this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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I don’t really agree with this post, at least in title (and not in the way many commenters seem to be “agreeing with it” despite maybe not reading the article).
Tiktok is getting worse… for users. Not for “itself”. It’s the same as Facebook or even other tech based services like Uber. They start off good and very user friendly to draw people in, often operating at a loss for years… and then they clutter themselves with ads and other monetizing features.
I don’t know Tiktoks profit loss margins but I’m guessing that it’s financially near or at its absolute peak performance so far, just as Facebook has continued to raise profits year after year despite often being detested more and more as time goes on.
I will say it was incredibly fast how quickly it transitioned to a giant money making machine compared to older platforms. It's much more rapidly viewable, and seems to have more conversation around that then it being legitimately a worse social platform.
The COVID boom to tech is the most probable answer as it was steroids to isolation accessable social interaction. But man they aren't even trying to ride the wave anymore but capture as much of the leftover ripples as possible.
Definitely. I think a lot of it is just that other websites like… already took the time to figure it out. Sites like google, YouTube, Facebook, they all had to take 10+ years to figure out how to effectively monetize. Tiktok doesn’t need to really “wait” because it can just copy off their papers
That's actually a really fair point. Why would you wait to do what is working for other sites when the goal is to waste as little investor money as possible?
COVID means the money is available, the path is pretty much discovered. So they took the moment and ran with it. Hm.
The article also makes some very large assumptions about longer length tiktoks being inherently worse for its audience.
I for one would love longer length tiktoks, and as for those who don't the algorithm is extremely efficient and will filter out that style of content for those who don't.
This is similar to the shop discussion, tiktoks gives full control over filtering this out via the #shop hashtag and disabling the shop tab.
The article really creates artificial problems with the app to justify its own existence when really these aren't major issues that would lead to the downfall of a company or reduction in users.
Personally I'll be the first to stop using a platform when they spam me with ads (Instagram). But tiktok is generally very manageable, much more than most other forms of social media.
Very much agree on all fronts. I think articles like this in part often spring up just because… a great deal of people enjoy clamoring around some “haha evil tiktok is finally ending!!, but it’s just… not really the case and tiktok being more “evil” than any other major app is really not substantiated in my view.
There definitely have been some changes. I absolutely get more “non ad-ads” in my feed (as in, content that is clearly being paid for but not marked as an advertisement and played off as organic content), though I’m not even sure if this is really the apps “fault” as much as it is creators.
When I left tiktok, I feel like I was getting an ad every 4 or so minutes, almost all of it scammy fastbfashion brands. I think I left tik too fully at the same time as the reddit protests.