Signups opened this week for Loops, a short-form looping video app from the creator of Instagram alternative Pixelfed, reports TechCrunch.

  • utopiah@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    (insert here the “The TikTok at home” meme format) So actually I did my own with PeerTube (self hosted server side) and Latrix (mobile client to live stream) and you can see the result at https://video.benetou.fr/w/p/hfPcHz1kCgnM6zKhfPrS4b (playlist of 6 short videos with progress over time).

    I’d argue it… works. Is it necessary or useful? Well I didn’t keep up with the format but it potentially can be. My point being… we already have quite a few tools in place.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    Awesome! This sounds like a much better way for me to share the occasional video of either or both of my dogs being super cute on c/dogs (and on other non-Lemmy forums) than relying on an anonymous YouTube account.

    (I may have partially used this post as an excuse to share a video of one of my dogs being super cute.)

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    Granted, TicTok is worse than cancer so technically speaking this is of course a “good” step. But I have such a distaste (or rather hatred) for this type of content (same with Shorts), that I still cannot feel good about it.

    • pushECX@lemmy.world
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      Haven’t gotten mine, either. Email said I’d get an invite like that night, but one never came.

    • Green Wizard@lemmy.ml
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      Thought I put in the wrong email or something and was super confused for a while myself 😁

    • Fitik@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      I got this email 5 days ago and nothing since

      Hi @Fitik, We’re thrilled to welcome you to Loops.video! We’re in the process of onboarding all our new users, and we can’t wait for you to experience the magic of short looping video. Keep an eye out for another email from us later tonight or tomorrow (depending on when you signed up). It will have all the details you need to get started, including how to create your first Loop. Welcome to the Loops community! Regards, The Loops Team

    • DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz
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      I got an email that said to keep an eye out for another email lol. Glad I’m one step ahead of everyone else

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    ITT: People in their mid-twenties or later, who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media.

    Elitism aside, I don’t really see what federation solves here. What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media

      I don’t watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.

      What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?

      I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.

      But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You’re still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you’re going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.

      But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you’ve got a degree of control (I don’t have to listen to Rogan if I don’t want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      I don’t think they’ll be able to do any type of direct competition for TikTok with a lack of advertising and payments You’re not going to draw quality creators. Decentralized algorithm sounds like a nightmare to manage.

      However one place they will have some advantage is censorship. Anything that’s not explicitly illegal Will be a hell of a lot harder to stamp out. Moderation will probably be very light.

    • minstrel@lemmy.eco.br
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      3 days ago

      Federation can solve the danger zone content for you, how about a federation network with just kids content, other with more adult ones, etc to the just nsfw isolated from each others?

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        That’s…actually a really good use case for something like this. I’d argue that a recommendation algorithm that tailors to the best content a given federated service can provide for their use-case is probably a better source than what you’d get from a single source of truth that could give you everything and nothing.

    • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      the benefit i can see is that instead of having to share out to other social media, you can just see it in any fediverse account you have thanks to activity pub which eliminates one of the barriers to being viral.

      that said i don’t think it will get mainstream appeal.

    • Waryle@jlai.lu
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      ITT: People in their mid-twenties or later, who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media.

      You’re just waving away an important fact, which is that shorts and their equivalents are notoriously known for killing attention spans and disrupting the management of dopamine in the brain, causing depression in particular.

      We are no longer simply in the traditional custom of the elderly who despise the activities of the younger generations, we are talking about health.

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        While true, how is that any different to the arguments that were used for TV? Additionally, Lemmy is a social network in the same way that Reddit is. Is this not also dangerous?

        As has been the recommendation for practically everything for the four decades I’ve been on this earth, moderation is key. Instead of hating new media, either regulate it (if the evidence is truly that great) or treat it with healthy moderation.

        Let’s be blunt here. Most of the people in this thread aren’t worried about health. They don’t like short-form video/foreign-owned companies/things they didn’t grow up with, and their elitism is getting the better of them instead of them letting people like what they want to like.

        • Waryle@jlai.lu
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          While true, how is that any different to the arguments that were used for TV?

          Television is bad because it is a passive activity, but it is less harmful than the continuous ingestion of micro-videos. But I don’t see what it has to do here.

          Additionally, Lemmy is a social network in the same way that Reddit is. Is this not also dangerous?

          What’s the connection? I didn’t mention Reddit.

          As has been the recommendation for practically everything for the four decades I’ve been on this earth, moderation is key. Instead of hating new media, either regulate it (if the evidence is truly that great) or treat it with healthy moderation.

          This would be to ignore the particularly addictive nature of this kind of content. It would be like comparing apples to Snickers: both are sweet, yes, but one is much more problematic.

          Let’s be blunt here. Most of the people in this thread aren’t worried about health

          That could be a point, but I’m pretty sure that if you ask anybody, the main reason given would be that it makes you stupid. But I can agree that this opinion would not necessarily be based on anything other than the eternal contempt for novelty as video games or manga were, for example, before they became popular.

        • ugjka@lemmy.world
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          I made a rule that i only do social media on desktop pc. Phone is only for emails and rss feeds. Seems to work

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      Authwalls, data sovereignty, self controlled open source algorithms for finding content without manipulation by corporations, etc

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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          Authwalls are an issue for everyone because everyone doesn’t have an account unless they create one.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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      A distributed service is much less vulnerable to being bought up by a single narcissistic billionaire who can ruin the online experience of millions of people at once.

      A distributed service like Lemmy is spread out over 600 Instances in countries all over the world. If someone buys the most popular Lemmy Instance and wrecks it, those users can simply move to the same communities on the second or third or fourth most popular Instance and the original Instance will wither and die. This also works for communities with power tripping moderators. You can quickly find out through a search which community is the “real” one by the number of subscribers it has.

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user? They don’t give a fuck about billionaire ownership, moderation, or where an “instance” or server is located.

        • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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          Well, you should care about it because that’s how online communities get ruined. Case in point: Twitter has become a propaganda tool for an apartheid-loving fascist since he bought it.

          • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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            Why should a user care about the health of an online community? To them it should “just work”.

            (I’m being purposely facetious here, because the average person really doesn’t care about this shit. When Twitter no longer serves its purpose to them they just leave and go to the next place)

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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              Why should a person who goes to the park care about the park?

              If people are dumping trash everywhere and all the plants and animals are dying, I assume you wouldn’t like to spend much time there anymore.

              Sure another park might be opened, but constantly changing parks isn’t what you want to do long term. If someone buys up the basketball court and turns it into a cesspool of hate, you can unsubscribe from that court and remove it from your park. Adding another one that is nicer, without completely going to a new park.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user?

          You have more control over your front-page content. If you don’t want to get a particular feed, you unsubscribe from it.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    Yes, and it will still be brainrot.

    My attention span is just fine. I don’t need to see it ruined by short format nonsense with about as much intellectual value as the nutritional value of a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

    I never installed TikTok or Snapchat on my phone, not because I had privacy concerns, but because I hate everything about the format.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        Cultural osmosis.

        Just because I never installed TikTok or Snapchat, doesn’t mean I’ve never seen or heard anything from it. Snapchat used to be big, TikTok is even bigger right now, it’s completely impossible to actually avoid seeing anything from it. And then there’s YouTube with their shorts.

        • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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          To be fair, Snapchat is still better than tiktok, because you can actually communicate with friends. Their spotlight is as much brainrot as it gets

          • catloaf@lemm.ee
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            And very few people (at least people my age) are still on Snapchat. They all moved to Instagram stories years ago. I finally deleted my Snapchat account a couple months back, because the only reason I was still using it was to trade pictures with a friend of our cats.

        • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, exactly. Not everything needs to be experienced. Not experiencing something doesn’t mean being ignorant of its consequences.

    • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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      It’s not the format that is the problem. It’s that old rich people from the broadcast industry decided that since they couldn’t compete with the communications and community industry they’d instead turn the communications platforms into broadcast platforms and tear down all of the community aspects. It happened to all of social media including more long form media as well. So if this project can avoid selling out or being manipulated by spammers into becoming yet another broadcast platform, it might have a shot.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        It’s absolutely the format. The old rich people just have the incentive to drag everyone into it, to make it something to get “hooked” on. But the format itself is already cancerous.

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
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        Same reason it is weird to want a FOSS copy of the UX of Slack/Telegram/Discord in Matrix instead of realizing you don’t need or want the chat history to persist for eternity. Good thing you can choose a different protocol/service in these cases.

        • Charzard4261@programming.dev
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          Of all the reasons to hate these messaging apps, it’s because messages last forever? I’d get it if you were concerned that private companies don’t really delete your messages, but you know the average person using these apps actually does want their messages to last?

          • toastal@lemmy.ml
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            Privacy is one part. The cost of joining & maintaining a server on the network is the other. Many servers have shut their doors due to expensive hosting. If you are lenient on how many messages need to actually be stored on the server for archives, self-hosting is now much more accessible which leads to a healthier, more decentralized network since more nodes can afford to join.

            You can still creating your own archives in your clients or on your specific server via s2s communications, but Matrix has this as a network requirement for eventual consistency. You can’t have the “search all messages in the last 5 years” feature without eventual consistency—but this is the point I am trying to make: copying the Slack/Telegram/Discord model makes this a requirement to have in a decentralized sense which costs way too much. Step back & reassess if copying this model is the right call. We were fine last decade without this.

        • Dragon "Rider"(drag)@lemmy.nz
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          Drag wants the chat history to persist for eternity. Just two weeks ago, drag pulled up a 3 year old quote from one of drag’s friends to make a point in a discussion.

          • toastal@lemmy.ml
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            Drag can archive it locally just fine or on Drag’s own server if using a different protocol. Is it worth storing hundreds of thousands of messages & attachments that price out self-hosting & low-spec hosters & medium-sized communities on a budget? These storage costs add up quickly & without lots of nodes, the network is no longer federated but held by a few mega hosts like Matrix.org & a sprinkling of single-user hosts. I have seen many servers shut down due to costs. This tradeoff just isn’t worth it for a triving, decentralized platform (Mastodon suffers similar duplication issues).

    • Amanduh@lemm.ee
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      I was there 3000 years ago when snapchat was brand new… those were some good times. Sending snaps to all your friends and staying in touch etc, before all the filters and stories and news etc it was great

    • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      I’ve been avoiding it for years and finally gave in in the moment of weakness. I uninstalled it very soon after because I hated the experience so much and never gave it another thought nor chance. xd

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        I did that exact same thing with Twitter about seven years ago and I still don’t understand why someone would use it

        • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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          Twitter is trash, on the basis that it tries to create “engagement” as much as possible. Any engagement. So it’ll force a bunch of hot topics and rage fuel down your throat.

          However, as an artist, I kind of need a platform like Twitter. Thankfully there are alternatives. I stopped using twitter quite a while ago now.

  • rodneylives@lemmy.world
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    I signed up for Loops the first day. I didn’t get an email confirmation until two days after, and I still haven’t been given a way to sign in.

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
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    Ignoring the myriad of other issues listed in this thread, the bit about training AI is pretty misleading. It’s not hard to scrape webpages for whatever kind of data you like, even if loops doesn’t outright hand things over for third parties for that purpose.

    And the kind of people who are downloading the entire internet to train AIs are the type to be willing to just scrape without permission.

    • DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz
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      They are claiming not to train AI using your videos/info theirselves. I don’t think it’s misleading just because other people can scrape that info.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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      loops doesn’t outright hand things over for third parties for that purpose.

      Hey, check it out; it’s the thing loops said buried in the middle of your paragraph highlighting what other parties can or will do.

    • Wiz@midwest.social
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      So, you’re being negative about an alpha release of someone’s hard work without checking it out first?

        • Wiz@midwest.social
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          PeerTube is also a Fediverse service, and does the longer form videos, like YouTube. It mostly works fine; it just lacks content.