Title.
Some are calling Loops (https://pixelfed.social/loops) the FediTok (Federated TikTok). What’s your personal stance on this?
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Short form content without a profix-maximizing algorithm pushing it to you does sound interesting, not gonna lie
Yeah, I can’t do Instagram or TikTok because within 3 videos I’m either getting something inflammatory or selling something. An algorithmically neutral version would be amazing.
This confuses me. You want something without an algorithm… because you used systems before their algorithm kicked in and hated it?
The crap you got was because it didn’t know enough about you to know what you like. Without an algorithm, that’d be your feed forever.
This is a decent point. YouTube is cancer if you don’t police your algorithm. If you do (ie: vote on vids, use the “Not Interested” and “Don’t recommend channel” options) you get a very clean and personalized feed.
You’ll know when YouTube makes changes to their algorithm as you’ll suddenly get some unwanted stuff. For example, when any football videos show up in my feed I know YT is making changes so I flag the unwanted stuff when it comes up and within a few flaggings its back to normal.
If you open my YouTube home page its nothing but metal bands, production vids, guitar and drum vids as well as video games, racing, sim racing, science and some other long form content. Its hyper specific to my interests.
I helped pull my buddy out of a bit of a ragebait spiral during covid just by showing him my feed and comparing it to his. He never fathomed the depths that YT would drag him to if he didn’t curate his algorithm.
The algorithm can be cancer if you engage with cancer. If you pick your content like you pick your fruits at the grocery store you’ll have a much better time.
He never fathomed the depths that YT would drag him to if he didn’t curate his algorithm.
100% this. The algorithms are designed to give you what keeps your attention. You need to be careful about what you give attention to.
It’s not that they don’t want an algirithm. They just don’t want one that’s profit motivated.
As a heavy tiktok user I would probably only use this if it had an algorithmic feed.
I’m not a fan of short form videos at all, but it’s cool that exists for those who do :)
If it has an embed API, I’ll probably add support to Tesseract if there’s interest.
Lol I’m not a huge fan either, but I love being able to doom scroll after a tiring day at work.
My friends will usually send me the good stuff so it spares me the scrolling. They get to share something cool they found, and I don’t have to scroll. Win-win 😆
I’m not a fan of crack at all, but I’m glad it exists for those who do
I don’t think short-form video is quite that addictive, but your comment made me chuckle.
I’ve been waiting for something like this. A FOSS, federated TikTok alternative that doesn’t send my data to the Chinese and doesn’t sell it to data brokers sounds pretty great.
I never got into the short form video thing but anything to get more people onto the Fediverse is a good thing
I was thinking about Loops earlier today. I’d love to implement Quiblr’s For You recommendation algorithm for Loops and see how it performs. I haven’t joined the beta though so not sure how baked it is yet
I am very, very excited about it! I check for updates nearly every day lol
Lmao same! I quit TikTok because of their TOS and Privacy Policy. I’ve been looking for an alternative ever since, but none are privacy respecting.
I wonder how it will work without an algorithm, though 🤔
The algorithms are what makes these services. Most interactions aren’t searching and selecting something specific or intentional, they’re just opening a fire hose and expecting the algorithm to pick content they find entertaining for them. It requires the algorithm to have a lot of information, both about the specific user, and about similar users.
I think they could add a tag system, where the user enters their interests as a tag and then Loops shows all the content that shares the same tag.
Yes, it’s more effort than TikTok, which automatically guesses what your interests are, but I think it’s still a good, privacy friendly alternative.
If something like that were to work, a lot of effort would need to be put into minimizing the UI friction. I could see something like: uploaders add topic tags to their videos, and an AI runs in the background to generate and apply new tags based on the content (most people would not understand how to properly tag content). An AI would also be used to create a graph of related tags, where similar or closely related tags are nodes joined by an edge. Then, on first login the user is prompted to pick some tags to start with. Over time, the client uses the adjacent tag graph to fine-tune users’ tags, on device. The idea here is that we could get a decent algorithm that can recommend new stuff based on what the user watches, but keep that data processing of user-specific content local. Then, the client would also have an option the user could enable that would contribute their client’s tag information back to the global tag graph, improving the global tag graph for everybody. This data could also be combined with other users data at the instance level to somewhat anonymize the data, assuming it is a large multi-user instance. If you were to host a single user instance, you’d probably not want to contribute to the global tag graph unless you’re ok with your tag preferences being public.
Would there be some way to have the algorithms localized to the user (or instance)? If data needs to be compared between users, would there be some way to anonymize the data first?
It’s a bit tricky but I think a privacy preserving algorithm is possible. Simply put, the more data available, the better an algorithm can be.
Or just manage your interests and cultivate your own catalog of creators to follow.
I think the easy discoverability on these platforms is part of what makes them so popular. Using TikTok or similar, a user typically wants to be shown new things, it maintains a sense of novelty that keeps users constantly engaged. Having to do this manually would be a huge negative.
It’s what’s makes them addictive. Mindless doom scrolling an algorithm.
Give users control to block and follow whatever without being pushed for “engagement”
That’s for selling ads
I pretty much do exactly that when it comes to YouTube, and I almost never browse TikTok/Shorts/Reels-type content. Not everyone is like me though, and options for those who do enjoy short-form video would be good.
I still haven’t figured out why people like them except to annoy everyone around them by playing the audio through their phone speakers.
How do I join the closed beta?
I was never into this type of content cayse I don’t wanna touch tiktok nor instagram. This does seem interesting though
I’m happy about any new features that draw more users to a federated alternative :)
Bröthër may I have some lööps
I don’t watch reels, shorts, tiktoks or any other short for videos and Loops is not an exception. I moved from Instagram to Pixelfed for the sole purpose of getting atleast some audience for my photography since Instagram wants you to post videos instead.
What’s your profile? Let me drop you a follow!
I never got into vertical video, not my type of thing.
But if something like that is a way for someone to reduce stress or do anything in a bored moment, then why not.
That’s a refreshing take to have on things.
They are working on loops but yet Pixelfed doesn’t have push notifications yet.
I hope they support UnifiedPush
I just want a notification 😂😂😂😂
So do I, but I don’t have Google play services on my phone.
I think they will push an update through their native app, at sometime in the future.
Can’t be bothered, tiktok is cancer, and I don’t need an alternative.
