4 ms·

Good attempt but TikTok also makes people rich. Amassing a huge following and being popular brings brand deals etc. I hope this takes off though.

poisonborz 2y ago
Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. Once people get feedback and good experiences things are evened out much better. Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture.
- spinningarrow 2y ago
  > Social networks It doesn’t bill itself as a social network though. Neither does TikTok seem to.
- LtWorf 2y ago
  I use an extension to heavily filter fb on the computer. When I get the "intended" experience opening on the phone it's so awful. It's mostly ads and pages I don't care about, and occasionally some local bands or venue writing what's happening, which is why I use facebook.
- gigatexal 2y ago
  > Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. > Once people get feedback and good experiences things are evened out much better. Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture. Couldn’t agree more. But Pandora’s box has been opened and people being people and companies being profit maximizing machines … I doubt we will ever get there. What’s really nice is small niche communities that exist in places like mastodon where often the “normals” don’t know about or don’t patronize making the experience really nice.
- medlazik 2y ago
  > Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. That's absolutely not what Tiktok is. Most people who make money are a majority or random amateur users with massive social interactions, and i see no "doomscroll-fueled advertisements" whatsoever. Ads are very badly targeted, like on every other platform.
- Sebb767 2y ago
  > Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture. I can't talk about Tumblr, but while Reddit doesn't have an open influencer culture in the same way that TikTok or Instagram do, it does have massive amounts of content marketing. It is very much not the anti-advertising community heaven it appears to be, at least outside of very small subreddits. Taking it as an example of pure socializing is quite optimistic.
sschueller 2y ago
Agreed. What is needed is a way for instance owners to monetize. So for example I own an instance and I will provide free video hosting. In exchange I will serve you ads and collect some data to target those. If you don't like that you could go to an instance that charges a monthly fee. Or you can run your own. If I can monetize my instance I can also pay people on my server to provide content.
- mariusor 2y ago
  Sadly as far as I'm aware the fediverse developers have been mostly against adding monetization means to their projects, with a couple of small exceptions related to cryptocurrencies. I think Dan (Loops main dev) would do well to implement or accept contributions that implement simpler monetization for his project, but I somehow doubt it.
- input_sh 2y ago
  There's nothing stopping you. Set up an instance, disable public registration, and send an invite to those that send you a payment. To put my money where my mouth is, the Mastodon instance I'm using charges people $20/year and I'm happy to pay it.
Tepix 2y ago
Does it make TikTok better that we're seeing paid endorsements?
- lionkor 2y ago
  Yes. It drives creators to the platform to make money, which means we get more cool content.
  - Tepix 2y ago
    I'm not sure i agree that paid content is cool in general.
mariusor 2y ago
But being able to launch your own instance where you get 100% of all the money spent by the users either through ads or directly is a pretty good incentive, and beats what any other platform offers, no? The trick is to get high enough numbers of users to use the platform though.
freeopinion 2y ago
Imagine if the distributed nature applied to the advertising. So influencers weren't paid by the platform, but by individual sponsors. If you want to view my content, first watch this 10 sec ad from one of my sponsors. And I only have two sponsors, so you're never subjected to Nike ads or Russian dating ads or a million others. Just the silly Creality ad. If you want to see Tomas's content you have to see an ad from some cruise line or a skydiving company based in Connecticut. His ads are controlled by him. Mine are controlled by me. Each producer has to hustle up their own ads. So they tend to coalesce onto huge servers that provide an ad service to do that work. Still, you often get some content sponsored by the local Mexican restaurant in some town you've never heard of.

poisonborz 2y ago

Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. Once people get feedback and good experiences things are evened out much better. Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture.

spinningarrow 2y ago
> Social networks It doesn’t bill itself as a social network though. Neither does TikTok seem to.
LtWorf 2y ago
I use an extension to heavily filter fb on the computer. When I get the "intended" experience opening on the phone it's so awful. It's mostly ads and pages I don't care about, and occasionally some local bands or venue writing what's happening, which is why I use facebook.
gigatexal 2y ago
> Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. > Once people get feedback and good experiences things are evened out much better. Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture. Couldn’t agree more. But Pandora’s box has been opened and people being people and companies being profit maximizing machines … I doubt we will ever get there. What’s really nice is small niche communities that exist in places like mastodon where often the “normals” don’t know about or don’t patronize making the experience really nice.
medlazik 2y ago
> Social networks should be about socialising and not a minority of professional content creators enriched by doomscroll-fueled advertisements. That's absolutely not what Tiktok is. Most people who make money are a majority or random amateur users with massive social interactions, and i see no "doomscroll-fueled advertisements" whatsoever. Ads are very badly targeted, like on every other platform.
Sebb767 2y ago
> Look at Tumblr or even Reddit, that despite being popular, never had influencer culture. I can't talk about Tumblr, but while Reddit doesn't have an open influencer culture in the same way that TikTok or Instagram do, it does have massive amounts of content marketing. It is very much not the anti-advertising community heaven it appears to be, at least outside of very small subreddits. Taking it as an example of pure socializing is quite optimistic.

sschueller 2y ago

Agreed. What is needed is a way for instance owners to monetize. So for example I own an instance and I will provide free video hosting. In exchange I will serve you ads and collect some data to target those. If you don't like that you could go to an instance that charges a monthly fee. Or you can run your own. If I can monetize my instance I can also pay people on my server to provide content.

mariusor 2y ago
Sadly as far as I'm aware the fediverse developers have been mostly against adding monetization means to their projects, with a couple of small exceptions related to cryptocurrencies. I think Dan (Loops main dev) would do well to implement or accept contributions that implement simpler monetization for his project, but I somehow doubt it.
input_sh 2y ago
There's nothing stopping you. Set up an instance, disable public registration, and send an invite to those that send you a payment. To put my money where my mouth is, the Mastodon instance I'm using charges people $20/year and I'm happy to pay it.

Tepix 2y ago

Does it make TikTok better that we're seeing paid endorsements?

lionkor 2y ago
Yes. It drives creators to the platform to make money, which means we get more cool content.
- Tepix 2y ago
  I'm not sure i agree that paid content is cool in general.

mariusor 2y ago

But being able to launch your own instance where you get 100% of all the money spent by the users either through ads or directly is a pretty good incentive, and beats what any other platform offers, no? The trick is to get high enough numbers of users to use the platform though.

freeopinion 2y ago

Imagine if the distributed nature applied to the advertising. So influencers weren't paid by the platform, but by individual sponsors. If you want to view my content, first watch this 10 sec ad from one of my sponsors. And I only have two sponsors, so you're never subjected to Nike ads or Russian dating ads or a million others. Just the silly Creality ad. If you want to see Tomas's content you have to see an ad from some cruise line or a skydiving company based in Connecticut. His ads are controlled by him. Mine are controlled by me. Each producer has to hustle up their own ads. So they tend to coalesce onto huge servers that provide an ad service to do that work. Still, you often get some content sponsored by the local Mexican restaurant in some town you've never heard of.