoReading this article and other things, I don't see it declining so much. It was the most downloaded app worldwide in 2023 and had the largest consumer spending in 2023 ( https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/10/app-economy-recovered-in-2023-with-171b-in-consumer-spending-but-downloads-were-flat/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/10/app-economy-recovered-in-2... ). Yes, now that it is number one in these categories it is "mature" and its growth rate as not as fast as it was as it was climbing to these numbers. I don't see how being #1 in the world for app downloads and sales means it is "in decline".
- vampiresdoexist 3y agoThe amount of time they spent in the third paragraph linking to sources should’ve justified quoting at least some of the numbers within those links to help bolster their argument.
- pbj1968 3y agoIt is actually astounding how many people, particularly young women, that stream on TikTok live present phenotypes of fetal alcohol syndrome. I don’t know if it’s modern eyebrow grooming habits and filters accentuating the look or what, but there are so many widely spaced eyes and smooth upper lips on there. Thick regional accents and simple vocabularies, but lots of people throwing attention at them. It’s a strange place to visit.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoTikTok is a propaganda machine of the Chinese government, so I go all conspiratorial with all of that. For example, my answer would be "because the CCP wants to (among other things) emphasize the worst of America, so the algorithm boosts FAS trailer trash". Is that actually true? Can we know? Does it matter? Either way, it's hilarious.
- amelius 3y agoI wonder, would people pay for using TikTok?
- SunlitCat 3y agoWhat I find interesting is that the Chinese Tiktok (Douyin) is somehow more engaging than the Western version. Even though both have their share of memes and dance videos, Douyin is more fun to scroll through (even if you don't speak Chinese). But maybe that's just because I don't speak Chinese, so Douyin seems more interesting to me. Who knows. :D
- karaterobot 3y agoThere is an argument that even if you hate TikTok, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever, you should not cheer on their demise, because whatever comes after them will be worse. That is, they will be a more effective form of whatever attention eating mechanism the previous one relied on to generate ad revenue for funders. The history of the internet provides many examples of this. But the cost of switching away from the incumbent is sometimes enough to keep these upstart apps from becoming established in the first place. So if you have accepted the fact that our culture won't suddenly go back to not abusing social social media when one of these services shut down, then we who hate them might want the current cast of social media villains to stick around as long as possible.
- atum47 3y agoHow is it on decline when Instagram forces you to watch reels of people you don't even follow and YouTube try to force you to watch shorts ever chance they got? Even if TikTok ceases to exist it has contaminated every other major platform
- AlienRobot 3y agoOne thing I find interesting about TikTok (and potentially modern algorithm-driven social medias) is the region-locking. Growing up I was fascinated by the fact I could force people across the ocean to read my broken English, and that was basically how I learned English. Nowadays a lot of English vocabulary has invaded my language in gaming and tech circles, while apps like TikTok have their recommendation algorithms designed with strong regional bias and no way of opting out of that apparently. It's hard for me to tell if TikTok is really the way Americans say it is when, if I try to use TikTok, what I will end up seeing will be in literally a different language. I hope this doesn't catch on. It makes the world wide web feel a lot less world wide.