1y ago

What is the fediverse equivalent to TikTok?

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.

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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.

43 comments