New blog post: Out of the Loop(s)

Loops (by Pixelfed) is all in the news, and in this post I'll talk about why it won't work out in the long term.

https://pixelde.su/blog/out-of-the-loops/

#blog #loops #pixelfed

@pixel You know I like projects that dansup has been cooking with pixelfed and FediDB both are great tbh.

But as you say a TikTok-like thingie might have a very hard time gaining traction since hosting it will be a small nightmare as is peertube. Not because the software is bad or anything. Just the requirements are different.

Fedi and matrix are easiliy self-hostable since storage and bandwidth-requirements are (depending on instance-size) moderate. I hosted those at home pretty easiliy.

I tried doing that with peertube and it would just eat up my (pretty limited) upload bandwidth for breakfast. So at home the storage problem isn't as bad but bandwidth is. On a VPS bandwidth is not the problem but storage is expensive. Can be done but really expensive (other than being puni and having access to cheap colocation...)

Loops could be easier to handle atleast. Videos are shorter and smaller so encoding them should be easier right? and they take up less space. Bandwidth will still be a problem though (maybe my internet is just shit. Thanks telekom) And you will run out of storage eventually. It just maybe not as bad so quickly. Of course one could purge older vids but that would also limit selection.

Its still cool someone tries it but tbh the short-form video-content is something I dislike so much personally. People mindlessly scrolling through tiktoks and "wasting" time is such a shame.

You just mindlessly scroll through algorythmically chosen videos. For hours on end. I just don't like that idea. Yes I do watch videos for fun when I have nothing todo as well. but I think the short-form content is so much worse than "normal" content.. Likely I am just getting old...

@stefan @pixel then dont use it lol. It looks like plenty will just like plenty watch tiktok, reels, shorts, etc.

@Im_Dylan I mean yeah to each their own and stuff. I won't use it, but I will also grant enough freedom to others to use it if they want. Thats their desicion to make anyway on how they want to spend their time.

I also get why people use it. Its cheap dopamin, lots of stimuli for the user easily availiable. Everyone will have to decide for themselves if they wan lt that.

I just think that maybe people should be more critical of stuff and not just jump after every trend that comes up.

In the activitypub is an open protocol so people can do whatever they want. Does not mean I would have to agree with what is done.

We will see how stuff shakes out tbh. Good luck to dansup. Lets hope loops has what it takes to overcome the challenges it has in front of it. Though there might be a push to centralize loops...