That's the same as the established YouTube creators

Facebook, SnapChat and Instagram are social networks.

YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit are social media.

Plenty of social interaction happens in TikTok comments and DMs. If Instagram is social media, so is TikTok.

At best its grist for the content mill. Cheap animal feed to fatten the livestock and attract the eye of advertisers.

I have no IRL links to any of the accounts I'm following on Insta. I'm interested only in seing beautiful pictures (and not awful "reels").

IMO it's all an illusion, but it's not much different from seeing a friend, family member, co-worker. or a prominent business-person/celebrity being more successful than you. The interesting (scary?) thing about TikTok is that it hyper-compresses that environment into a few seconds, then constantly bombards you with it via a neverending flow of videos. It's like keeping up with the Joneses on amphetamines.

Obviously, it heavily depends. I’ve looked at my friends’ feeds and it’s exactly what you’ve described.

Obviously we all like different things, and there is enough content to fill everyone’s feeds with it.

That's actually what got me to try it out. There were multiple cases where I heard that, so downloaded it and spent some time on it. After you've used it a few hours, you start really getting mostly the stuff you like.

You just have to be very careful not to engage with stuff you don't want to see. Scroll away as soon as you've determined it's not for you, as they'll notice if you watch things to the end. I made a conscious decision that I didn't want to engage in content where people were complaining about the behavior of other people and scrolled past as soon as I identified things as such, and I stopped getting them within a few days. My TikTok is all fun/funny stuff.

I've certainly seen friends and family compulsively scroll and obsessively check instagram and snapchat in a manner no different than what people are criticizing about tiktok. It seems like people witness their "their generation" using instagram/snapchat for hours on end; then they see the younger generation using tiktok for (the same number of) hours on end, and get the idea it's far more damaging.

I suspect the curated short video format is what really holds people's attention in a way that is different from "traditional social media".

*disclaimer: as reported by different sites, with different methodologies, and different reporting dates.

The amount of things I want to and do share with my wife and kids in there makes me thing of the items as small emotional payloads I can send which are themselves a message, sort of like sending an emoji or string of them.

They don't actually have much choice in how they run their products.

Not sure it matters much if you're at the bottom and have to bow to one for a while then the other.

So yes, I do actually believe that. If the hold on power is weak enough it doesn't count as a dictatorship.

Similarly many of today's tech giants are difficult to escape, especially as network effects drive toward centralization of power.

https://mignano.medium.com/the-end-of-social-media-a88ffed21...

Both of which of course have a lot to do with reduced attention span.

Over time, it becomes a culture signifier of sorts. MrBeast is bigger than Pewdiepie (embarrassed that I know these names), he obviously does not need to paper over mistakes with those cuts.

Same way he doesn't need to make exaggerated open-mouth face for the Youtube thumbnail, but they do anyway.

The only good things on youtube are music videos, DIY repair, and lectures / talks that gets uploaded.