Firebrand

Never truly appreciated how many niche porn subreddits with significant following there were until I started watching the stream.

Users affected by this still have until March 6 to file a claim, in case anyone was unaware of the class action settlement:

https://www.keyboardsettlement.com

Don’t miss your paycheck!

The only new Mac products last year were the M2 MacBook Air and the Studio. Everything else for sale was at least a year old.

TikTok’s popularity is already waning in the U.S. Installs of the app are down 33% YoY in November, from 6.6MM in November '21 to 4.5MM in November '22. -0.3% YoY worldwide.

In fact, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outgrew TikTok and even YouTube during this period:

https://twitter.com/eric_seufert/status/1602045164016615428?...

Aaron Sorkin made the most concise counterargument to this in Steve’s biopic:

“Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”

https://youtu.be/-9ZQVlgfEAc

Bytedance even publicly denounced Tencent last year after a VP compared Douyin’s content to pig feed:

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3136168/tiktok-ow...

It’s all the same crap being served.

I’ve seen Twitter uproars against Google and LinkedIn employees who have uploaded similar content:

https://twitter.com/coldhealing/status/1561022408206729216

A lot of the lavish perks they’ve showed have been part of these companies since these two young women were toddlers. It’s privilege discourse meeting the cringey nature of TikTok.

I thought about starting my own TikTok page dedicated to programming so I recorded one about why I still prefer C++ over Rust. While I got decent views for the subject matter, I got roasted by 12-year-olds in the comments section. The top one implied the real reason I preferred C++ was because I’m a boomer, and it was apparently written by someone who likes to upload Roblox music videos. My page has since been made private.

I can take toxic Reddit, HN, and even Twitter comments, and while I found the whole situation hilarious there’s something frightening about opening my whole identity for hordes of anonymous people to judge. There’s a power imbalance that doesn’t seem to bother a subset of Gen Z or the general population who continue uploading content there.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find the concept of hiding behind my profile picture while I speak to potentially hundreds of people in my pajamas to be not nearly as frightening as uploading a video of myself for hordes of 12-year-olds to roast in the comments. There seems to be enough everyday people comfortable enough to do that on TikTok to make it work, though.

Clubhouse’s demise seems to come from entering such a mature space without much of a marketing budget, then. Not enough extroverts know about it to keep the app interesting 24/7 and not much incentive to keep returning to talk on it as well.

Did that actually happen? I thought the Saudi Arabia hack was a convenient tale conjured up by Bezos’ team to cover up that his girlfriend was the one sending his pictures and messages to her brother, who in turn tried selling it to the National Enquirer.

Hasn't Twitch always been that way? It's been my impression that streamers are a bit more nuttier compared to the average Instagram influencer or TikToker since most of them have to grind videogames while talking to their computer for 12 hours each day before being gaining enough of a following to set their own schedule.

On Wednesday, mobile insights firm Sensor Tower said that TikTok was the most-downloaded app globally in the first half of 2021. TikTok also surpassed 3 billion installations globally, SensorTower said, making it the first non-Facebook app to exceed that figure.

Seems a bit cheating to combine Douyin and TikTok download numbers even if they are nearly identical apps.

https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-3-billion

Columbia also has the School of General Studies bachelors program for non-traditional students that costs $85k (including living expenses) a year, and it’s notorious for offering little to no financial aid for it.

You end up paying $340,000 to take the same classes as regular Columbia students while being almost cut off completely from the college social experience.

Imagine a story about Charles the software developer, who lives in Chicago, being a horrible, predatory romantic partner.

Not trying to imply that you are one of course, but that’s about as much detail she changed from the real life story—just the names. And now it was so successful that there’s going to be made about it starring Cousin Greg from HBO’s Succession. People love to gossip and will eventually put two and two together.

Reddit bought Dubsmash last year, too. I imagine the app will eventually operate almost similar to TikTok: funny picture, advertisement, cat video, person live-streaming. Whether or not they can attract more of these power users to use the official app to upload short videos and livestream remains to be seen. I don’t think they’re able to on third-party apps. I’m not able to on Apollo, at least.

You focus on things people aren’t willing to post on their Facebook feed. Snap and TikTok remain strong despite being copied because it allows people to essentially shitpost without their close friends and family seeing it.

How timely for Instagram’s CEO to say the quiet part out loud and announce that they’ll be helping content creators to get around Apple’s 30% cut today:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/instagram-ceo-facebook-will-...

I think Zuckerberg was right when he said Apple’s practices have ultimately benefited Facebook in eliminating any competition.

I wonder what happened with Walmart’s partnership with TikTok and if they’ve given up on their social media/e-commerce ambitions:

https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-de...

They were very eager to beat Amazon on bringing the QVC style online video commerce that’s super popular in China to the U.S., but I haven’t seen much about it since. I guess like convincing teens to buy clothing that their favorite influencer was wearing from Walmart.com was too tall an order.

I think a good example of this would be Tim Cook’s email to Phil Schiller on why the Mac’s App Store wasn’t taking off, which was revealed during the Epic Games v Apple trial: https://mobile.twitter.com/benedictevans/status/139681157744...

Cook sees the fire, gives a brief thought, and leaves it to Schiller on Christmas Eve to figure out why it started and how to fix it.

If I call out BS there’s a risk of the influencer incensing their followers enough for them to go after my employer and colleagues and tell them that I’m bully.

Best not to poke the bear.

I don’t know what’s more shocking, Zhang stepping down or an HR head becoming CEO of a major tech company.

What’s really interesting about TikTok is that they’ve seem to have successfully taken making a fool of yourself on the internet (and out in public if you dance outside) mainstream. I have no idea what compels otherwise everyday people to post embarrassing and sometimes way too personal videos for potentially millions of people to laugh at but they do it.

Of course, there are a lot of issues with the app itself, but it’s nice to see the world be a little less serious sometimes.

Based on Apple’s job postings I’m beginning to suspect their stance on ads and tracking was nothing more than a clever ruse to weaken competitors while they build their own a personalized ad business for iOS:

https://i.imgur.com/y1s9F4J

They also just hired Facebook’s first ads targeting product manager to work for their ad platform. I don’t think Apple ads won’t be limited to the App Store within a couple years.

TikTok is a special case since it’s owned by a conglomerate with deep enough pockets to brute force their way into Western consciousness. They most likely pay their top creators not to post Instagram Reels.

I don’t think it would have nearly the amount of success today if it were an American company going through the traditional VC funding route.

What caused this surge of products from Twitter lately? The platform has been accused of being stale for years but then 2021 rolls around and now they have Clubhouse, Substack, and Patreon competitors ready to be released. Were they repaying technical debt before?

Debating whether repealing Section 230 will suddenly grant people free speech on social media platform is missing the real issue. We should repeal Section 230 in order to destroy the social media industry.

Online you do not interact with "regular people" but people who put the most effort into online presence and those people are overwhelmingly individuals with very real mental disorder on the narcissistic spectrum often with other comorbid disorders.

On social media in particular you are exposed to both narcissists and in general a narcissistic mode of communication - because that's what social media is. Social media is a vehicle for turning an individual into a narcissistic persona. So even if you are not narcissistic in real life your social media activity will make it look like you are.

Social media is very unhealthy. It is a recipe for a mental disorder. It is primarily used by people with mental disorders. It is designed by people with mental disorders.

Quit social media—these online free speech advocates just want more people to pay attention to them which leads to more screen addiction. It's cancer for your soul. And I am not sure I am just being metaphorical.

Must be the same people who think TikTok is just a dance app.

People who enjoy comic book movies are constantly talked down to by others for enjoying them.

The diehard DC comic fans who started the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign and pooled their money together to buy billboards during Comic-Con were called similar things by the rest of the Internet for doing so.

The main takeaway is that TikTok is labeling videos that they determine are misleading.

Just what the Western world needs: a Chinese company determining what is fact or fiction.

I was thinking about that the other day when Snap reached $100B in market cap. That’s a mobile app whose continued success rides entirely on the good graces of Apple and Google.