Obviously Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc. are federated decentralized equivalent to their centralized counterparts, but what is the counterpart in the fediverse to TikTok? It is a dominant app for millions of people, and as far as I can tell the closest thing is Peertube, but isn’t that more of a YouTube equivalent? Does it not exist because the bandwidth and storage costs are just too great? Or because the algorithmic nature of content selection is inherently anti-fediverse in some way? Clearly many people choose to interact with each other this way, but it seems like a gap in the fediverse and I was wondering why.
I can see it happening at some point especially with all the alternatives but it’d be really hard to get that appeal especially with how some people within the fediverse view tiktok. You’re also gonna have a hard time in my opinion getting users from TiktTok over so you can’t really appeal to that crowd. I wouldn’t say its impossible but it’d just be really really difficult.
I mean network effects are real. You always have a hard time moving users over to a new network platform. Are you saying that anyone using TikTok right now arguable does not care about privacy at all so would be unlikely to see the value of federated decentralized apps?
Not really. The same reason why alot of social media is still incredibly successful even when they are actively violating your privacy; people just want something easy to use and out of the way. They don’t care at all as long as it works so when you try to give them an alternative, they might join but then see that no one is on their or is much more difficult and as such results in them hopping and then leaving.
But how is that a different problem than mastodon or Lemmy or friendica face? What makes TikTok different?
I am not trying to be condescending, but I get the feeling you may not be as versed in privacy matters. Those other social media apps require access to huge amounts of information about you and everything you do on your device. Location, location history, health and fitness info, contacts, browsing history, etc. Depending on what company we’re talking about, that info is used to generate detailed targeted profiles to sell to advertising companies, and possibly also to train in-house AI models. Lemmy doesn’t do that because it’s a community driven and hosted platform whose goal is not to sell the information generated by its users.
I think you misread the previous commenter. I think their point was: the assertion that nobody will leave TikTok despite its abuses is very similar to the assertion that nobody will leave Twitter for Mastodon, or Reddit for Lemmy, etc despite their abuses.
Yet, it is happening. Whether it will be a large or lasting migration to open, less intrusive platforms remains to be seen, but the fact that we are talking about it here, and not on reddit, would imply that it’s at least possible. The challenges and possibilities are similar.
But, I generally share the concern that the high cost of video storage and distribution is a major barrier to success.
The migration off of Twitter and reddit only happens when the site deliberately put barriers to people’s experiences, like killing 3pa and limiting how much post you can read. The privacy matters don’t figure much.
No, I understand that.
My point is that I think TikTok has a user base that is far less likely to care about privacy, openness of platforms, etc. In my opinion, it’s an app that is built for and used primarily people that don’t care. You can tell them over and over about its privacy abuses, you name it, and they won’t leave.
Reddit and Twitter tend to have older and more often nerdier users that are more likely to know about/understand/care about these issues and react accordingly.
Peertube as you said is the closest equivalent as a video distributor. Technically a similar approach to Peertube would work by using both Torrents and Instance data storage. Now what makes Tik Tok so popular is its algorithm, which mind you, is a tiny wee bit manipulative. In future, Peer Tube might implement something like dedicated sections for vertical videos. But without a significant cultural shift, I’m not seeing an effective Tik Tok clone appear without a lot of noses being turned up.
using both Torrents and Instance data storage
IMO, anything based on peer-to-peer sharing is a nonstarter, not with the kind of video bandwidth demands that a TikTok or equivalent would put on cell phone networks. You might get it working on desktop, but I’d bet good money that the cell networks & Apple & Google would move to lock that s*** down ASAP.
Torrents have been around for over 20 years and most of the time infamous for its abundance of “linux distros”. Citation needed.
Sure, but people generally aren’t downloading torrents on cell phones. Apple devices make it very difficult (torrent clients are explicitly excluded on Apple Store for iOS), and while you can get torrent clients on the Google store, people aren’t using them for live video as far as I know.
Cell phone TOS usually explicitly prohibit peer-to-peer sharing, and I got my so-called “unlimited data” Sprint service cancelled back in 2010 for exactly that.
As long as peer-to-peer on phones is rare, nobody will notice, but if somebody spun up a competitor to TikTok that depended on serving video FROM phones to the rest of the Internet, and it started to get significant traction, I think the cell phone companies would bring an end to it.
most of the time infamous for its abundance of “linux distros”
What the heck does that have to do with watching viral videos on cell phones? We’re talking about a competitor to TikTok. With respect, Linux is like 3% of the desktop market, anything happening on Linux endpoints is noise to the big players.
Solid response.
What the heck does that have to do with watching viral videos on cell phones? We’re talking about a competitor to TikTok. With respect, Linux is like 3% of the desktop market, anything happening on Linux endpoints is noise to the big players.
The bitTorrent protocol is infamous for piracy, in fact you’ll hardly find a common man who doesn’t equate the two together (hearing torrents = pirated media) Even with the full copyright cartel doing their damnest, it’s still available world wide. Also, video streaming on mobile data is everywhere and ISPs responded by fattening up their networks with newer, better, faster tech, like 4g/5g.
Your concerns are reasonable, though there is no precedent. Might be, might not be. Hard to say when one lacks the rulebook.
video streaming on mobile data is everywhere and ISPs responded by fattening up their networks with newer, better, faster tech, like 4g/5g
Yeah, but streaming from your phone to a streaming service, or whatever, hands over the job of distribution to the streaming service.
Streaming may be ‘everywhere’ but how many phones are streaming at any given moment? 0.01%? It’s probably not even that many. Now how many are watching TikTok? How much more bandwidth would they need if the TikTok client was also serving videos to other TikTok clients?
Now, could you obfuscate the video with encryption, etc. to make it nearly impossible for cell phone companies to stop it? Probably. But, you’d need the cooperation of the Google Play & Apple stores to make that happen (on non-rooted devices), and it seems likely they would take the side of their cell provider partners.
I’m not a Tiktok user, but what does Tiktok do that something like Peertube can’t, and that we would actually want as part of the Fediverse?
Siphon all your personal data while directing you to content designed carefully to ensure you watch more ads.
goldfish.social
There really isn’t one.
