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   Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 18-Nov-2023 04:34:09 JST Derek Powazek 🐐

   Three true things:

   Thing 1: Everyone is talking about everything on the internet all the time. If you go looking to find something bad in social media, you will find it.

   Thing 2: Anyone panicking about the kids doing something online has a different motive: they're trying to create panic, or make the kids look bad, or they just hate social media or the internet. It's never about the thing itself.

   Thing 3: Panic in the news about a thing CREATES THE THING online.

   https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-teens-arent-stanning-osama

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     Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 18-Nov-2023 04:34:04 JST Derek Powazek 🐐

     in reply to

     I once saw a woman on TikTok who only had one hand. One of her arms ended at the wrist. And she made a video explaining how she puts her hair into a ponytail with just one hand.

     It was interesting! She was so brave to share that. I appreciated her answering a question I never knew I had. So I gave her the token of the realm: a like.

     Reader, when I tell you how many amputees I saw after that. Good LORD. It took weeks for me to convince the algorithm to stop.

     This is what TikTok does.

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     Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 18-Nov-2023 04:34:05 JST Derek Powazek 🐐

     in reply to

     A common experience in TikTok is for a new audio to appear (many people can use the same audio in their videos), the algorithm detects that you like it (you let it play to the end), so the app feeds you other videos with that same audio. After you see a few you think, wow, this audio is everywhere today!

     Then you tap on the audio to see that there are only a few dozen videos with it. It feels like it's a huge viral movement, but it's not.

     It takes less repetition than you'd think.

     H repeated this.
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     Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 18-Nov-2023 04:34:06 JST Derek Powazek 🐐

     in reply to

     One under-discussed aspect of this is that TikTok is designed to create the feeling of popularity out of thin air. If the TikTok algorithm decides that you like a topic (or a song or really anything it can identify), you will see a TON of that thing. It creates this "OMG everyone is talking about this" feeling with very little material. So it's the perfect engine for this kind of panic, especially from people who haven't figured this out yet.

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     Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 18-Nov-2023 04:34:08 JST Derek Powazek 🐐

     in reply to

     • Ryan Broderick

     "The internet is an extremely chaotic living ecosystem and it’s constantly reacting to itself and all you accomplish by amplifying something like this is give more ammo to those who want to who want to take that away. You turn bizarre discourse into something bigger than it was ever meant to be. You pointlessly villainize normal people who aren’t public figures and don’t deserve this kind of scrutiny. And you help conservative political movements continue their culture war."
     –@ryanbroderick