While other tech companies suffer (and lay off) TikTok’s growth is impressive. In less than two years, users in Italy have doubled. Now there are more than 18 million, a figure that immediately denies the prejudice according to which TikTok would be a place only for the very young. There are about eight million Italians between the ages of 15 and 29: even admitting that they are all on TikTok, there are still another ten million later on. But what makes the most impression is the tempo that people spend on TikTok: for comparison, every month on average it takes a user almost three hours to search on Google, four hours and 28 minutes to send emails; to watch videos on TikTok four hours and 31 minutes. This is because, it has always been said, TikTok has a powerful and sophisticated algorithm capable of suggesting the best video for each of us, which is why it is difficult to break away from there. True but up to a certain point. Now it turns out that next to the algorithm and the usual artificial intelligence there are people in charge of putting in our stream the best videos not for our interests, but for the interests of TikTok. Videos of companies or influencers with whom TikTok is negotiating business and who it wants to seduce by artificially multiplying the views of their videos.
I study
Social networks aren’t dying, but they’re shrinking
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
It is neither a scandal nor a novelty. Chinese society in this it behaves exactly as those of Silicon Valley didfrom Google to Amazon: first they offered a fantastic and free service to win users, then they brought on board partners and finally they sold themselves to advertisers but offered a much worse service. Cory Doctorow, one of the sharpest observers of the network, calls this phenomenon “enshittification”, we could translate it: going to hell. In the name of profit, technology platforms are going down the drain. And the layoffs have nothing to do with it, they’ve gotten worse. And TikTok has gone the same way. No one will fail in the morning but there is room for a different future.
Social network
What is corecore, the TikTok trend that you only understand if you’re twenty years old
by Emanuele Capone
