7 ms·
I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at
by _7acn 2y ago
I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at the same time.
- zo1 2y ago100% agree on this and go further; it rots their brain. We have to have the societal courage and guts to admit that it is conceptually the same as things like drugs/alcohol/smoking. Then again, we lost that battle with misogynistic, language-rotting, and violent rap music because we were too worried about being called racists, so there might not be hope we'll do better this time around.
- zht 2y agoDo you think rap music has had more of an impact on society or democracy than TikTok or YouTube shorts or just Facebook?
- zo1 2y agoI'd be pulling something out of thin air, but my opinion is that yes so far it has. Facebook and TikTok, and other social media, has served as an amplification mechanism for various things, including rap music. But at this point, we also have a separate category of things that pretty much on their own are having a negative effect on society. That would be things like TikTok (including Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts). The fact that they're not trying to come up with a new UI paradigm, or discovery mechanism is very telling. They keep focusing on semi-random swipe-directed discovery, and that tells me they're not interested in making the best content available to you as the interested-consumer. They want you wasting time and generating N-counts of redundant ad views/impressions/things before finding that one thing you wanted or might find interesting. Youtube is probably the best at at-least trying to not force you to swipe (when watching normal videos). But even there, we can see how much people complain about "The Feed" or "The Algorithm". With all of Google's money and effort, they couldn't (or chose not to) find a better way at matching viewers with good content.
- sneak 2y agoYes, rap music (and video games, and rock music, and comic books, and pinball machines) definitely ruined the world by rotting the childrens’ brains. It wasn’t the gutting of the educational system, that’s far too simple an explanation.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoYour facetious comment is essentially correct. It all comes down to culture and parenting. The 'gutted' education system where I live spends 25k per student, which doesn't matter if kids never read a book.
- uniq7 2y agoNever had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them. However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos. At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now. I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoEven if it is recipes and chemistry it's the format that's the issue, it still fries your dopamine and lowers your attention span.
- yosame 2y agoI don't think it's any worse than any other form of media (like reading comments on hacker news instead of reading the article)
- zht 2y agoIt is much worse lol Videos cram so much stimulation over such a short period of time Text you still have to read
- ethbr1 2y agoOr, to spin it around -- given a standard, naive population, why are video platforms so much more successful than text ones? Hypothesis: video is more addiction, regardless of content
- JohnMakin 2y agoExcept I can read much faster than a video can convey information to me, almost always - I suspect the popularity of video to deliver information at least in some part stems from declining literacy. Whenever I have to watch a poor reader read something, I am honestly amazed they can function at all.
- htaunay 2y agoits like how 30 years ago when people would numblessly flip through hundreds of cable channels for hours, but with endless tailored content and extra dopamine shots on top from social feedback its very telling how, while youtube (classic) also has these same ingredients, the ux of looking through a menu is far less addicting than the slot machine mechanism from swiping up
- red-iron-pine 2y agoyeah but cable was limited by channels and by producers. now anyone can make a video and it's possible to tailor that to tiny niches that would have never been served by cable.
- fqye 2y agoI can't believe how ignorant some people could be. It is so easy to find reports and evidence of how Tiktok could be of great value to people. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/dining/tiktok-ban-cooking-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/dining/tiktok-ban-cooking... https://www.today.com/popculture/books/what-is-booktok-meaning-rcna70362 https://www.today.com/popculture/books/what-is-booktok-meani... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-67555175 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-67555175
- z3c0 2y agoNot that I really care enough to ban TikTok, but the value demonstrated here is pretty spurious. You could swap "TikTok" with "socializing", and I'm sure these people would've had similar outcomes.
- mandmandam 2y agoSocializing is indeed of great value to people; not at all spurious. You're helping prove OP's point. And OP didn't even mention all the small businesses that took off due to TikTok giving them an avenue. This notion that people have to dismiss TikTok as merely mindless dopamine is really just wilful ignorance.
- z3c0 2y agoMy point is that none of this is truly dependent on the existence of TikTok, which OP does not be seeming to be arguing, even slightly. The internet is a revolving door of gathering spaces that enable people to do nice things for each other. People can do nice things for each other anywhere, even when surrounded by the digital equivalent of two-way mirrors.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoCitizens have a right to assemble and speak to each other. Foreign corporations don't have a right to own the feeds of huge swaths of the population. Hence the rules around newspaper and TV ownership.
- 2y ago
- portaouflop 2y ago[flagged]
- JoshTko 2y agoIt's a slot machine, a scroll is an arm pull. Sometimes you get a brain tickle and you keep on scrolling to get more. I'd bet money that the brain activity is exactly the same.
- mistermann 2y agoDo you think forums like the one you are on right now do not?
- ziddoap 2y agoDo you think there might be some variation in the degree of negative effects a forum like Hacker News has compared to TikTok/YT shorts?
- mistermann 2y agoI do, but this is not contrary to my point.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tester457 2y agoNo, because reading is more healthy than mindlessly watching short videos. There is only so much content on the front page, it's not a slot machine you can pull for hours like tiktok.
- sebastiennight 2y agoGive it a few months until somebody rigs an open-source video generation model to generate a "Short" from any frontpage article, and then several "reaction videos" based on the top comments... and maybe a frontend UI that turns the frontpage into an infinite scroll of those Shorts... and bam, HackerReels will be born
- mistermann 2y agoDo you truly believe zero brainwashing takes place here? Out of curiosity, how deeply have you considered the question? And, might that depth not be a function of the norms in the forum?
- stiltzkin 2y ago