Never had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them.

However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos.

At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now.

I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.

This type of comment comes up here a lot, but maybe you should show us what exactly you mean?

Because at least for physics and chemistry, those are topics where, in my experience, you need deep, sustained engagement to make any personal progress on them.

Sure, you can probably learn a few fun facts through TikTok but really what's the point?

There are only 24 hours in a day. The hours you spend doomscrolling through - in the best case - fun facts about physics and chemistry are hours you spend not doing anything of value, like learning about actual physics or chemistry.

I get that you don't need to be doing something super productive all the time, what I'm saying is that I think you're fooling yourself if you believe that TikTok and co. are anything more than the shallowest form of entertainment available.

Can you provide a ranking of entertainment from most “deep” to most shallow please since you seem to be an expert on what entertainment is OK to consume?

I'm not, but I do know you'll be on the safe side if you go read a book that challenges you! :)

Do you agree that differences exist and some things can be better for mental and personal growth than others?

I remember lots of things! Like Nile burning some random thing. Or that British physicist talking to the British shit poster lady.

I think you might have a point..

I chuckled at your reply, because there is truth to it. But in all honesty I did learn proper running form from TikTok.

I also did from some American Olympic athlete. I still don’t go running though.

An interesting difference between physics and metaphysics is that in physics people tend to think fact checking their claims is important.

Until recently, both meta and physics thought that fact-checking claims was important.

I think physics folks are still mostly top notch when it comes to physics, but for metaphysics they fail like everyone else of course.

Aha sorry, it was a play on words. "Meta" the company just fired their fact-checking team, hence the tongue-in-cheek comment

Even if it is recipes and chemistry it's the format that's the issue, it still fries your dopamine and lowers your attention span.

I don't think it's any worse than any other form of media (like reading comments on hacker news instead of reading the article)

It is much worse lol

Videos cram so much stimulation over such a short period of time

Text you still have to read

Or, to spin it around -- given a standard, naive population, why are video platforms so much more successful than text ones?

Hypothesis: video is more addiction, regardless of content

Except I can read much faster than a video can convey information to me, almost always - I suspect the popularity of video to deliver information at least in some part stems from declining literacy. Whenever I have to watch a poor reader read something, I am honestly amazed they can function at all.

Have you used it?

We might not use HN the same way then...

I frequently give up on reading a thread midway down the page because it's requiring *too much focus*, and, get this, I might even interrupt my break and just go back to work early instead!

I don't think that would ever happen on a neverending infinite scroll of hyperengaging video.

Some of it is that for sure. But you could also make the counter argument about long form content. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to explain how to make a cake.

It doesn't take 30 seconds either.

TikTok has been pushing longer form content for a while. 60-90 seconds is plenty for a recipe

Definitely two sides of the same coin, struggle not to have a YT video playing if I’m alone and doing something else that should be enough for my focus.

That is exactly what TikTok does, they are more popular because their tastes algorithm is even better than Shorts for figuring out what you actually want to watch

For me, in reddit (and hacker news), I tend to actually read the actual video, read the comments, sometimes even leave a comment. Much more time spent on an actual item.

For short videos, it is a continuous stream of video's where a new video is automatically started after the last one. This is what makes shorts so horrible. You are forced to watch a new video every 15s to 1 min. Versus actively deciding yourself how long you look on a particular item. It becomes bad as your brain gets trained to loose interest after 1min.

I'm so tired of the Internet turning into the Internet of Faces. I feel like I see faces plastered all over the Internet now, eager to take only ten minutes to explain one minute of information to me.

Probably not a coincidence that the Internet became a lot less nerdy and cool around the time HD streaming was viable. Modern social media shows that people want the next evolution of TV not books.

I highly recommend turning off the autoplay next video option in YouTube. It will enhance your life.

Don't download titkok. It's like Shorts but works a lot better.

Both are like using slot machines but on tiktok you win (dopamine hit) more often - or at whatever rate the house wants you to.

its like how 30 years ago when people would numblessly flip through hundreds of cable channels for hours, but with endless tailored content and extra dopamine shots on top from social feedback

its very telling how, while youtube (classic) also has these same ingredients, the ux of looking through a menu is far less addicting than the slot machine mechanism from swiping up

yeah but cable was limited by channels and by producers. now anyone can make a video and it's possible to tailor that to tiny niches that would have never been served by cable.

I can't believe how ignorant some people could be.

It is so easy to find reports and evidence of how Tiktok could be of great value to people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/dining/tiktok-ban-cooking...

https://www.today.com/popculture/books/what-is-booktok-meani...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-67555175

Having some amount of utility doesn't contradict it possibly being used for nefarious purposes by it's owners though. If I intentionally wanted to design an information warfare weapon, I'd make sure to sugarcoat it with interesting/funny/useful content to make it palatable. Just like putting the soldiers inside a giant wooden horse.

AR-15s can be used for hunting but it doesn’t mean it is always used for good

Not that I really care enough to ban TikTok, but the value demonstrated here is pretty spurious. You could swap "TikTok" with "socializing", and I'm sure these people would've had similar outcomes.

Socializing is indeed of great value to people; not at all spurious. You're helping prove OP's point.

And OP didn't even mention all the small businesses that took off due to TikTok giving them an avenue. This notion that people have to dismiss TikTok as merely mindless dopamine is really just wilful ignorance.

My point is that none of this is truly dependent on the existence of TikTok, which OP does not be seeming to be arguing, even slightly. The internet is a revolving door of gathering spaces that enable people to do nice things for each other. People can do nice things for each other anywhere, even when surrounded by the digital equivalent of two-way mirrors.

Citizens have a right to assemble and speak to each other. Foreign corporations don't have a right to own the feeds of huge swaths of the population. Hence the rules around newspaper and TV ownership.

> I can't believe how ignorant some people could be.

Wow, it goes deeeeeeep.

100% agree on this and go further; it rots their brain. We have to have the societal courage and guts to admit that it is conceptually the same as things like drugs/alcohol/smoking.

Then again, we lost that battle with misogynistic, language-rotting, and violent rap music because we were too worried about being called racists, so there might not be hope we'll do better this time around.

Do you think rap music has had more of an impact on society or democracy than TikTok or YouTube shorts or just Facebook?

I'd be pulling something out of thin air, but my opinion is that yes so far it has. Facebook and TikTok, and other social media, has served as an amplification mechanism for various things, including rap music.

But at this point, we also have a separate category of things that pretty much on their own are having a negative effect on society. That would be things like TikTok (including Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts).

The fact that they're not trying to come up with a new UI paradigm, or discovery mechanism is very telling. They keep focusing on semi-random swipe-directed discovery, and that tells me they're not interested in making the best content available to you as the interested-consumer. They want you wasting time and generating N-counts of redundant ad views/impressions/things before finding that one thing you wanted or might find interesting.

Youtube is probably the best at at-least trying to not force you to swipe (when watching normal videos). But even there, we can see how much people complain about "The Feed" or "The Algorithm". With all of Google's money and effort, they couldn't (or chose not to) find a better way at matching viewers with good content.

Yes, rap music (and video games, and rock music, and comic books, and pinball machines) definitely ruined the world by rotting the childrens’ brains.

It wasn’t the gutting of the educational system, that’s far too simple an explanation.

Your facetious comment is essentially correct. It all comes down to culture and parenting. The 'gutted' education system where I live spends 25k per student, which doesn't matter if kids never read a book.

smoothbrain take

TV is far more mindnumbing and stupid

It's a slot machine, a scroll is an arm pull. Sometimes you get a brain tickle and you keep on scrolling to get more. I'd bet money that the brain activity is exactly the same.

Do you think forums like the one you are on right now do not?

We're the product of all the information we consume, but forums like HN aren't custom-tailoring what I'm shown to maximize engagement from me.

Perhaps, but the question was regarding whether this forum brainwashes people.

Do you think there might be some variation in the degree of negative effects a forum like Hacker News has compared to TikTok/YT shorts?

I do, but this is not contrary to my point.

No, because reading is more healthy than mindlessly watching short videos. There is only so much content on the front page, it's not a slot machine you can pull for hours like tiktok.

Give it a few months until somebody rigs an open-source video generation model to generate a "Short" from any frontpage article, and then several "reaction videos" based on the top comments... and maybe a frontend UI that turns the frontpage into an infinite scroll of those Shorts... and bam, HackerReels will be born

Do you truly believe zero brainwashing takes place here?

Out of curiosity, how deeply have you considered the question? And, might that depth not be a function of the norms in the forum?