I have never been a fan of TikTok and long called for it to be banned yesterday. Despite having come close, President Trump was derermined to snag partial defeat from the jaws of victory, potentially ameliorating some, but certainly not all, of the concerns I have raised about TikTok in a deal of questionable legality under the TikTok divestment law. Even were we to sepparate the Chinese Communist Party concerns from TikTok, its rapid fire short video format combined with its promotion of pure algorithmic “consumption” is conducive to “bad content” and turning the brans of its “users” into pudding. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the format stupid. TikTok is not always the only problem. I note this all to set up a question: Could there be anything more insufferable than the old or new TikTok? After reading an article in the Verge titled TikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeover (HT GadgeteerZA), I fear the answer is yes: A TikTok consisting of people leaving TikTok to post more TikTok-style videos could be worse than TikTok.

(All jokes aside, I am willing to grant that in a structural design sense, that UpScrolled and the Fediverse answer to TikTok, Loops, eschew TikTok’s infamous algorithmic approach is an improvement, but the short video format is the problem. Consider me anti-TikTok clone for reasons largely unrelated to why I personally led the charge to ban TikTok. Something that is conducive to creating meaningful writing and anudio-visual media is preferable to alternatives or proxies that encourage more content.)