Definitely, but so are Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, and any other clones of the formula.
Surely we’ll see legal action against all of them?
You are right , Instagram and YouTube short is the same exact content only a week delayed .
A lot of content overlap for sure, but there are some differences in the type of content and significant differences in the algorithm / the distribution of content types within one’s feed.
For example, I’ve found that YouTube shorts will identify multiple creators or formats that you engage with and rotate between them, while Instagram reels tends to find one niche you respond to and then bombard you with it.
Regarding comments, shorts will promote shallow observations about the video while reels promotes controversial ones to get one to engage by arguing.
Probably we will? As the lawsuit notes, TikTok has specific features which arguably exacerbate the harms - their monetization is gacha-level predatory and they toss you into the “For You” ocean the instant you open the app. But it’s not surprising that the first commercial success in a new industry might be the first to face a lawsuit about the industry’s alleged harms.
First commercial success? In what new industry?
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41779254
let's talk about the actual nicotine slingers
https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-new...
Tobacco companies pivoting and hooking kids and adults with processed foods
Gives one pause doesn't it?
> Fazzino’s new study found that by 2018, the differences in previously tobacco-owned foods and other foods had mostly disappeared. It’s not that foods got healthier, Fazzino said, but that other companies saw what worked and many products likely were reformulated to make them just as hyper-palatable as those sold by their competitors.
Kind of explains why snacks are so delicious and irresistable.
I'm neutral on (tobacco company creation) Teddy Grahams though.
> bologna, crackers and processed cheese contained so much sodium and saturated fat that some doctors called it a “blood pressure bomb.”
swap the crackers for celery and you could market it as keto/low carb
Every moral panic needs alarmist names for things.
Right? Past panics have included Rock 'n' Roll, TV, Video Games, and Heavy Metal. All the while these people never seem to get too concerned that a significant percentage of American children only get fed at school by the school, don't receive proper medical care and have very little wherewithal to get an education beyond high school - thus all but ensuring the poverty cycle will continue.
But sure, let's add TikTok to the list of moral panics.
Does this count as a moral panic?
All the examples you gave involved sorting kids into good and bad categories. There were good kids who were victims caught up. And there were bad kids, who the good kids needed to be warned to stay away from.
So far as I know, no one has yet said that any kids who use TikTok need to be separated from any other kids. And I don't remember that happening with Facebook or MySpace before them. Everything earlier is before my time.
How could you forget about them saying the exact same things about Facebook? It wasn't that long ago.
Seems like you must not have kids in this age range.
I do, and I have kids older than this age range. This isn't the first time we've heard this moral outrage. Facebook, iPhones, Call of Duty - we've heard it all before. But TikTok is a Chinese company, so they believe they have a free pass to attack it ruthlessly. Here's the thing - the kids in this age range see through this BS and hypocrisy.
You forgot the evils of pinball and comic books.
You're right, how could I forget?! WRT pinball, add Arcades in general to the list. Evil! Evil! Evil!
Are you implying TV is harmless? It mollifies and brainwashes people to a saddening degree; even though it can be hard to differentiate symptom from cause, here.
I'm not saying that at all. But I also notice that TV is controlled by American media companies while TikTok is controlled by a Chinese company.
<cue up dramatic sarcastic voice> Certainly politics isn't playing any role at all in this good-hearted attempt to "protect the children."
Equating TikTok to Rock 'n Roll, TV, Video Games, and Heavy Metal is a bit reductionist don't you think?
Numerous studies have been done on the effect of "dopamine hijacking" that is common to platforms like TikTok. The effect this has had on children's attention span has been measured. In particular CocoMelon has been at the forefront of this. Colloquially this has been called "brainrot". The pacing, colors, frame timing, etc are all studied in a lab to achieve maximum engagement. This isn't necessarily a problem for content designed for adults. Ostensibly, adults can make a choice whether or not to consume addictive entertainment. However, for children this type of material is sold as educational. There's a direct line from attention span to screen time that is suspected to be the reason for poor performance in Gen Alpha.
However, anyone, child or adult, that has spent time on these platforms has found themselves locked into a doom-scrolling loop.
This is all so well known at this point it's common knowledge. The only people shilling for this content to be unmoderated work for these companies themselves.
If we are to say TikTok is a moral panic than we should also say cigarettes are a moral panic. After-all, all you "have to do" is stop smoking. No harder than stopping scrolling. I would challenge you to sit through CoCoMelon or "gagagadee Chicken Nugget" and determine if it's a moral panic or a crisis originating from terrible parenting. Hell, just click over to Youtube Kids and leave it playing for a while. It will quickly diverge into brightly color, precisely measured, loud, fast paced, and nonsensical videos labeled as "educational".
> All the while these people never seem to get too concerned that a significant percentage of American children only get fed at school by the school, don't receive proper medical care and have very little wherewithal to get an education beyond high school
FWIW this is a classic misdirection. I care simultaneously about these things. But the lowest hanging fruit that I personally can understand is preventing our kids from watching the social media equivalent of a gallon of ice cream. There wouldn't be a "moral panic" if kids were binge watching full length episodes of Nova and National Geographic.
I don't work for TikTok or any other social media company or for any company running on ad platform or for any news company trying to garner clicks.
You call my argument reductionist while grossly oversimplifying the concept of "dopamine hijacking."
I think it's a shame that your values are such that you place feeding children below worrying about TikTok. That is what I think the problem actually is: ignoring the core problem facing children and getting caught up in this feel-good BS that you're helping "the children" while not doing the hard work of actually helping the children.
It’s an analogy.
The funny thing is that in normal doses, pure nicotine isn't even particularly harmful. (I am not recommending that children use nicotine.)
When a product is engineered to be as addictive as possible to increase sales/usage it should be considered a "drug like" substance and be heavily regulated/monitored for public health reasons.
This treatment should include lots of other products like for example videogames or flavour enhanced junk food