People don’t like it because:
- It’s the new thing. If alcohol were introduced today it would be banned in every country on earth. People tolerate Facebook, Twitter, Insta because that’s what’s been around. They all do the same thing, but TikTok is new and scary.
- Short form video is scary! It’s a new form of entertainment, and old people don’t like new forms of entertainment. See: every newly introduced form of entertainment in history, books included.
- They are misinformed about what data a mobile application can and cannot do, and the level of security built into both iOS and Android. Rest “assured”, they are collecting as much data as they can – just like every app creator on the planet. What they aren’t doing is capturing mic data while you’re sleeping (that’s not how microphones in phones work), stealing your passwords from your clipboard (OS’s notify users about clipboard paste)
- China bad. This primes people to consider negative press about it with a less skeptical eye, feeding the above points. (Don’t misconstrue me as being pro-China, I’m not, and that’s not what this post is about.)
Pull up the top 50 YouTubers today and tell me how many of them are something you would consider “quality”.
If what you hate is “random people filming themselves doing something irrelevant”, I’ve got some bad news about the vast majority of accounts that post on YouTube.
In the top 50 youtubes there is at least some music artists. And while I don’t listen to that kind of music, that’s definitly quality content.
Youtube sure has it’s flaws and is also full of crappy content. But it’s not literally designed specially for crappy content.
See, if both platforms where a book, then youtube might be a shitty book, but at least it’s a hardcover. Tiktok would be one of those 5-page books made of cardboard for toddlers.
If i had never used YouTube, I’d say the same thing about it compared to cable TV (in fact many people did). Flash back to MTV in the 90s and see what people were saying about music videos and their effect on society.
Ultimately, you’re allowed to not like it because you don’t like the format. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have quality content. It also doesn’t mean it’s more or less invasive of an app because you don’t like the format (as my original assertion of this UnOp post).