I have immediately failed at TikTok
My mum has been asking me about ways to promote my dad's work online, and TikTok came up as a possibility. So I decided to sign up for a TikTok account and see what it was like from the creator side.
My findings were as follows:
- I registered a new account on the desktop version of the website and set up the basics of my profile.
- I attempted to upload a video of my cat, only to find out TikTok's built-in video editing tools only worked on the mobile app.
- Already dreading the prospect of trying to cut video on a tiny touchscreen, I installed the TikTok app on my phone.
- I was immediately shunted into TikTok's onboarding flow for new users, which involved picking vague topics of interest like "Entertainment" and "Lifestyle."
- I elected to skip that whole process and instead searched for a few people I knew on TikTok. The app responded to this by demanding access to my contacts, which I refused.
- I quickly realized I couldn't follow anyone; clicking the "Follow" button on a profile did absolutely nothing, and my "Following" feed remained empty.
- TikTok's official help site contained no useful information, but third-party sites suggested this might be because my account has been shadowbanned.
- I'm not sure why I'd be shadowbanned, as I've barely posted and haven't commented at all. It's possible that registering on desktop first or skipping the onboarding convinced TikTok that I'm a bot. Or maybe they're just sore about the contacts thing.
- A support ticket filed through the TikTok app has, to date, received no response. A support ticket filed through a form on TikTok's website did receive a response, telling me I needed to report the problem via the app.
Thus ends my experiment with TikTok (for now, at least). I'm not sure what I learned, if anything. If this is supposed to be the app brainwashing the world, I don't think it's doing a very good job.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" is now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. If you don't want to wait for Chapter 5, you can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
Recommendation: Terry's Sunday Reader
Where this author, reformed journalist and retired consultant waxes on with cringe-worthy yet occasionally humorous personal anecdotes, the odd essay (emphasis on odd), short videos, favourite tweets and Facebook posts, shameless plugs for favoured projects, and whatever else tweaks his fancy.
You know how I mentioned my dad and his work earlier? His latest venture is a free weekly newsletter, the first issue of which went out this last weekend.
Dad used to write a weekly humor column back in the day, and he's pretty damn funny. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
This Week's Links
Navy Ad: Gig Work Is a Dystopian, Unregulated Hellscape, Build Submarines Instead
The gig economy is obviously not the Navy’s direct responsibility. But it is quite striking that instead of trying to improve the state of gig work run by multi-billion dollar corporations that actively oppose measures to improve their workers’ lives, the government has simply opted to agree that it is bad, and use those working conditions to recruit for the military.
CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage
On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”
Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win
“We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them,” the subcommittee said.
Announcing an attempt to cheat a Hugos finalist to victory but not revealing which finalist sounds like something that should trigger the biggest and most toxic social deduction game of all time.
If we ever do get my father on TikTok, all the Gen Z gays with daddy issues are going to imprint on him like baby birds. He'll probably handle it okay but I'm not sure I will.
-K
