Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place.
As is the incessant stream. If there is a pause at all in the next video loading the addicted user can break free.
One of the issues with federated anything is that there will be good servers and bad servers.
Good servers get hammered, and if you're popular you might end up perversely paying for people to watch your videos having to fund your server to maintain its performance.
This happened with mastadon, matrix and will be far worse if they want to deliver tiktoks insane performance.
Birth rates took a dip with broadband, smartphones, and TikTok.
Dopamine and attention sinks are pulling society in directions counter to evolutionary programming. Our runtime algorithms optimize for different things.
Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.
Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction.
Discord is designed to gamify communication. It has 'features' like likes, reacts, gifs, roles, badges, etc. Many communities add bots that enable profile leveling, quests, challenges. These things are designed to reward and drive engagement, and lights up the reward centers of the brain. Between an IRC user and a Discord user, the Discord user's going to be much more addicted.
It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers.
The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.
I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually
Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers.
Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time..
The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.
The UX should be more "mass user" friendly if the goal is to attract mainstream users. Sign in with Apple/etc.. selecting a server is technical language and not end-user language etc.
Selecting a server is one of the reasons the fediverse appears to have not seriously challenged incumbents. As soon as a non-technical user sees this, they bounce.
Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.
I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all
There's also the problem where selecting the server is quite a consequential choice which users who are brand new have no way to make a proper choice on. The owner of the server you choose has access to all of your data and the ability to delete your account or shut down the server at any time.
Great to see this progressing.
Tried it out just now after last testing it over 6 months ago.
I’d say the main “feature” id want to see added is a mandatory field on upload to tick if it’s AI content. Then a tag on videos that are Ai and at the account level to filter out AI content.
This project would love some additional support. If you're a developer who is interested in building this... please get in touch with them, the team is VERY small so you can do some good by just supporting them.
I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.
We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.
Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.
HN is generally the place you come to to hate anything new in tech. No new piece of tech released in is ever liked here. Everyone nitpicks, strawmans, and complains that the v1 of the product is not perfect. It’s honestly so tiresome
The TikTok users are not conscious humans to think like "oh, this app is bad for me, let me find a clean alternative". Nice try, but missed the target by a mile.
Aw man can we not flip the script and maybe build less of these things? It’s saturated and not really helping society but rather creating more addiction machines.
Based on what I have seen, read and experienced, a tech doesn't just go away. It evolves (unless you know one company was building it and then got shut down). Social media in the current form if it went away, would get replaced with something even worse.
From what I’ve heard, people burned out on TikTok are switching to more mindful alternatives. Perhaps what Loops could do is try to capture those people as well?
But the most basic functionality of going to the next video is only available via scroll (no keyboard arrow down?) and it has a really long animation and delay?
Just feels awful to use.
I feel if you wanna win in this space, especially with people who prefer more "free" platforms, then the non-app version should be a bigger priority IMO.
This is actually pretty exciting. Excited to see how this turns out.
But I am wondering how to keep it financially possible to operate the platform.
Also, 95+% of the users probably don't care that much about censorship and privacy enough to switch platform.
centralized servers cost less to operate, that why data intensive applications centralize over time. That's division of labor. The higher the complexity the the higher degree of specialization. And a video service is very demanding.
And you need to solve the economics first because otherwise your decentralized service is simply going to centralize over time to deal with demands for a more reliable and higher quality service. (and how to compensate creators)
One thing that's awesome about this and is 100% better than TikTok:
No burned-in branding. No trailing brand screen. No trademark brand noises.
----
Tiktok videos have omnipresent logos burned-in and a full-screen trailer with an annoying Tiktok brand sound. The few random loops that I looked at had none of these. I hope this doesn't change and, if it doesn't change, I hope loops displaces TikTok. I despise being constantly bombarded with branding.
Bombarding with branding is how TikTok got people on, and I don’t think it’s a bad strategy per se. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to overcome network effects with a product like this (word of mouth would be the best, but you’ll need a ton of creators first).
Vandalizing every video posted on their service may have helped TikTok spread brand recognition. One can only hope that a service that doesn't vandalize the content they deliver will find a way to pull ahead.
There’s a middle ground solution here. TikTok does (naturally) have a version of each video without watermarks which they show in-app. They don’t let you download it, but external tools can generally help with that. What Loops could do is default to a watermarked version, but allow downloading original as well. This way, person sharing the video can decide whether they want to help promote Loops or not.
¹ – as a humanity; I’m not affiliated with Loops in any way
Let me also register my disinterest in another platform that mimics TikTok.
Brainrot is brainrot regardless of whether it's "federated and open-source" or not. And BTW, 95% of the people on TikTok don't care about either of those two things.
this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem.
These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value.
so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride.
Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.
On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.
It's not necessarily the case that Loops is just as addictive as TikTok. Because TikTok is more than just short term videos. It's also a recommendation algorithm that slurps up as much information as it can about you to predict what you'll want to watch next. This recommendation algorithm plays a big role in making TikTok addictive. And as far as I'm aware, Loops does not have this functionality. It will just show you videos based on a much simpler algorithm that takes into account how recent a video is and how many likes/comments it has, or something like that, which will make it less addictive.
I’ve started wondering if I want a smartphone at all lately. The whole paradigm gets creepier by the day and the global corporate expectation you have one makes me not want it.
The unfortunate truth is that TikTok is just a dopamine hit machine. There's no puzzle here, this project is just "we built an open source slot machine that you can install in your own home". Replacing the casino is addressing a pointless problem.
I enjoy watching TikTok, especially local or niche creators who have just a couple hundred followers. This is not going to be a problem as you imagine.
One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified.
Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.
Yep. Anything similar to what was Vine (i.e., TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels; e.g., very short videos with infinite scrolling) is ultimately too consuming literally a drug that robs one of the ability to concentrate and patience.
I think we need to encourage long form videos from 5 minutes to 1-2 hours and organize stuff around metadata (title, keywords/tags, lists, unique identifier) to mesh with a living, standardized ontology in a curated, sensible fashion that disallows proliferation of slop, too low quality stuff, and spam. From there, choose your own recommender and related algorithms/plugins.
The big gotcha of decentralized video platforms is content distribution that doesn't hug a self-hoster's server with barely any traffic.
> Each instance admin has full control over their server's moderation policies, allowed content, and federation choices. Loops provides the tools; communities set their own rules.
Yeah, but how do you maintain quality? Are users expected to shun instances that have poor quality? Quality doesn't just mean spam and unwanted content, it means hiding poor quality posts in feeds. You end up with users that are willing to invest time in curating the app to meet their needs. But that means you miss out on most people out there who expect a curated and engaging (read:addicting) experience.
I am not concerned about market shares on their own. But this is a good idea, and tiktok and youtube short videos are doing lots of harm to the world. Having a viable alternative would be amazing.
I'll suggest that a very strong and well funded "main" instance server exist? I'm sure there is one now, but I'm concerned this will go the way of lemmy and mastodon.
I would much rather prefer a centralized social media with a sanely constructed governance and corporate structure and a clear and non-conflicting revenue generation plan. The guardian's incorporation structure is what I consider a good example. That news organization is managing to be fairly independent, prevalent and significant when all others are caving to walled gardens and billionaires. social media in general should be viewed similar to journalistic organizations in terms of governance structure.
it is nice to be able to take your data elsewhere, it is nicer not having the need to begin with. In principle that sounds great, but in practice it is similar to forking software if you don't like it.
Lastly, how do they plan on making money? At least to the level that sustains their operations?
the format isn't inherently bad, it's the algorithm optimizing for engagement over everything else that's the problem. short video is actually great for tutorials, explanations, behind-the-scenes stuff. i make AI-generated video content and the short form works well for documentary-style clips where you're mixing stills with selective animation.
the real question is whether federation changes the incentive structure enough. if the recommendation algo is still optimized for watch time, you just get tiktok with extra steps. if instances can tune their own ranking, that's actually interesting.
Counterpoint: The format is bad. The constant stream of videos, skipping between videos at (relatively) your own pace, the anticipation about the next video; it's similar to electronic gambling machines.
Gambling is bad because it wastes people's money. Short-form videos just waste people's time, the same as the hours of television that older generations spend watching every day but with more diversified propaganda.
"just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. people wasting time staring at screens is the prevalent problem of today. with TV it was not as bad because there was/is only one in a room so it becomes shared experience. phones are worse.
Go a little further. Think about "how." How do slot machines get people to waste their money for hours-on-end? How does TikTok use short-form video to get people to scroll for hours-on-end? What is the mechanism?
It's OK to waste time. All art and entertainment is a waste of time. Most of what people do on HN is waste time. Arguably anything besides eating and procreative sex is a waste of time.
To use the analogy of other vice industries like gambling or alcohol, would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities?
That’s the type of analogy we might make in this case.
Obviously many people (literally billions) like this format and use it in relative moderation to unwind and kill time. Hell, I’ve even gotten productive helpful information out of the format on occasion.
It’s also taken a critical role in journalism and current events.
Unless you’re advocating prohibition, the cat is out of the bag.
Being able to find a short form video alternative that isn’t owned by commercial/government interests is a positive thing.
Question: how many people do you think would watch your short form ai videos if they had to actually seek them out and choose to watch them? The reason why the format is problematic is because it feeds off the dopamine hit of scrolling to the next piece of unknown content.
It’s well known that if people need to be intentional about what they consume they consume far less. Something tells me 15 second AI videos aren’t at the top of most people’s lists.
There’s a reason why we don’t want to show kids fast pace videos with cuts that are less than 4s: it’s not good for the brain. The format is just not good for us
It's not just bad, it's the worst format that could exist, if radio and TV have already ruined the attention span this one seems to have the aim of doing just that by showing short content with almost no effort to understand it, a lot of context switching every 10-15 seconds and videos designed to attract as much attention as possible.
Ew. The content problem on TikTok was never the protocol, it's that 99% of short-form video is brainrot slop regardless of who hosts the servers. Slapping ActivityPub on it literally solves nothing for humanity.
I do not know how to phrase this politely. I like the platform and the concept is interesting. But the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals.
You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I havent used Loops but im assuming its the same crowd as on Mastodon.
While I'm not interested in "short form" videos I had the same curiosity regarding the userbase and wanted to check myself.
The only way to look at the web view is to sign up, so I did. I completed E-Mail verification, then the account was disabled immediately with a pop up message to contact support. Not worth the effort.
I just tried exactly the same (at https://loops.video ), but I was able to watch without account, and registering afterwards also worked. Guess it's something on your side.
I can too, now. I wonder if any changes were made or if it was just a problem on my side.
Checking loops.video now, these were the first 5 videos I saw, in order:
1. Left-Wing American Politics
2. Promotion of the Fediverse and Loops
3. Left-Wing American Politics
4. A Non-English Play
5. Left-Wing American Politics
6. Stop Motion Flipbook Thing
7. Advocation for Loops Itself and Decentralization
8. Loops Promo
9. Left-Wing American Politics
So out of the first 9 videos, 4 centre around American politics, 1 I couldn't understand, 3 were promotion for the service I was currently using and only one was interesting and understandable.
I don't have a Loops account, but check multiple sites for news and information, landing on the loops homepage several times. I haven't needed a login to see videos appear for some time.
If it's anything like the rest of the Fediverse applications, it's meant to give you a full chronological feed of people you subscribe to. While several of these sites seem to have a simple trending page, one of the themes of the Fediverse seems to be getting away from overly predatory algorithms and leaning into letting people curate their own feeds and interactions again.
It sounds a lot like a "be the change" situation. If you want to see other stuff, follow people you like instead of drinking from the hose. It's still a small site, so if you don't see the content you want, then make it or build the community there.
These sites can also have basic interoperability. I don't know if the Loops UI supports subscribing to people in other Fedi networks yet, but I've seen people say Loops videos have started trickling onto Mastodon.
> You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.
What are you talking about? Sports, cars, and comedy are present everywhere on the internet. Guns are more of a niche and not without controversy, and it's certainly true that the incumbent networks place restrictions on some gun related content.
I know they're everywhere on the internet. I'm specifically talking about loops/mastodon. I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.
> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.
I think a lot of Fedi people want that, but the community is still small. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.
This identity politics/virtue signaling seems off topic.
> I havent used Loops
I think the worst repercussion of consuming short form content is that it gives the _consumer_ a false sense of engagement. That their passive consumption endows them with knowledge and credibility, leading to the deluded belief that a display of disintirest such as this one is 1) appropriate and 2) a profound condemnation rather than the petty, irrelevant whine that it is.
I have no interest in guns, and only a minor interest in sports and cars; but if you set up an instance devoted to these, and got your friends to use it (just to talk to each other), I reckon it would only be a few months before you'd seeded a community. (There is plenty of comedy on the Fediverse, so I think that's a bad example.)
The design of the Fediverse is receptive to niche communities. If other communities are hostile, you can just pretend they don't exist, and the things they post won't appear on your timelines. "The people on it" is not as much of a thing as you might be used to from social media like Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, or HN. (As everyone's so very fond or saying, ActivityPub is like email.)
If your niche is a popular niche (which sports most certainly are), then it should get quite big, quite quickly, provided the people who'd participate in it are (or can be) present.
I disagree because you dont just want "twitter for MMA" you want the whole network. So you want to be a good citizen and have instances federate with you. But most wont because of the nature of the content. So users would prefer platforms where they can follow all content from a single account.
I like guns and cars, but not sports. How exactly is it performative? Both are engineering marvels and fascinating to watch videos about, and they also happen to be a load of fun.
I watch hours of videos on both with nobody else around and don't really talk about those topics with others much. So in the spirit of HN, I'm actually curious to know what about those interests is performative?
I'm from Canada, and I like cars for many of the same reasons I like programming. They're complicated, fickle, and go fucking fast when you get everything right. It's like mainlining adrenaline and validation at the same time.. who wouldn't like that?! They're just fucking fun
>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.
I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.
I posted a cool clip from the UFC and got banned even though the content had a warning. It wasnt even that violent just a clean headkick ko.
If I started an instance it would get defederated because people would take one look and assume its toxic. But its not, Im not, I've spend years in the leftie techie activist spaces and cause no issues.
You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.
The whole point of federation is that you can build communities that share common values. I'm not sure what more you want. We can't force everyone to like the things you like.
However, it is a little silly to suggest that UFC is not extremely popular. I myself have wasted hours flipping through UFC reels.
I don't know about Loops specifically, but generally [Fediverse][0] projects tend to:
- Not rely on a central server.
- Allow you to set up your own server.
- Connect to a web of other servers through the Activity Pub protocol.
- Allow you to modify policies on your server (including restricting which other servers information is shared with.)
Many are also open source.
The creator of Loops also built a different project called [Pixelfed](1) with a focus on decentralized photo sharing (although it can also host video.) Because all these projects speak the same protocol, it's possible that at some point, Loops could show content from Pixelfed. Apparently Loops content is already appearing in Mastodon.
Meta's Threads also has Activity Pub support. Hypothetically, Threads content could appear on Loops and vice versa, if the UI is built to accommodate that style of content and a server admin doesn't block the Threads server (many servers block Threads specifically.)
TL;DR: A web of servers using different pieces of open source software to share social media, without a centralized server.
Just a side note, reading through some of the other comments, it sounds like Loops specifically isn't currently open source and the intent is to open source it at some later date.
It's interesting, I doubt it'll ever be successful.
Look, the reason a lot of content makes it's way to Youtube, tiktok, and twitter, etc is because the creators can earn money from the platform. On youtube and tiktok, you can send gifts to your favorite creator. That incentivizes creators to create content.
loops will never have that feature. It's really hard to legally distribute money like that. But further, the decentralized nature of it means that you'll never know if your funds ends up in your creator's account or the instant account.
Without any sort of path to make money, the only content on the platform will be works of passion. Maybe that's a good thing, but it means these people will ultimately burn out.
But on the plus side, it means you probably won't end up with an endless stream of AI slop.
Instagram pays hardly anything. I don't know anyone doing it for that reason. It's more advertising for their other services. Like onlyfans, selling physical stuff, lectures, events etc.
And of course the people who do it for fun, usually the best content. It doesn't matter they'll eventually stop. There's always new ones.
I'm not sure about tiktok, but I doubt they pay much more than insta.
Glad to see more platforms on the Fediverse. Couldn’t be less interested in this particular one since it’s short form video. Those who like this medium: enjoy.
I may find short form video distasteful, but it’s less distasteful than those who want to dictate the media formats that others consume. Get a grip, people.
For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14).
And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time spent in game without having to create content, which is expensive.
Thing is, players of this genre don't want PVP. Even in WoW, I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase actively engages in PVP activity. So, by focusing on PVP, you're actually cut your potential market by 90%. Before you've written a single line of code or created any artwork. Put another way, you're spending valuable development effort on features only a tiny minority of players care about or even want.
I'm reminded of this whenever somebody on HN talks about federation. The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. It greatly complicates the implementation. The last successes of federation are POTS and Email. It's quite literally never succeeded since. And the problems with federation that POTS and Email continue to have to this day should be an object lesson in why it's a bad idea.
Choosing federation from the start is choosing to lose. I'm sorry but it's true.
"Open-source TikTok" is like reading "open source slot machine". Not something you should be proud of, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with "All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control"
Short form content is a medium that isn't going away. Short form content is not inherently harmful, although short form content replacing or displacing other important mediums arguably is. When I think about the issues stemming from short form content, I don't think about the inherent medium, I think about the providers and their capabilities to use the sum of all consumed content by a user in the name of a ulterior motive at scale. While I haven't investigated it too deeply, Loops seems to be an effort in patching that. Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
Short form user generated content being served in our faces in a constant and ever updating feed fucks up our brains. It does not matter if it's proprietary or FOSS or non profit.
>Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
I think saying it's like an open source slot machine is pretty much self-explanatory
I mean, I love the idea behind the fediverse, but the problem is, as long as you got federated instances of anything, instance admins will use their userbase for petty bxtchfights and purity contests.
and no, selfhosting is not an alternative, anything Fediverse requires a lot of resources, is ripe with exploits and exposes you to significant legal risk from griefers (e.g. you get DM'd CSAM by someone, your server automatically downloads it => congratulations, you are now a pedo under at least German law).
A small minority of loud neurotics shouldn't get to dictate what social media other people use. I don't know a single person who feels like social media has affected their mental health; it seems to be a uniquely American leftist thing.
Small minority? What about all the studies and statistics both from third parties and from the social networks themselves showing a direct effect on the _majority_ of users? Not that I expected a better argument from someone that crams in "leftists" as an unwarranted snide remark
Your kind is the braindead target audience for this digital crack. The audience that has a 5-second attention span and jumps on the opportunity to try the paint-huffing challenge.
The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer).
There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.
Scrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video?
Or browsing shelves in a bookshop. I've noticed I forget what I was doing ("prospective memory impairment") while looking for a good book. Also sometimes I annoy myself because I want to quit but I can't because I haven't found anything good yet. Whoops, where did the time go? So, ban bookshops.
The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...
My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names.
The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
I used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested.
And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
>And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century.
This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby.
It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.
Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos.
Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part.
Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Bluesky proved no such thing. Merge bluesky with truth social and you’d be back to the same thing again. Both platforms are just full of people retreating into smaller bubbles, the underlying issues are still there just less common.
I'll come at it from another angle. Some of the most popular podcasts (and YouTubers) produce hours of long-form video (an acceptable format) daily. Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes.
The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters.
(And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.)
Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions?
Alcohol is bad, regardless of the spirit you consume. Look at how prohibition worked out.
It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles.
There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system.
I feel justified turning this around on you and asking what is good about it? It's disposable media. In and out of brain in seconds. There are any number of better ways to waste time let alone ones that don't show you ads.
You're pardoned, but I have much more fond memories of magazine baskets in bathrooms. Today you should at least have a Switch in there ;)
But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom.
The Economist app and Inoreader are higher on my front page than Instagram is, so I am being slightly tongue in cheek.
But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice.
But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back.
Oh ya, I did not mean to rag on mindless time killing! I just mean, I used to doodle or play guitar or drums far more often than I do now when I was looking for mindless distractions (which is not to say that any of those things can't also be mindful, which is maybe my point? I dunno). And of course I watched a lot of TV which, back then, was more limited so at least had the benefit of being able to use it as common ground when meeting new people. Nowadays it's a viral video that a million people have seen has not been seem by billions. Any even so, we could have a much more in depth conversation about Star Trek than an 8 second video we both happened to see.
Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me.
They are absolutely not the same! I mean, they come in all forms so yes, they are overlaps, but many magazines have long form articles that you can take in over several, uh, sessions. You can re-read them catching new things each time. As a guest, bathroom magazines had that funny specialness to them in that they were curated by the host. You get "recommendations" far outside of what The Algorithm would ever give you (this is actually how I learned about Scott Pilgrim comics 25 years ago). You're basically "forced" to read/look at something the host actually cares about which, if you were interested in the material after having some private time to digest it on your own, made for more meaningful conversations, way better than, "Hey! Check out this video I like! I'm going to watch with you and eagerly await your reaction!"
Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place.
What am I missing?
The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product.
These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes.
They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.
As is the incessant stream. If there is a pause at all in the next video loading the addicted user can break free.
One of the issues with federated anything is that there will be good servers and bad servers.
Good servers get hammered, and if you're popular you might end up perversely paying for people to watch your videos having to fund your server to maintain its performance.
This happened with mastadon, matrix and will be far worse if they want to deliver tiktoks insane performance.
Birth rates took a dip with broadband, smartphones, and TikTok.
Dopamine and attention sinks are pulling society in directions counter to evolutionary programming. Our runtime algorithms optimize for different things.
No value judgment, but it's interesting.
To be fair, you don't need to slay giants to be a viable product.
"nicotine free cigarettes" are a product too.
We have limited time on earth, so many tend to evaluate things on how big of an impact they make or how large of a demand they satisfy.
It's okay if not everything is big, but it's also okay for people to use scale as a criteria for sizing things up.
Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.
Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction.
There's no comparison.
Discord is designed to gamify communication. It has 'features' like likes, reacts, gifs, roles, badges, etc. Many communities add bots that enable profile leveling, quests, challenges. These things are designed to reward and drive engagement, and lights up the reward centers of the brain. Between an IRC user and a Discord user, the Discord user's going to be much more addicted.
It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers.
You can see the recounting of his hostility at https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/
(I'm not a signature of the open letter)
The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.
I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually
Isn't this somewhat like how these new crypto prediction markets work? There is no house taking a cut, all of the winnings get paid out.
Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers.
Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time..
The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.
Is that not crypto?
The UX should be more "mass user" friendly if the goal is to attract mainstream users. Sign in with Apple/etc.. selecting a server is technical language and not end-user language etc.
Also why not have the homepage be a feed, let me scroll for a bit before forcing me to sign up
Selecting a server is one of the reasons the fediverse appears to have not seriously challenged incumbents. As soon as a non-technical user sees this, they bounce.
Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.
This does solve the problem, although I do hope it doesn’t turn into another Bluesky this way.
I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all
There's also the problem where selecting the server is quite a consequential choice which users who are brand new have no way to make a proper choice on. The owner of the server you choose has access to all of your data and the ability to delete your account or shut down the server at any time.
A sensible default should be preselected. E.g. the geographically closest, not overloaded server.
Great to see this progressing. Tried it out just now after last testing it over 6 months ago.
I’d say the main “feature” id want to see added is a mandatory field on upload to tick if it’s AI content. Then a tag on videos that are Ai and at the account level to filter out AI content.
Otherwise it’s going to be a slops fest.
This project would love some additional support. If you're a developer who is interested in building this... please get in touch with them, the team is VERY small so you can do some good by just supporting them.
I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.
What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid?
https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg
We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.
Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.
HN is generally the place you come to to hate anything new in tech. No new piece of tech released in is ever liked here. Everyone nitpicks, strawmans, and complains that the v1 of the product is not perfect. It’s honestly so tiresome
Unhelpful nitpicks and people complaining about them get downvotes.
At this time the top comment on this post is complaining about the rest of the comments. This is not how things should be around here.
The TikTok users are not conscious humans to think like "oh, this app is bad for me, let me find a clean alternative". Nice try, but missed the target by a mile.
Aw man can we not flip the script and maybe build less of these things? It’s saturated and not really helping society but rather creating more addiction machines.
Based on what I have seen, read and experienced, a tech doesn't just go away. It evolves (unless you know one company was building it and then got shut down). Social media in the current form if it went away, would get replaced with something even worse.
From what I’ve heard, people burned out on TikTok are switching to more mindful alternatives. Perhaps what Loops could do is try to capture those people as well?
They’re addiction machines because of how they’re built.
See: custom Facebook apps that only show the part of the service you ask for - not force-feeding you whatever they want.
Problem will be growing the user base. YouTube Shorts will be a big competitor.
Good that they have a web version.
But the most basic functionality of going to the next video is only available via scroll (no keyboard arrow down?) and it has a really long animation and delay?
Just feels awful to use.
I feel if you wanna win in this space, especially with people who prefer more "free" platforms, then the non-app version should be a bigger priority IMO.
It's open source? Make a PR.
Recently released on the Appstore https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/
This is actually pretty exciting. Excited to see how this turns out. But I am wondering how to keep it financially possible to operate the platform. Also, 95+% of the users probably don't care that much about censorship and privacy enough to switch platform.
I would have thought that the point of federation is not to require centralized servers that cost a lot to operate.
But sure, something like this probably requires a fundamentally different revenue model. Maybe even the one where people donate to server operators.
centralized servers cost less to operate, that why data intensive applications centralize over time. That's division of labor. The higher the complexity the the higher degree of specialization. And a video service is very demanding.
And you need to solve the economics first because otherwise your decentralized service is simply going to centralize over time to deal with demands for a more reliable and higher quality service. (and how to compensate creators)
One thing that's awesome about this and is 100% better than TikTok:
No burned-in branding. No trailing brand screen. No trademark brand noises.
----
Tiktok videos have omnipresent logos burned-in and a full-screen trailer with an annoying Tiktok brand sound. The few random loops that I looked at had none of these. I hope this doesn't change and, if it doesn't change, I hope loops displaces TikTok. I despise being constantly bombarded with branding.
Bombarding with branding is how TikTok got people on, and I don’t think it’s a bad strategy per se. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to overcome network effects with a product like this (word of mouth would be the best, but you’ll need a ton of creators first).
Vandalizing every video posted on their service may have helped TikTok spread brand recognition. One can only hope that a service that doesn't vandalize the content they deliver will find a way to pull ahead.
I do hope we¹ can figure it out, too.
There’s a middle ground solution here. TikTok does (naturally) have a version of each video without watermarks which they show in-app. They don’t let you download it, but external tools can generally help with that. What Loops could do is default to a watermarked version, but allow downloading original as well. This way, person sharing the video can decide whether they want to help promote Loops or not.
¹ – as a humanity; I’m not affiliated with Loops in any way
LOOPS, on the other hand, is an object-oriented programming environment in Interlisp-D, and one of the predecessors to CLOS.
how good is the For You feed? the tiktok secret sauce is the creepy algorithm, who's clamoring for "crack but not addictive?"
It sounds like you’re suggesting federated crack…
is it really a tiktok alternative if there's no crack?
I can appreciate the effort, but the UI is indistinguishable from tiktok.
Let me also register my disinterest in another platform that mimics TikTok.
Brainrot is brainrot regardless of whether it's "federated and open-source" or not. And BTW, 95% of the people on TikTok don't care about either of those two things.
Good luck, projects like these either end up getting sued or going to acquisition. Open source != morally on the end result
this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem.
These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value.
so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride.
Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.
On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.
It's not necessarily the case that Loops is just as addictive as TikTok. Because TikTok is more than just short term videos. It's also a recommendation algorithm that slurps up as much information as it can about you to predict what you'll want to watch next. This recommendation algorithm plays a big role in making TikTok addictive. And as far as I'm aware, Loops does not have this functionality. It will just show you videos based on a much simpler algorithm that takes into account how recent a video is and how many likes/comments it has, or something like that, which will make it less addictive.
I’ve started wondering if I want a smartphone at all lately. The whole paradigm gets creepier by the day and the global corporate expectation you have one makes me not want it.
The unfortunate truth is that TikTok is just a dopamine hit machine. There's no puzzle here, this project is just "we built an open source slot machine that you can install in your own home". Replacing the casino is addressing a pointless problem.
There's nothing tricky about this - the only winning move is not to play.
I enjoy watching TikTok, especially local or niche creators who have just a couple hundred followers. This is not going to be a problem as you imagine.
One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified.
Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.
The incentive is still there.
If there is an algorithm putting stuff on people’s faces then there will always be an incentive imo.
Well said, thank you.
Yep. Anything similar to what was Vine (i.e., TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels; e.g., very short videos with infinite scrolling) is ultimately too consuming literally a drug that robs one of the ability to concentrate and patience.
I think we need to encourage long form videos from 5 minutes to 1-2 hours and organize stuff around metadata (title, keywords/tags, lists, unique identifier) to mesh with a living, standardized ontology in a curated, sensible fashion that disallows proliferation of slop, too low quality stuff, and spam. From there, choose your own recommender and related algorithms/plugins.
The big gotcha of decentralized video platforms is content distribution that doesn't hug a self-hoster's server with barely any traffic.
"we need to rethink how we interact online"
I don't have a TikTok account, never have and I doubt I ever will. Am I missing anything?
I gave up fags (cigarettes) around eight years ago. Would you like some ideas for coping and abstention strategies?
> Each instance admin has full control over their server's moderation policies, allowed content, and federation choices. Loops provides the tools; communities set their own rules.
Yeah, but how do you maintain quality? Are users expected to shun instances that have poor quality? Quality doesn't just mean spam and unwanted content, it means hiding poor quality posts in feeds. You end up with users that are willing to invest time in curating the app to meet their needs. But that means you miss out on most people out there who expect a curated and engaging (read:addicting) experience.
I am not concerned about market shares on their own. But this is a good idea, and tiktok and youtube short videos are doing lots of harm to the world. Having a viable alternative would be amazing.
I'll suggest that a very strong and well funded "main" instance server exist? I'm sure there is one now, but I'm concerned this will go the way of lemmy and mastodon.
I would much rather prefer a centralized social media with a sanely constructed governance and corporate structure and a clear and non-conflicting revenue generation plan. The guardian's incorporation structure is what I consider a good example. That news organization is managing to be fairly independent, prevalent and significant when all others are caving to walled gardens and billionaires. social media in general should be viewed similar to journalistic organizations in terms of governance structure.
it is nice to be able to take your data elsewhere, it is nicer not having the need to begin with. In principle that sounds great, but in practice it is similar to forking software if you don't like it.
Lastly, how do they plan on making money? At least to the level that sustains their operations?
I want this to be succesful so much, but almost nothing works in the mobile app
Needed 2 tries to sign up, and uploading a video from the camera roll failed (5-7 tries)
yeah, there's a consistent pattern of overpromising across this and other projects by the same person
I like the app but it really needs a mute function (ideally an option by default).
the format isn't inherently bad, it's the algorithm optimizing for engagement over everything else that's the problem. short video is actually great for tutorials, explanations, behind-the-scenes stuff. i make AI-generated video content and the short form works well for documentary-style clips where you're mixing stills with selective animation.
the real question is whether federation changes the incentive structure enough. if the recommendation algo is still optimized for watch time, you just get tiktok with extra steps. if instances can tune their own ranking, that's actually interesting.
Counterpoint: The format is bad. The constant stream of videos, skipping between videos at (relatively) your own pace, the anticipation about the next video; it's similar to electronic gambling machines.
>electronic gambling machines.
Gambling is bad because it wastes people's money. Short-form videos just waste people's time, the same as the hours of television that older generations spend watching every day but with more diversified propaganda.
At least you have to go a casino for gambling. Short form video wastes your entire life away.
"just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. people wasting time staring at screens is the prevalent problem of today. with TV it was not as bad because there was/is only one in a room so it becomes shared experience. phones are worse.
Go a little further. Think about "how." How do slot machines get people to waste their money for hours-on-end? How does TikTok use short-form video to get people to scroll for hours-on-end? What is the mechanism?
"just" waste people's time? their most valuable resource?
It's OK to waste time. All art and entertainment is a waste of time. Most of what people do on HN is waste time. Arguably anything besides eating and procreative sex is a waste of time.
Sure, everything is just like a anything else. Rick and Morty is my favorite show too
Case in point - your comment was a waste of your time to write and a waste of my time to read, yet here we both are.
To use the analogy of other vice industries like gambling or alcohol, would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities?
That’s the type of analogy we might make in this case.
Obviously many people (literally billions) like this format and use it in relative moderation to unwind and kill time. Hell, I’ve even gotten productive helpful information out of the format on occasion.
It’s also taken a critical role in journalism and current events.
Unless you’re advocating prohibition, the cat is out of the bag.
Being able to find a short form video alternative that isn’t owned by commercial/government interests is a positive thing.
Question: how many people do you think would watch your short form ai videos if they had to actually seek them out and choose to watch them? The reason why the format is problematic is because it feeds off the dopamine hit of scrolling to the next piece of unknown content.
It’s well known that if people need to be intentional about what they consume they consume far less. Something tells me 15 second AI videos aren’t at the top of most people’s lists.
The less ai generated video I see the better.
There’s a reason why we don’t want to show kids fast pace videos with cuts that are less than 4s: it’s not good for the brain. The format is just not good for us
It's not just bad, it's the worst format that could exist, if radio and TV have already ruined the attention span this one seems to have the aim of doing just that by showing short content with almost no effort to understand it, a lot of context switching every 10-15 seconds and videos designed to attract as much attention as possible.
> if the recommendation algo is still optimized for watch time
"people don't want to watch my AI slop, it's the algorithm's fault!!"
Ew. The content problem on TikTok was never the protocol, it's that 99% of short-form video is brainrot slop regardless of who hosts the servers. Slapping ActivityPub on it literally solves nothing for humanity.
I do not know how to phrase this politely. I like the platform and the concept is interesting. But the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals.
You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I havent used Loops but im assuming its the same crowd as on Mastodon.
While I'm not interested in "short form" videos I had the same curiosity regarding the userbase and wanted to check myself.
The only way to look at the web view is to sign up, so I did. I completed E-Mail verification, then the account was disabled immediately with a pop up message to contact support. Not worth the effort.
I just tried exactly the same (at https://loops.video ), but I was able to watch without account, and registering afterwards also worked. Guess it's something on your side.
I can too, now. I wonder if any changes were made or if it was just a problem on my side.
Checking loops.video now, these were the first 5 videos I saw, in order:
1. Left-Wing American Politics
2. Promotion of the Fediverse and Loops
3. Left-Wing American Politics
4. A Non-English Play
5. Left-Wing American Politics
6. Stop Motion Flipbook Thing
7. Advocation for Loops Itself and Decentralization
8. Loops Promo
9. Left-Wing American Politics
So out of the first 9 videos, 4 centre around American politics, 1 I couldn't understand, 3 were promotion for the service I was currently using and only one was interesting and understandable.
I don't have a Loops account, but check multiple sites for news and information, landing on the loops homepage several times. I haven't needed a login to see videos appear for some time.
If it's anything like the rest of the Fediverse applications, it's meant to give you a full chronological feed of people you subscribe to. While several of these sites seem to have a simple trending page, one of the themes of the Fediverse seems to be getting away from overly predatory algorithms and leaning into letting people curate their own feeds and interactions again.
It sounds a lot like a "be the change" situation. If you want to see other stuff, follow people you like instead of drinking from the hose. It's still a small site, so if you don't see the content you want, then make it or build the community there.
These sites can also have basic interoperability. I don't know if the Loops UI supports subscribing to people in other Fedi networks yet, but I've seen people say Loops videos have started trickling onto Mastodon.
> You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.
What are you talking about? Sports, cars, and comedy are present everywhere on the internet. Guns are more of a niche and not without controversy, and it's certainly true that the incumbent networks place restrictions on some gun related content.
I know they're everywhere on the internet. I'm specifically talking about loops/mastodon. I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.
> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.
I think a lot of Fedi people want that, but the community is still small. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.
I'm not a Loops user atm though.
This identity politics/virtue signaling seems off topic.
> I havent used Loops
I think the worst repercussion of consuming short form content is that it gives the _consumer_ a false sense of engagement. That their passive consumption endows them with knowledge and credibility, leading to the deluded belief that a display of disintirest such as this one is 1) appropriate and 2) a profound condemnation rather than the petty, irrelevant whine that it is.
I have no interest in guns, and only a minor interest in sports and cars; but if you set up an instance devoted to these, and got your friends to use it (just to talk to each other), I reckon it would only be a few months before you'd seeded a community. (There is plenty of comedy on the Fediverse, so I think that's a bad example.)
The design of the Fediverse is receptive to niche communities. If other communities are hostile, you can just pretend they don't exist, and the things they post won't appear on your timelines. "The people on it" is not as much of a thing as you might be used to from social media like Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, or HN. (As everyone's so very fond or saying, ActivityPub is like email.)
If your niche is a popular niche (which sports most certainly are), then it should get quite big, quite quickly, provided the people who'd participate in it are (or can be) present.
I disagree because you dont just want "twitter for MMA" you want the whole network. So you want to be a good citizen and have instances federate with you. But most wont because of the nature of the content. So users would prefer platforms where they can follow all content from a single account.
> … sports, guns, cars … The rest of the world sits back snd takes just one guess as to which country you’re from.
Modern masculinity has lapped femininity in how utterly performative it is. This shit is so tiring.
What. What if I just like cars though. Am I a performative male?
No. Cars are amazing pieces of engineering and fun to drive. The people who vapidly flex supercars are an irrelevant fraction of the community.
I like guns and cars, but not sports. How exactly is it performative? Both are engineering marvels and fascinating to watch videos about, and they also happen to be a load of fun.
I watch hours of videos on both with nobody else around and don't really talk about those topics with others much. So in the spirit of HN, I'm actually curious to know what about those interests is performative?
Of the three, I only like cars.
I'm from Canada, and I like cars for many of the same reasons I like programming. They're complicated, fickle, and go fucking fast when you get everything right. It's like mainlining adrenaline and validation at the same time.. who wouldn't like that?! They're just fucking fun
New Zealand. I dont own any guns or flash cars but I still think they're interesting
> The rest of the world sits back snd takes just one guess as to which country you’re from.
Are football and F1 not immensely popular in Europe and the rest of the world?
> Modern masculinity has lapped femininity in how utterly performative it is. This shit is so tiring.
People like what they like, big whoop.
Football and F1 have become more popular by being less performatively male. Drive to Survive is The Real Househusbands of Oxfordshire (and Monaco).
>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.
I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.
I posted a cool clip from the UFC and got banned even though the content had a warning. It wasnt even that violent just a clean headkick ko.
If I started an instance it would get defederated because people would take one look and assume its toxic. But its not, Im not, I've spend years in the leftie techie activist spaces and cause no issues.
You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.
I do think its a popular niche but currently no one on the fediverse enjoys that stuff. But how can it grow when its rejected?
The whole point of federation is that you can build communities that share common values. I'm not sure what more you want. We can't force everyone to like the things you like.
However, it is a little silly to suggest that UFC is not extremely popular. I myself have wasted hours flipping through UFC reels.
This is about the fediverse not about the rest of the internet.
Disgusting.
I didn't deep dive into this, but just for context and comparison, here are some other tools which are building TikTok like tools on Bluesky-
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling...
Congrats. All that remains now is spending $$$ on some D-level celebs to lure in the users...
How is it decentralized? Decentralized as in bitcoin?
Decentralized as in not needing a central server.
I don't know about Loops specifically, but generally [Fediverse][0] projects tend to:
- Not rely on a central server.
- Allow you to set up your own server.
- Connect to a web of other servers through the Activity Pub protocol.
- Allow you to modify policies on your server (including restricting which other servers information is shared with.)
Many are also open source.
The creator of Loops also built a different project called [Pixelfed](1) with a focus on decentralized photo sharing (although it can also host video.) Because all these projects speak the same protocol, it's possible that at some point, Loops could show content from Pixelfed. Apparently Loops content is already appearing in Mastodon.
Meta's Threads also has Activity Pub support. Hypothetically, Threads content could appear on Loops and vice versa, if the UI is built to accommodate that style of content and a server admin doesn't block the Threads server (many servers block Threads specifically.)
TL;DR: A web of servers using different pieces of open source software to share social media, without a centralized server.
- [0] https://fediverse.info/
- [1] https://pixelfed.org/
Just a side note, reading through some of the other comments, it sounds like Loops specifically isn't currently open source and the intent is to open source it at some later date.
the brainrot from tiktok amplified with the brainrot from mastodon, what's not to love?
It's interesting, I doubt it'll ever be successful.
Look, the reason a lot of content makes it's way to Youtube, tiktok, and twitter, etc is because the creators can earn money from the platform. On youtube and tiktok, you can send gifts to your favorite creator. That incentivizes creators to create content.
loops will never have that feature. It's really hard to legally distribute money like that. But further, the decentralized nature of it means that you'll never know if your funds ends up in your creator's account or the instant account.
Without any sort of path to make money, the only content on the platform will be works of passion. Maybe that's a good thing, but it means these people will ultimately burn out.
But on the plus side, it means you probably won't end up with an endless stream of AI slop.
Instagram pays hardly anything. I don't know anyone doing it for that reason. It's more advertising for their other services. Like onlyfans, selling physical stuff, lectures, events etc.
And of course the people who do it for fun, usually the best content. It doesn't matter they'll eventually stop. There's always new ones.
I'm not sure about tiktok, but I doubt they pay much more than insta.
Glad to see more platforms on the Fediverse. Couldn’t be less interested in this particular one since it’s short form video. Those who like this medium: enjoy.
I may find short form video distasteful, but it’s less distasteful than those who want to dictate the media formats that others consume. Get a grip, people.
two hardest problems for a platform like this.
1. users and initial flywheel. 2. content moderation.
Finally, federated, open-source crack!
Open source meth is still bad in absolute terms even if it’s better than the alternative meth
For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14).
And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time spent in game without having to create content, which is expensive.
Thing is, players of this genre don't want PVP. Even in WoW, I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase actively engages in PVP activity. So, by focusing on PVP, you're actually cut your potential market by 90%. Before you've written a single line of code or created any artwork. Put another way, you're spending valuable development effort on features only a tiny minority of players care about or even want.
I'm reminded of this whenever somebody on HN talks about federation. The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. It greatly complicates the implementation. The last successes of federation are POTS and Email. It's quite literally never succeeded since. And the problems with federation that POTS and Email continue to have to this day should be an object lesson in why it's a bad idea.
Choosing federation from the start is choosing to lose. I'm sorry but it's true.
completely agree. Every time I see a "fediverse" on a project, I know its not going anywhere.
This didn’t go where I thought it would. You made me chuckle. Thanks!
> The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users.
Until enshittification happens. Example: the fall of Freenode.
"Everything you love about short-video"
Ha
haha
"Open-source TikTok" is like reading "open source slot machine". Not something you should be proud of, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with "All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control"
Short form content is a medium that isn't going away. Short form content is not inherently harmful, although short form content replacing or displacing other important mediums arguably is. When I think about the issues stemming from short form content, I don't think about the inherent medium, I think about the providers and their capabilities to use the sum of all consumed content by a user in the name of a ulterior motive at scale. While I haven't investigated it too deeply, Loops seems to be an effort in patching that. Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
Short form user generated content being served in our faces in a constant and ever updating feed fucks up our brains. It does not matter if it's proprietary or FOSS or non profit.
>Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
I think saying it's like an open source slot machine is pretty much self-explanatory
Oh dear god, another fediverse service.
I mean, I love the idea behind the fediverse, but the problem is, as long as you got federated instances of anything, instance admins will use their userbase for petty bxtchfights and purity contests.
and no, selfhosting is not an alternative, anything Fediverse requires a lot of resources, is ripe with exploits and exposes you to significant legal risk from griefers (e.g. you get DM'd CSAM by someone, your server automatically downloads it => congratulations, you are now a pedo under at least German law).
There have already been some TikTok alternatives that have become popular after it got bought by the Trump / Oracle / Silver Lake group of buyers.
One alternative I’ve heard of that apparently became popular is Skylight: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skyligh...
We do not need another tiktok.
Censorship.
No, health advocacy (societal and mental). Better formats exist
This format is present on all video platforms, an "open" version is definitely a step in the right direction
A small minority of loud neurotics shouldn't get to dictate what social media other people use. I don't know a single person who feels like social media has affected their mental health; it seems to be a uniquely American leftist thing.
Small minority? What about all the studies and statistics both from third parties and from the social networks themselves showing a direct effect on the _majority_ of users? Not that I expected a better argument from someone that crams in "leftists" as an unwarranted snide remark
The anxious generation is a best-selling book for no reason then.
Your kind is the braindead target audience for this digital crack. The audience that has a 5-second attention span and jumps on the opportunity to try the paint-huffing challenge.
This form of content is bad regardless of platform.
The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer).
There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
Here's a study showing an immediate negative impact on prospective memory from switching context repeatedly on short-form video platforms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107...
Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.
Scrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video?
Or browsing shelves in a bookshop. I've noticed I forget what I was doing ("prospective memory impairment") while looking for a good book. Also sometimes I annoy myself because I want to quit but I can't because I haven't found anything good yet. Whoops, where did the time go? So, ban bookshops.
you would hope that comments in a thread would stay in context, ideally.
The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
Yeah that’s what memeing is. What is this, 2000s internet and we start discovering what memes are or something.
Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...
My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names.
The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
You can use youtube and never come across a "meme" like that.
I used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested.
And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
>And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century.
This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_sitting
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_marathon
It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.
Memes were usually funny though. And just pictures so easily ignored if they weren't. I feel like this is just attention seeking.
Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos.
Weren't memes always just that? I think we're just old
Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part.
>The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
congratulations on discovering mimesis
They've made it into an actual skit now? I remember when it was just a regular old meme.
I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey..
edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
> I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women…
Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Is that also short form?
How would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex
Short form video is the brainrot.
This. If people are looking for freedom, the thing to do is to stop using TikTok or anything like it, not to make a federated version of it.
A federated version could provide a path away from addictive and polarizing content, and endless viewing.
Exactly, BlueSky demonstrates that it's not the form, but the engagement-at-any-cost feed algorithms without user-controllable knobs.
Bluesky proved no such thing. Merge bluesky with truth social and you’d be back to the same thing again. Both platforms are just full of people retreating into smaller bubbles, the underlying issues are still there just less common.
I'll come at it from another angle. Some of the most popular podcasts (and YouTubers) produce hours of long-form video (an acceptable format) daily. Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes.
The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters.
(And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.)
Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions?
Everyone keeps saying this
But no one will say why
This seems like (probably) harm reduction, the approach to dealing with drug addiction. It's not great, but better than at least some alternatives.
This. It is just mental drug.
so is love
this level of reductive thought termination goes nowhere
Alcohol is bad, regardless of the spirit you consume. Look at how prohibition worked out.
It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles.
There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system.
Sure but there are like 5 layers of bad with tiktok, this undoes at least 2-3 of them
Why?
https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-litera...
This is a great writeup on why short-form content is overall a net negative for us with a human brain.
I feel justified turning this around on you and asking what is good about it? It's disposable media. In and out of brain in seconds. There are any number of better ways to waste time let alone ones that don't show you ads.
Better ways to waste time.
If I'm on the toilet not having a fun time, pardon me for wanting to see some cat videos instead of solving a Rubik's Cube, I guess?
You're pardoned, but I have much more fond memories of magazine baskets in bathrooms. Today you should at least have a Switch in there ;)
But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom.
The Economist app and Inoreader are higher on my front page than Instagram is, so I am being slightly tongue in cheek.
But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice.
But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back.
Oh ya, I did not mean to rag on mindless time killing! I just mean, I used to doodle or play guitar or drums far more often than I do now when I was looking for mindless distractions (which is not to say that any of those things can't also be mindful, which is maybe my point? I dunno). And of course I watched a lot of TV which, back then, was more limited so at least had the benefit of being able to use it as common ground when meeting new people. Nowadays it's a viral video that a million people have seen has not been seem by billions. Any even so, we could have a much more in depth conversation about Star Trek than an 8 second video we both happened to see.
Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me.
Magazines are exactly the same type swipe-every-few-seconds crap.
They are absolutely not the same! I mean, they come in all forms so yes, they are overlaps, but many magazines have long form articles that you can take in over several, uh, sessions. You can re-read them catching new things each time. As a guest, bathroom magazines had that funny specialness to them in that they were curated by the host. You get "recommendations" far outside of what The Algorithm would ever give you (this is actually how I learned about Scott Pilgrim comics 25 years ago). You're basically "forced" to read/look at something the host actually cares about which, if you were interested in the material after having some private time to digest it on your own, made for more meaningful conversations, way better than, "Hey! Check out this video I like! I'm going to watch with you and eagerly await your reaction!"
I signed up and had a look, its full of garbage
The platform is filled with so many AI generated slop