A recent example is when a prominent critic of video game monetization got some of their videos removed for ‘promoting gambling’, despite said videos being critical of gambling practices in video games, both the CS-GO lotto skin gambling controversy, and the predatory lootbox/gacha crap. (replace “poketube.fun” with another YouTube frontend (or with “youtube.com” if you’re brave) if the link doesn’t work. I’m trying to protect the readers here.)

An older (and more documented) example is when their stupid AI moderation flagged robot combat videos as ‘animal cruelty’. This made the news multiple times, and that’s just a few of the many articles on this topic.

This kind of shitty content moderation has even marked it’s effects on human language. People are genuinely starting to use the phrases ‘unalive’ and ‘PDF file’ in serious contexts now. This ‘algospeak‘ phenomenon is a real thing, and there has already been a few books written on this subject.

This ‘algospeak’ thing won’t work forever. The bots may very well flag the workarounds, and make it even harder to discuss serious topics.

We know the advertisements aren’t held to the same standards. There are multiple examples of crappy YouTube ads uploaded to Reddit alone. Some have even been reuploaded as YouTube compilations, including the many ‘play this game, earn real money’ scams.

This is all the while the platform is pushing more invasive advertising shenanigans, including overlay ads that can not be dismissed. Imagine if it was a scam ad, and the video uploader has to answer for it being ‘part of the video’?

Even if you block the ads as many do nowadays, it’s still a pain in the rear end. The platform pushed ‘shorts’ into itself to compete with TikTok, and somehow became even worse than TikTok in many respects, especially with regards to content quality. Just type in “story sad ai kitten car accident”, and scroll down very slowly, and see what kind of diabolical shit shows up.

Trigger warning for the below image: cats in horrible situations.

That’s just the tip of the ice berg. There have also been examples of pregnant cats having their stomachs punched in, or worse. This is worse than Elsagate.

This is all in addition to the usual social media poison existing in the platform, including it’s habit of drowning the device’s notification feed with recommendations that distract from the important stuff, like my important emails about bills to be paid, and the like.

What do we use instead?

For end users who want to watch videos, use things like Grayjay and other alternative frontends instead, where possible. These will make the most of the current monopolised situation where the vast majority of video content is on a single website, while cleaning up all the invasive stuff, like ads and trackers. Grayjay is a good example, as it has the additional functionality of aggregating multiple platforms other than YouTube, and has it’s own account system that can help content creators combine multiple accounts, useful for those who use other platforms as backups.

As for those who create videos, heed the advice below.

While it is certainly possible to use a competing platform, my idea is to forego social media entirely, and go straight to hosting the video file itself.

Our requirements are simple:

• We don’t care about feedback or metrics. Feedback can happen on another platforms, i.e. by embedding the video into a WordPress article as an external embed, and that’s all that matters to us.
• We don’t care about people downloading the file. That just means there’s less bandwidth costs for us to pay for once they’ve downloaded it. Watermarks can be added if content authenticity is a concern for the video creator, and sponsorships exist for the rest. Copyright laws may kick in if significant unauthorised use is made, at the content creator’s discretion.
  • The videos are going to be downloaded anyway, with things like yt-dlp, or the likes of my patent-exempt Cardboard Box Technique, so DRM is going to be practically useless for this. There’s no point in stopping them. The most you can do is to target unauthorised commercial use, and libelous misrepresentation of your content. Watermarking may help with proving those in court.
• We don’t care about advertisements. Advertising doesn’t guarantee financial compensation (as YouTube’s ‘demonetization’ incidents can account for).
  • Sponsorships baked into the video content itself may be more sustainable, but sustainability of that method also isn’t guaranteed. It’s still better than the advertising landscape of the current internet, however.
  • Other funding opportunities, like donations and Patreon, may also help out a little, especially if one’s content remains popular enough.
• We don’t care about financial compensation for the videos.
  • While paywalling the videos is certainly possible with the web server method, this would not prevent someone from distributing the video file once they’ve downloaded it.

Our methods include the following:

1. Web server (may require port forwarding) (content may be paywalled via login if necessary)
2. Cloud object storage solutions. i.e. Amazon’s S3, and the like. Many providers exist for this. They are often used as CDNs.
3. Darknet solutions. i.e. Tor and I2P. (great for privacy, and restrictive internet connections that prohibit port forwarding, i.e. CG-NAT) (content may be paywalled via login if necessary)
4. Decentralised solution using IPFS (great for limited bandwidth, as IPFS functions as it’s own CDN. It can also bypass CG-NAT limitations)

The pros and cons of each method vary.

First 2 methods are guaranteed to work on all modern web browsers.

Method 3 will require client software to be installed. Either a local software daemon combined with a browser extension (less secure), or a specialised web browser (most secure), depending on one’s threat model regarding anonymity.

method 4 uses public gateway infrastructure to serve web browsers, but will otherwise take advantage of local software if available.

The subject of our experiment

I am going to attempt to host the recorded video of one of my cardboard box video capture experiments using these various techniques. This is from MK2 of my ‘Schrödinger’s Box’ experiment, the one with the microphone in it. I will make a follow up article on that when I’ve completed that round of video capture experiments.

This is essentially video game footage recorded in a cardboard box, with a strategically placed microphone in the back, behind the handheld game console. I might as well have been drunk when I played it this time, but I don’t drink, nor do I play World of Warcraft.

• Filename: Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.mp4
• Filesize: 6730200KB (about 6.5GB)
• Resolution: 1920×1080
• Framerate: 30fps
• Bitrate: 128kbps + 19951kbps for audio and video respectively
  • You might want a good internet connection for streaming this one.

This video could be re-encoded to a lower bit rate and/or lower resolution in order to decrease hosting costs, but I don’t have time to do that on my potato computer. I’d take too long.

Also worthy of note: The video game in question IS NOT World of Warcraft. It’s actually Hello Kitty Island Adventure. The name of the file is based on a South Park episode about World of Warcraft that predicted said Hello Kitty game’s existence.

There is long-standing precedent on the Internet that video game footage should be safe to use, legally speaking, as long as it’s being played by the person in question. Besides, game developers often use this kind of thing as a free marketing opportunity, some even paying for online streamers to play their games. If you like the game, give it a go for yourself.

Method 1: Web Server

Theoretically, all that’s needed is a web server directory with sufficient storage, and a server with sufficient bandwidth. I happen to have both at my disposal.

By simply placing the file in the Nginx directory with the correct permissions, will make the file publicly available, based on the rules set in the relevant /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/* configuration file. Such configuration file can be changed to require authentication for access to said file, allowing for a basic paywall if desired.

This file will take a significant portion of the disk space in the VPS server I’m using, so it might not be up there forever. I might delete it later to make space for other things, or if bandwidth costs exceed my expectations somehow.

This VPS is extremely close to the east Australian internet backbone. We are talking 0.55ms ping to/from Google’s servers here. This is ideal, since New Zealand’s internet exchanges are well linked to Australia’s ones. About 45ms ping between me and the server I’m using.

The VPS does cost money though, but it does have a couple of terabytes of egress traffic included before additional costs can be incurred. Good for hundreds of streams.

File link: https://faba.icu/284fb336-be38-4946-81e6-a42f618835d6/Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.mp4

After testing it, it seems quite performant. I can scroll through the video without issue. I can even embed it into this WordPress article, but I didn’t do that for now.

Pros and cons of this method:

• Your server, your rules. As long as you aren’t hosting anything particularly objectionable, the server will remain untouched as long as it’s paid for.
• Any copyright disputes will be directed at you. This may be a blessing or a curse depending on the context, but it does prevent most of the shady abuse that YouTube’s copyright system is known for. You might want to put a contact email on the main page of your site for legal stuff, so the provider doesn’t get complaints about it. Contact a lawyer if this is of any particular concern for the type of content you are hosting.
• Performance is limited by the internet connection used for the server. For datacenter stuff, like a VPS or a colocated server, this is usually very close to the internet backbone. For home internet, this will vary based on latency, and bandwidth. A good fiber connection on a competent provider is recommended, although things like coaxial cable, 5G, or Starlink may also work if one can get a static IP through them, or by securing a VPN to a static IP.
• Storage limitations. Each video requires hard drive space, and that may come at a premium in some cases. i.e. a cheap VPS may only have 25GB of total storage.
• Performance may also be limited by the server itself. Use potato hardware, expect potato results. This is why I used a VPS for this, as the underlying server hardware is usually pretty good, even on a cheap VPS.
• This method doesn’t have the robustness that a CDN will offer, as it’s served from a single server. This is a single point of congestion, and a single point of failure. One might remedy this by tunneling their traffic through something like Cloudflare, who can do the CDN stuff on behalf of the server.
• Paywalling will be possible, by using login and password on the web server. This won’t actually prevent anyone from downloading, and distributing the content once they have gained access to it, however.

Method 2: Cloud object storage

This method is often relegated to the idea of cloud computing. The idea is similar to that of a VPS, but in this instance, very minimal compute resources are involved.

Long story short, cloud object storage is perfect for this use case, as long as the one hosting the content doesn’t require anonymity. Many providers exists for this purpose. This will also cost money for both the data stored, and the egress traffic provided to end users, so it may be wise shop around for a good deal on this. It’s still a technology with massive applicability, and it’s use has been observed for over a decade now.

After all that hassle, here it is:

https://f005.backblazeb2.com/file/vidhost-test/Mk2-WORLD-OF-WARCRAFT.mp4/Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.mp4

This wasn’t quite as performant, but that’s probably due to the datacenter(s) being in some other continent across the Pacific ocean (namely the one where that orange rock spider is currently president of), adding additional latency, but it works once the video starts playing. It’s only the scrolling through the video, and the loading time that the latency effects.’

A more appropriate CDN-focused object storage solution may overcome these latency concerns, but it’s actually not that bad all things considered.

As always, this video can be an external embed in a WordPress article, but I chose not to do that.

Pros and cons of this method:

• As long as you aren’t hosting anything particularly objectionable, the provider should leave the files untouched as long as the service is paid for.
• Any copyright disputes will be directed at you. This may be a blessing or a curse depending on the context, but it does prevent most of the shady abuse that YouTube’s copyright system is known for. You might want to put a contact email on the main page of your site for legal stuff, so the provider doesn’t get any direct complaints about it, giving you time to resolve the issue. Contact a lawyer if this is of any particular concern for the type of content you are hosting.
• Object storage solutions are usually extremely close to the internet backbone. Where on the internet, is another story. One should shop around for the appropriate object storage solution if low latency is desired, but it’s still usable for video nonetheless.
• Theoretically unlimited storage capacity, you just have to pay for what you use. This can be as cheap as $10 a month per terabyte, or even less if you score a good deal. You may get charged for egress traffic too, but that isn’t usually as much of an issue as the storage cost itself.
• This method will often have the robustness of a CDN, the degree of which will depend on the provider and it’s geographic location and/or geographic distribution, especially concerning geographically-bound storage tiers, and additional requirements, like lower latency if desired. Cheaper solutions often forego distributed CDN features, sometimes at the expense of latency.
• Paywalling content using this method, isn’t quite as straight forward. One might get away with encrypting the file and distributing keys from another server, but just like the many DRM schemes before it, it won’t actually prevent anyone from downloading, decrypting, and distributing the content once they have gained access to it. It may also increase bandwidth costs.

Method 3: Darknet Shenanigans

You may have heard of the likes of the Tor network, or the I2P network. Fantastic for punching through firewalls, bypassing internet censorship, hosting hidden websites from anywhere, and hidden e-commerce website that sell drugs. Don’t do the latter, they’ve probably laced it with Fentanyl, and that’s assuming that the darknet market itself isn’t a scam, as they often are.

Regardless of what’s on there, the technology behind these darknets is actually quite impressive. It also has the inherent safety net that is each hidden site being a random string of text. One actually has to actively be looking for the bad stuff in order to find it.

We can use this to our advantage. If we want to host a file, but we can’t puncture ports 80 and 443 through our firewall, and don’t have access to an external server, we don’t have many options, but things like Tor and I2P offer a solution to that.

We do have to disable HTTP redirection to HTTPS, as this will effect the functionality of this. These darknets provide their own encryption anyway. HTTPS over the regular internet will still be functional, it just won’t be enforced.

Tor was easy to get working, but the performance was garbage. No surprises there. A lower video quality may help things a bit. I’ll use the VPS CPU to convert the video to 480p with a moderately high CRF instead. I’ll leave the audio at 128kbps.

ffmpeg -i Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.mp4 -vf scale=854:480 -c:v libx264 -crf 32 -preset fast -c:a copy Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.480p.mp4

This may take about an hour, and the video quality will certainly suffer for it, but it should fix the bandwidth issue.

http://bzjwajkvwe4pmdwl6v2xi2r7bxe2dmdcmixkxlkkfrrs4jrbe6cygqad.onion/284fb336-be38-4946-81e6-a42f618835d6/Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.480p.mp4

and it works. It takes a while to start, but that’s Tor for you. Other darknets exist, like I2P. I2P differs from Tor in that it doesn’t outproxy to the internet. I2P is darknet-only, so it may be more specialised for this purpose.

I2P is also more flexible. One can modify the tunnel length to configure the trade-off between anonymity and performance. I will configure it with a tunnel length of 1 for both inbound and outbound, as I don’t care about the anonymity right now. I will also configure it for high bandwidth, yet it still isn’t fast enough for the full 1080p video, so 480p it is…

http://44aefhgxac3uellzvhgxsorhhvlwyvyh2ljhehgyor5mz7ryqjzq.b32.i2p/284fb336-be38-4946-81e6-a42f618835d6/Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.480p.mp4

It may take several seconds to load, and scrolling through the video isn’t very convenient to say the least, but it still works.

Pros and cons of this method:

• Anonymity is a core part of these networks, so this is a good backup method for those who are abused by frivolous legal threats, like many people living under oppressive regimes, or journalists who risk getting sued for doing their job. It may also be useful for those who want to share miscellaneous files of any kind regardless of legality in their geographic region. It’s a double ended sword, so each to their own I guess?
• Punctures through firewalls like a hot knife through butter. Can be hosted on any internet connection, without the need to worry about port forwarding.
• Performance isn’t particularly good, so videos will have to be hosted at reduced quality. Load times may also be high. this is due to the multiple hops such anonymising protocols take over the internet. Round-trip latency can often be measured to around a whole second.
• These networks require specialised software in order for access to be possible for the end-user. This won’t work for embedding the video, unless the website it’s embedded in is also on the relevant darknet.
• Paywalling will be possible, as with method 1. The content is hosted on a web erver, it’s just tunneled through an overlay network. This won’t actually prevent anyone from downloading, and distributing the content once they have gained access to it, however.

Method 4: IPFS

the InterPlanetary File System is an interesting piece of software engineering. A decentralised protocol that can host any file, and autonomously distribute it to wherever it is needed, while also distributing the source of the file around the internet in the process. The more the file is requested, the faster the file can be retrieved. IPFS functions as the ultimate CDN, at least when used on-device.

Just like the darknets in method 3, this does require specialised software, but unlike darknets, IPFS has the functionality of allowing for a hosted gateway to be used instead. Therefore, public gateways exist, like dweb.link. Cloudflare used to have a public IPFS gateway, but that has since been retired in favour of the official IPFS ones. Keep in mind that they do have an abuse policy, and also accept DMCA takedown requests for blacklisting resources from their public gateways, so one might want to encourage the use of a local on-device gateway instead where possible if DMCA abuse is a concern. This is as simple as installing IPFS on one’s device itself.

IPFS has actually been very popular for use as an immutable datastore for NFTs, where the NFT itself is a link to content, ant the content itself needs a futureproof and disaster-resistant method of storage. That doesn’t make NFTs themselves any less stupid of an idea however.

IPFS is content-addressed, so separate copies of the same file are treated and distributed as one file.

Okay, this is weird. After testing on the larger video file, the local gateway works, but public gateways don’t quite work as I expected. It appears that they don’t work well with large video files. Small file works, so small file it is then…

Hosting a file on IPFS is as easy as running:

$ ipfs add --nocopy /home/ipfs/www/faba/284fb336-be38-4946-81e6-a42f618835d6/Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.480p.mp4

important note: I used the experimental --nocopy flag to skip the datastore and save disk space on my VPS, which is at a premium right now. Otherwise, the process is the same.

I also symlinked the /var/www directory to the /home/ipfs directory to overcome the “cannot add filestore references outside ipfs root” error.

One may also wish to use IPNS using ipfs pin to make a link that references a file or directory whose contents may change over time, allowing for a web server directory to be updated, for example.

It spat out the following:

added QmURUKL7tH4HeDR8jzEJFYFTKXC7CrVGrAsr1k7VtyXAe8 Mk2-WORLD_OF_WARCRAFT.480p.mp4

“QmURUKL7tH4HeDR8jzEJFYFTKXC7CrVGrAsr1k7VtyXAe8” is the link that can be accessed by the following links:

local node: http://127.0.0.1:8080/ipfs/QmURUKL7tH4HeDR8jzEJFYFTKXC7CrVGrAsr1k7VtyXAe8

This can be converted to base32, and used in the subdomain gateways:

$ sudo -u ipfs ipfs cid base32 QmURUKL7tH4HeDR8jzEJFYFTKXC7CrVGrAsr1k7VtyXAe8
bafybeic2mjdersgydnw5rjnakiwir2fklum5e564lcv2q3beapxxshvwxu

This can be used in a DNS subdomain link:

http://bafybeic2mjdersgydnw5rjnakiwir2fklum5e564lcv2q3beapxxshvwxu.ipfs.localhost:8080

Translated to public gateway link:

https://bafybeic2mjdersgydnw5rjnakiwir2fklum5e564lcv2q3beapxxshvwxu.ipfs.dweb.link/

Pros and cons of this method:

• While IPFS provides decentralisation and fault-tolerance, it doesn’t provide anonymity. It is still possible to track an IP address that hosts content through the IPFS network, although it’s a bit more convoluted due to the decentralised nature of IPFS, where downloaders automatically become uploaders, similar to what happens with bittorrent. IPNS will likely be traceable to it’s origin, however.
  • In addition, public gateways may blacklist content from being accessed through them if they get a legal complaint. The act of using a local IPFS instance can be used instead to bypass this, however.
    • Another easy bypass for this kind of blacklist would be to append an extra byte to the file, changing it’s hash in the process, thereby circumventing the blacklist. This means that this content blacklisting technique is yet another game of whack-a-mole. Hollywood entertainment companies must seem to love playing that game, huh?
• This method takes advantage of client-side software in the best case scenario, but will fall back to public gateways if this isn’t possible. The public gateway may prove to be a congestion point, and a point of failure.
• Public gateways may not work properly with large video files, for some reason. Local gateway will still work.
• Punctures through firewalls by design. No need to forward ports, although it is preferable if one could do so.
• Performance is moderate, or even good in the best case scenario. It depends on how common the file is within the IPFS network. Best case scenario may assume a device on the local network has the same file that it can provide over the local network, bypassing the internet connection entirely.
• Paywalling content using this method, will not be straight forward. One might get away with encrypting the file and distributing keys from a server, but just like the many DRM schemes before it, it won’t actually prevent anyone from downloading, decrypting, and distributing the content once they have gained access to it. It may also increase bandwidth, and eliminate many of the benefits of using IPFS.

What’s the most appropriate solution?

It will depend on the use case. For example:

• For a personal vlog, a video series, or a podcast: Use methods 1 or 2, either host from a server, or use a cloud object storage bucket. The former is easiest, while the latter provides the most flexibility.
  • The files may then be embedded into a WordPress article without much effort. Just upload to cloud bucket, take the public link, and embed it into the article. Simple
  • There may even be a WordPress plugin that will automate the object storage solution, or it could be a feature of WordPress itself, IDK, haven’t checked.
    • One might also want a contact email on such website for dealing with legal stuff, so the hosting provider doesn’t have to deal with it first.
• For paywalling content behind a purchase or a subscription, use method #1. This will give the site administrator precise control over who can access what via a login system.
  • Don’t bother with DRM, it’s a waste of carbon emissions when used on audio/video/text content. It’s also a crime against accessibility for those who need their viewing augmented for safety reasons (i.e. to reduce flashing light that can cause seizures in some people). Just admit that your content will be copied eventually. Just accept it already. Even a cardboard box can be a sufficient tool in DRM circumvention, let alone cracking the encryption itself with a good GPU cluster, or a future quantum computer.
    • To mitigate the inevitability of this, one may provide a more convenient means to legal content access. Whether it be a better experience, or a cheap and convenient price, each step matters when competing with that whole“free, but you risk your computer contracting the kind of digital equivalent of syphilis that hacks into your bank account if you don’t know what you’re doing” type shit.
    • Content watermarking techniques may be a countermeasure that can be deployed to mitigate unauthorised commercial use of content. This can prove a content’s origin for a copyright enforcement case if one is interested in taking that to court. This can sort out the main parasitic weeds of DVD bootleggers in the street markets for example.
    • Experienced users who want free content, will get it regardless of what you do, and there is no point in spending thousands of dollars suing over damages that amount to less than 50 dollars. The most you can do is provide a more convenient legal option to those who care about supporting the content production process.
• For those who are in oppressive scenarios, are wanted by criminals, are doing something considered extremely illegal (or are in close association with someone who is), or are otherwise a paranoid conspiracy theorist worrying about the glow-in-the-dark 3-letter-agency ninjas spying on you and turning your pet frog’s orchids gay, use method 3. This will provide the best privacy, in the expense of bandwidth capacity.
  • One will have to limit the bitrate of the media file, as to actually make it playable over such networks. Stick to around 512kbps or lower.
  • If you are doing this to distribute ‘cheese pizza’, ‘canned pringles’, or ‘club penguin’, then forget about it. The authorities already know who you are, where you live, and what you are doing. The world is sick and tired of rock spiders like you crawling around it. Go commit drop the soap.
    • Same goes for terrorists. I saw what happened in Christchurch in 2019, you stupid pieces of canine fecal matter. Stop calling him a ‘hero’. We don’t need to be reminded of what he did. Go commit solitary confinement.
• If you are making an archive of old internet media, or are otherwise distributing a large dataset, method #4 might be worth looking into. Many organisations who are dedicated to media preservation use IPFS due to it’s incredible flexibility, and distributed nature. IPFS can even be run on computing clusters if necessary.
  • If there are legal concerns over the content in question, one might look into using a good VPN. IPFS will work over those, regardless of port forwarding. This is because IPFS doesn’t guarantee privacy or anonymity on it’s own. Content can’t be deleted off of IPFS either, so keep that in mind also. I’d contact a lawyer if this content immutability becomes a serious concern in the future (i.e. the government classifies something you previously posted as illegal that was not when you originally posted it).
    • If the legal concern is about ‘cheese pizza’, ‘crabby patties’, or ‘Caribbean Poultry’, then forget about it. The authorities already know who you are, where you live, and what you are doing. There is no saving rock spiders like you.
      • Same goes for those terrorists who wish to harm people, and celebrate the act of their mates doing so. Again, Christchurch flashbacks and all that. You make me sick.
  • Files may be encrypted before they are added to IPFS, but this may inhibit many of the benefits of using IPFS in the first place, namely concerning the content-addressed nature of IPFS. Encryption might still be useful for securely sharing files privately among a group of select individuals, however…

The conclusion?

There are plenty of alternative methods to hosting content that don’t rely on social media sites. They may not be as convenient or as cheap, but they are worth looking into.

The reason why these free services are such dog crap, is because they aren’t getting paid to host the content, and the platforms are starting to realise that advertising revenue isn’t guaranteed revenue. That means that it’s an active liability for them to host content without doing shady stuff, like:

• Tweaking their content moderation to remove more content (regardless of what it is), because most people are powerless to fight back.
• Selling personally identifying information of their users to the highest bidder.
• Forcing advertising into their services more aggressively, to the point of self-parody, potentially driving away users from using the platform as frequently(less egress bandwidth if less heavy users use the platform, thereby reducing costs)
• Lowering the bar for what content is acceptable for advertisements. The ad money is just too irresistable.(youtubers can’t say ‘shit’ or else they get their ads pulled, yet the ads often contain the cringiest horny bait shit ever witnessed by human kind. Oh, and all the Elon Musk crypto giveaway scams)
• Flooding users with useless push notifications by default, in attempt to psychologically hook them back into the app.
• Demonetising content, so they don’t have to pay the content creators (not that that was viable long-term anyway).
• Pushing for generative AI, to inflate their content portfolio, and drown out the metrics for paid content posters, so they don’t need to pay as much.
• Tweaking recommendation algorithms to push content that makes people more outraged. Statistics show that a more emotionally charged response is more likely to gather a user’s attention. Same thing that happens on TV news (it’s 90% bad news, because bad news gets the most of the views).

The best way to bypass this is to pay for your own platform, and bypass this unsustainable social media game entirely. It’s better for the brain.

There are alternative social media solutions, including the fediverse ones that are quite promising, but it’s good to sidestep this whole social media thing altogether, and tell those free-but-unsustainable services where to stick it.

If one finds it too hard to set up a website, and use cloud object storage, there are consultancy firms and service providers out there that can help do this stuff for you, it just might cost a little extra. One can even hire someone for the sole purpose of setting up and maintaining such a website.

Otherwise, an experienced individual can set up a perfectly usable website for about 20-30 bucks a month, and that’s for the costs of both the server, and the domain name included. More complex setups might cost more, especially if more storage space is needed.

One can re-encode the videos into lower bitrate and lower quality to save on hosting costs, and make the content easier to access for slower internet connections. Ask yourself if you really need to host expensive 4K videos.

Some may use AI to help them do this kind of thing, but I’d highly advise against blindly obtaining serious technical advice from something that repeatedly told people to kill themselves, and put glue on their pizzas. Generative AI technology is also quite unsustainable in a datacenter context, with the main concern being electricity usage. Most AI companies are actually losing money by deploying this stuff. Use AI at your own discretion, and at your own risk. I might make an article about self-hosting a local LLM on an old beheaded e-waste laptop, as that’s more sustainable than using a data center API in most cases.

Self-hosting video content is certainly possible. It isn’t quite as staight forward as uploading to a crack den social media site, nor is it as cheap and effortless, but it is certainly is more future proof than relying on a platform that keeps changing it’s own rules, and retroactively punishing people who uploaded content before the rules changed.

They have even made it illegal to break this encryption for any purpose in some countries. This is problematic, due to the possibility of device manufacturers locking down their hardware using such techniques, outlawing the otherwise legal repair and upcycling of hardware. This obviously leads to unnecessary e-waste. I’d also love to see them try to justify that the breaking of a ransomware’s encryption as illegal.

It’s also bad OPSEC. While security-by-obscurity may not work, security-by-legal-threat is even less effective; it only causes problems for otherwise legitimate use cases, and does absolutely nothing about the less than legitimate use cases. Illegal hackers don’t care about what is or isn’t illegal.

The hypothesis that makes audiovisual DRM encryption largely pointless:

The target for this experiment is to prove that it’s pointless to protect a data stream consisting of linear audio/video content, when it needs to be decoded and displayed in order for a human to see and hear it. This concerns things like HDCP, Widevine, and DVD/Bluray encryption.

If it can be seen or heard, it can be captured. Cameras and microphones are commonplace, and easy to come by. It’s even more effective for audio, since that can be captured by hotwiring the speaker outputs to a capture device, or even by emulating a Bluetooth audio device on a Raspberry Pi, and capturing the digital audio stream directly.

As for the imperfections of analog-digital conversion, this can be minimised by carefully controlling the environment, device position, and the camera and display settings. This may be further optimised by post-processing the video recording to deal with the white balance, backlight compensation, and the perspective correction stuff. The camera must be within the optimal viewing angle of the display, although this isn’t as much of an issue for many modern LCD and OLED displays. CRT displays should not be used for this, due to the electron beam scanning causing tearing issues, especially on displays with frame interlacing.

The correct device setup should also be important. I.e. for capturing 1080p content, the camera must be capable of at least double that, plus the overhead black space that has to be cropped out for the purpose of perspective correction in each individual setup.

The dynamic range of the capture is also important. SDR capture can be mapped to by an HDR camera. If calibrated properly by mapping the 256 brightness levels for the 3 colours of the SDR display to the HDR values seen on the camera, it should theoretically be possible to capture SDR content to an almost perfect level of accuracy.

Frame rate is also important. Since there isn’t a single standard for video frame rate, it’s probably better to use a frame rate of at least 60fps. Ideally, it would be at least double the frame rate of the content being captured. Frame rate can be calculated, and converted upon post processing of the video.

For HDR content capture, this will never be precisely captured, but for what that’s worth, this isn’t that much of an issue. Human eyeballs don’t have as precise of a floating point precision, so if the calibration is done properly, the human eyeball probably couldn’t tell the difference anyway. Same with capturing anything above 4K resolution, the human eye won’t be able to see the difference in these cases.

Behold, the camera!

So here I be getting inspired by the techniques that were widely used in the Warez scene of the early 2000s, only in a more optimal environment.

The main reason why those old CAMs and Telesyncs have such a bad reputation, is due to someone attempting to record a movie in a movie theater while attempting to conceal the recording device, and keep it still for a whole 120 minutes, and that’s assuming there isn’t the very real first world movie theater problem exemplified by the infamous ‘chicken jockey’ situation, where the theaters erupted into chaos and ruined the experience for those trying to watch the movie, let alone record it.

By eliminating all these chaotic factors by using our own devices on our own premises, we can improve the quality of the audio and video capture process.

The Method of the Magic:

This reminds me of Schrödinger’s cat.

It’s quite trivial when you think about it. Why bother dealing with the NP-hard problem that is brute forcing the encryption, when you can attack the obvious weak point? Why waste so much electricity on pointless encryption, when it can be rendered irrelevant so easily? Why make the decryption illegal, when it is this easy to sidestep it entirely? Are you going to outlaw the possession of cardboard packaging and duct tape now?

This is not much harder than the common act manufacturing of a homemade bong. Any old pot head could pull this together. The harder part would be pulling this off in a more professional manner, but that wouldn’t take much more effort.

Examples of improvements include:

• The use of better display and/or camera hardware. The visual quality is inherently limited by the weakest of the two.
• more optimal positioning of the display, camera, and microphone.
• direct audio capture for higher audio quality:
  • Bluetooth audio capture, provides unencrypted digital audio.
  • Surround sound may be possible via capturing the raw unencrypted audio data from S/PDIF, TOSLINK, or HDMI ARC.
  • Analog audio capture via headphone jack, RCA cables, or even by hotwiring a cable to the speaker output directly.
• A higher quality microphone setup can be used, if audio capture can’t be done. This may include a dedicated stereo condenser microphone.
  • This may be accompanied by a more robust acoustic design for the box itself.
• Manual display and camera calibration, for optimising settings like focus, contrast, gamma, and the like.
• Video post-processing, for things like cropping, perspective correction, backlight compensation, colour correction, and gamma correction. There is free software available that can do many of these things.
  • AI content enhancement is another possibility, but one I’ll steer very clear of. Many of the relevant AI use cases for video processing are too controversial, too expensive, and too dystopian right now.

Many of these improvements are quite trivial, and easy to accomplish with the right hardware and software. Some others, like video processing, may require a little bit more effort.

The Experiment’s Real-Life Setup

May I introduce, Schrodinger’s Nintendo Switch 2.

The image below says it all.

For the initial demonstrations, I will stick to video game footage. There is good long-standing precedent that this should be legally safe for this purpose, as long as I’m playing the actual game. The device being captured in this instance will be my trusty Nintendo Switch 2. It’s small enough to fit in the box, and has detachable controllers. All the games I have on this console were legally purchased.

The use of video games for this experiment also highlight the fact that video games are not vulnerable to this method of replication, due to the fact that the binary code that makes them up doesn’t need to be decoded into a human readable format in order to do it’s job. A game console is essentially a black box machine that executes the code based on HID input, and displays the output. It’s a medium where a method of copy protection can actually work on, at least for up to a decade later, after which someone will find a way to crack it (perhaps via an insider source, or by brute forcing the encryption using quantum computers). Long story short, the footage can be captured in the analog domain, but the game itself can not.

The initial test will be with my personal smart phone’s camera and built-in microphone. I have a much better microphone, but that would require extra setup regarding the process of recording audio on a separate device, so it will be reserved for MK2.

The Experiment, and The Results

Schrödinger’s Box MK1 test runs:

• #1 – Codename: Minecart
  • Game: Mario Kart World
  • issues:
    • Capture was split into 2 parts. Part 1 was stopped due to unusable latency making the game unplayable. Part 2 was more playable and had a higher frame rate, but video quality was downgraded to 1080p. All future tests on this camera device will be 1080p 60fps as a result of this.
  • This game came with the console.
• #2 – Codename: Ananas comosus
  • Game: Donkey Kong Bananza
  • Issues:
    • Video capture was rotated by 90 degrees for some reason. This can be fixed in video post processing however.
    • Camera auto-focus caused some problems.
  • This game cost me 120 dollars, and I don’t regret it one bit.
  • Note: Ananas comosus is not the scientific name of the banana. It’s actually the scientific name for the pineapple.
• #3 – Codename: World of Warcraft
  • Game: Hello Kitty Island Adventure
  • Issues:
    • My phone overheated, and started lagging over mid way through the test. I attributed this to the phone being plugged into a charger while recording. The lag stopped after I unplugged it.
    • Camera auto-focus was mitigated at the expense of video contrast, due to auto-brightness being disabled in the display for this test.
  • How could I not include this classic South Park reference?

There are some good reasons why these games were chosen.

• #1 and #2 have good visual design, high resolution, dynamic framerate, and possible HDR enhancement. #3 also looks good, but not quite as high resolution as the others.
• #2 and #3 have good sound design. This is good for testing the microphones.
• #1 and #2 are latency sensitive, while #3 is more forgiving of latency. This is useful for testing the responsiveness of the camera device.
• #3 has frequent loading zones that fade to pitch black, useful for diagnostics regarding issues of display backlight, and white balance.
• I just happen to have these games on hand at the time. I have many other ones that can be used also, including some Switch 2 titles.

These initial tests were completed, but the files aren’t available yet due to their size. Tests #2 and #3 are over 10 gigabytes in size, and will need to be re-encoded into a smaller file size before that happens. Here’s some screenshots however…

23 is number 1. Analysis:

“I am the host, the man they call Ghost.”

An issue I didn’t expect to see was the ghosting issue. I attribute this to the setup I used. The Switch 2 has a dynamic frame rate peaking at 120fps, and the camera only supports 60fps.

This ghosting issue shouldn’t be much of an issue for content that has a constant frame rate of less than half the camera frame rate. This issue was mainly due to the high and variable frame rate of the displayed content. Even then, it shouldn’t be much of an issue, as the camera recording is at 60fps anyway, and the human eye tends to temporally blend the frames over time naturally. This is mainly a problem for screenshots, and/or cameras with lower frame rates.

If the content was 30fps or less (as in most TV and movie content), the ghosting wouldn’t be as bad, since the camera is 60fps.

Camera auto-focus and auto-brightness issues

The camera being used doesn’t have manual settings for focus and white balance. This caused some issues with focus being lost. (This was an issue in test #2. I had to occasionally tap the phone screen to regain focus)

When the screen fades to black, the display’s auto brightness dimmed down, and the camera lost focus occasionally.

The display auto brightness was disabled in test #3, but white balance was still an issue making the backlight brighter than it should be whenever the screen fades to black. Colour balance was also inconsistent between scenes due to the camera’s automatic settings.

These issues can be fixed by using a camera that supports manual configuration of these parameters, and calibrating them accordingly. Only then can backlight compensation be applied in post-processing.

Conclusion:

The results of this experiment conclude that it is in fact possible to replicate audiovisual content without breaking DRM encryption, at a much higher quality than many CAM and Telesync movie theater recordings can demonstrate. This setup still leaves many things to be desired, primarily due to the hardware setup being used.

A future experiment may lead with the hypothesis that with the right setup, it would very well be possible to do this with such a high level of accuracy, that a human might not be able to tell the difference.

A higher quality setup will have to be accomplished in a future experiment, in order to prove if that hypothesis is correct, but it looks like it may very well be possible with a better hardware configuration, and post processing of the video stream.

Better methods of audio capture will also have to be demonstrated, but that’s just a matter of either using a better microphone setup.

An even better method of audio capture would be to directly capture the audio using either the headphone jack, or Bluetooth audio capture. This kind of separate audio capture is known as the Telesync method, practiced in the Warez scene, where they separately record from the headphone jacks built in to some movie theater seats, and sync the video cature up to it after the fact (Crap video, perfect audio).

If this is successfully accomplished, this will lead to copy protection DRM techniques being rendered entirely pointless for use on linear audio and video content, essentially being a waste of electricity and silicon chip real estate. Many types of non-linear interactive content, such as video games, will not be impacted by this, but live video would, since this capture may be done in real time.

Another possible research opportunity would be to test the efficacy of watermarking techniques against this method, and also to test whether such watermarking can be rendered useless by the use of fake burner details, rented physical media, burner devices, use of stolen streaming account logins, watermark removal techniques, generative AI stuff, and/or media capture stockpiling for later release (capture all you can, and dump all of it to the internet at once after it’s all done).

In short, this experiment demonstrates a good chance that good quality media capture can be done without cracking any DRM, using consumer-grade hardware components, and a cardboard box.

A boolean is either a 1 or a 0, true or false.

Boolean functions include AND, OR, and NOT.

Some have combined these functions into others, such as NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR.

It’s actually quite an interesting idea, but wasn’t thought about much…

…until humans invented devices that can function as logic gates for these functions.

That’s right. They combined electrical components to make logic gates. These logic gates can be combined to make a machine that can do stuff.

General-purpose computers are just fancy calculators

This eventually led to the integrated circuits of today.

The reason I bring this up is that there is a push by technology companies to make it so we can’t run software on our own general purpose computing devices, unless that software is approved by them. This is gatekeeping the functionality of a machine that would otherwise do it’s job.

The fact that embedded devices that are designed to do a specific task and nothing else (e.g. a game console) already exist, doesn’t change the fact of the matter that these are a different class of devices.

First, you got the single-purpose device class. Devices that do one thing, and do it well.

Then you got general-purpose devices. Devices that are specifically designed to do anything that a user programs it to do.

The problem is that these tech companies (and even some governments) want to prevent general purpose devices from being programmed in an ‘unauthorised’ manner.

My question is this:

Authorised by who?

Who owns the device?

If I had to choose between an iPhone (cost over 2 grand), and a game console (cost 800 bucks), neither of which allow for unsigned code execution, I’d get the cheaper option that actually has some good games on it.

If I pay for it, knowing it’s a general purpose device, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want to install, run whatever I want to run, and destroy it if I ever want to.

If my choice is between a crap device that’s locked down, and a more expensive higher-end locked down device that can’t do any more than the crap one, I’d get the cheaper one.

This is compounded by another fact: Modern web browsers are designed to run arbitrary code on the website they’re browsing using Javascript and Web Assembly. Websites can do some rather interesting stuff with this, including running an entire x86 virtual machine inside the web browser. In addition, many modern websites will cease to function without the ability to run unverified code.

I mean hell, someone recompiled Super Mario 64 to web assembly using Emscripten, so it can be played inside a web browser. If only someone could be bothered to do this with GIMP, I’m sure it would mane many people’s lives easier if someone did, especially for iOS/Android users.

Locking down a general-purpose computing device is not feasible if one can run an entire operating system inside it’s web browser now, is it?

Then there’s the other problem. Stupid governments thinking they can dictate how operating systems work, locking them down to ‘protect the children’ by requiring age verification to use them:

• How are you going to enforce this against older devices?
• How are you going to prevent people from compiling their own operating systems, like what you can do with Linux distros?
• How are you going to prevent people from using older operating systems, or smuggling alternative ones on SD cards?
• How is this going to effect system users that aren’t representive of an individual person, such as ‘Admin’, ‘root’, or ‘nobody’?
• What are you going to do about virtualisation and emulation?
• What are you going to do about offshore developers that don’t give a shit about your bullshit?
• How are you going to prevent people from building their own computes?

And let’s not get started with that ‘censoring the internet to protect the kids’ bullshit. This can easily result in access to life-saving resources being restricted from access to those who desperately need them. I can’t stress this enough, as someone who is in such marginalized circumstances (intersectionally, of course: trans and disabled).

Locking down devices will also make it much harder for people to learn how to develop software.

Another reason that companies use as an excuse to lock down their platforms is ‘security’, as if sandboxing and virtualization techniques didn’t solve that problem already.

Google cited fake banking apps as a reason to lock down Android, despite the fact that progressive web apps exist, essentially allowing anyone to fake a banking app? Someone should tell them about that.

Yes indeed, you can make a functional website that can seamlessly be installed as a full featured app, with many browser APIs providing many necessary app features too.

Web browsers have APIs for notifications, battey status, clipboard, file system, geolocation, device vibration, device sensors, MIDI devices, WebGL and WebGPU for 3d rendering and AI workloads, content security / DRM (if desired), WebRTC for real time audio/video communication, picture-in-picture, screen capture, and service workers (allows for offline web apps), just to name a few. These are more than enough for many apps, like social media apps, communication apps, streaming apps, navigation apps, text/image editors, and games. As such, for many apps, there is simply no real reason to publish to an app store anymore. Just maintain a generic web app, and one doesn’t need to compile for multiple platforms, or wait for any sort of attestation.

There are some experimental upcoming APIs for USB, Bluetooth, NFC, HID devices, idle detection, VR/AR/XR, payment, audio session, credential management, etc, that should allow for even more advanced web apps. A good list is available here.

The only thing this kind of device lock down will effect, are the apps that actually need to be natively run on the device, with platform-specific APIs. This includes accessibility utilities, automation apps, device assistants / smart home apps (at least until a WebAPI is made for this), media players, many games/emulators, VPNs, certain security apps, and other system-specific apps, like button remappers and widget apps.

Another thing this will effect, is offline app installation and offline app development. If there isn’t a workaround (e.g. Android’s ADB installation), this will prevent apps from being installed in mission-critical circumstances where the internet may not be available. E.g. deploying a Bluetooth communication app during an emergency, like a natural disaster, or a war zone.

Advice for politicians, and operating system developers:

If you cowards are concerned about children:

• Don’t touch the operating system.
• Only enforce age verification onto applicable app stores that provide 18+ content for purchase, like Steam or Google Play. All others should be considered unenforceable, due to alternative app sources, and the lack of verification that comes with that.
• Leave the rest of the responsibility to the parents and caregivers. Any failure of parents’ to screen for inappropriate content should be considered negligence at best (if unintentional), and abuse at worst (if intentional). There are plenty of parental control tools that may be deployed if needed for compliance (i.e. for prevention, or for resolving a parental negligence situation).

If you cowards are concerned about malware:

• Secure the system, and provide safe guards, like malware scanners, and additional user confirmation or a disclaimer for unverified app installation.
• DO NOT PREVENT THE INSTALLATION OF UNVERIFIED APPS. Provide a sandbox for them if necessary.
• Consider the possibility of progressive web apps masquerading themselves as app clones, before even thinking about malicious apps that masquerade as other apps, since web apps can bypass web filters as trivially as using another domain/subdomain/subdirectory. And again, provide realtime anti-malware scanning capability for detecting known malicious apps, and provide additional user confirmation or a disclaimer for unverified app installation.

Advice for centralised social media platforms, and porno sites:

• Bring your own age verification, or pay someone else to do it. Especially for social media sites, since they already have enough information to verify age of users in most cases. As for porno sites, this can be as simple as verifying age via a credit/debit card processor (they can verify age at the bank’s KYC level).
• Allow the option for a program, app store, or browser plugin to verify a users age if desired, but don’t use it as the only option, as while such a solution may be convenient, it will not be available in all circumstances.
• Do not blame the operating systems for your lack of oversight. Own it, and clean up your own mess.

Read the advice above, and don’t make any of our lives worse. Amateur computing will live on in the same way as amateur radio, just without the need for a radio license. Hardware will always be available, and hobbyists will always get their fix, especially as STEM education fields remain increasingly important as time goes on.

If you bastards kill the internet, we will make our own. This can be as simple as running Yggdrasil (or a future variant of Yggdrasil?) on all computers, as it can bridge multiple transports, including leased lines, WiFi mesh, local networks, enterprise networks, metropolitan area networks, satellite links, licensed/unlicensed radio links, and the many surviving parts of the Internet. I2P can be run on top of it if needed.

The app was surprisingly well designed… Too well designed…

It has a doom-scrolling casino-like infinite scroll design. You never know which video will show up next. Each swipe feels like you’re hitting the lever of a slot machine. Some may not think much of this, but this can put one in danger of the recommendation algorithm taking them to a place they wouldn’t expect to end up.

The videos themselves ranged from memes, to tutorials, to trolls and obvious rage bait. One of the more interesting features were the ones that allow for making reactions to other content, allowing for quite the interesting reactions and memes.

Occasionally, an ad will show up. These were surprisingly non-intrusive, and could be easily swiped passed. This seemed to promote a unique advertising META that encouraged advertisements to actually blend in with the other content on the platform, because as soon as people swipe and see a blatant McDonald’s ad, they would immediately swipe past it. This advertising system is something I actually have to give credit to, as it discourages the usual un-creative slop that usually plagues advertising.

As usual, I didn’t engage much with the comment sections of videos. I knew those were nothing but trouble since I saw the ones on YouTube. It didn’t take long to find everything from mundane insults to entire flame wars in the comments.

I also didn’t watch live streams on TikTok. It didn’t feel natural to me.

The more I used TikTok, the more I could feel my brain start to malfunction, with stress and anxiety levels peaking far easier than before I started using it. I only used TikTok sparingly. It wasn’t an every day thing. I only used it every few weeks, but even then, I could still feel the effects.

After around a year of usage, I deleted the account, and the app entirely.

Alright, let’s boil it own to the problems that I saw:

Accessibility Issues

Undocumented features

My hands are very finicky with touch screens. Sometimes a tap or a swipe may not register as a single tap or swipe. This lead to a problem: The app had a button I can press to like a video. I see it, I recognise the shape, I know what it’s for. Simple as that. But TikTok is an entirely different beast. It kept occasionally liking the video when I tapped the screen. I thought this was a bug, until I looked in deeper.

It turns out that TikTok has an undocumented ‘double-tap to like’ feature, that can not be disabled, and this is a problem. It felt like I wasn’t controlling the app. It felt like it was deciding to do stuff on it’s own. This is an example of railroading a feature that can effect users in a negative way.

Inconsistent design

When one swipes up or down, they expect to go to the next pr previous video, but TikTok railroaded a feature that allows for image slideshows to be posted. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for one thing: the autoscroll. After a couple of seconds, it would automatically switch to the next slide. Not problematic yet? Well, did I mention that when you try to swipe vertically to change the video while the horizontal slide is changing, that it would cancel out the vertical scrolling? The horizontal slide change would take about a second to complete, and happened every 2 seconds. This vertical scroll-cancellation happened repeatedly, and pissed me off beyond explanation. I couldn’t filter out those slideshow posts, as they couldn’t be disabled. It’s almost as if I wasn’t in control of my own device again.

Obfuscated UI element names

While making an accessibility frontend using Tasker and AutoInput to overcome the above accessibility issues, I struck another issue: All the UI elements were obfuscated in a way that wasn’t consistent between app updates. This inhibits any accessibility software from recognising UI elements correctly and consistently, and makes it nearly impossible to make an app-specific accessibility overlay for TikTok, especially when UI element positions and sizes depend a lot upon the device itself, and the device’s settings. I’m pretty sure this is against Android’s accessibility guidelines for UX design, but I’m not a paperwork wizard, so what could I possibly know?

All I have to say is: GOOD LUCK USING THIS APP IF YOU’RE BLIND, LOL!

The usual social media crap

Doom scrolling infinite content machine

That platform was fill of garbage content, misinformation, and outright lies. This kind of stuff always shows up on user-generated content platforms like TikTok, but this time, it was exacerbated by the fact that on TikTok, you don’t browse for content (they do have a search feature, but it’s garbage). Instead, the algorithm feeds you what it ‘thinks’ you might like.

This can lead to a rabbit-hole effect, where you can start from knitting tutorials, and end up in some alt-right Qanon conspiracy niche that believes that a certain ethnic minority is drinking the blood from aborted fetuses or some shit, and the worst part is: the more these videos show up, the more watch time the algorithm sees, and thus, the more of this garbage is recommended by the same algorithm.

I think there’s a mathematical fallacy demonstrated in the image above…

The problem with these recommendation algorithms is that we don’t know how they work. We can, however, assume they keep total platform retention in mind for this. since they want to keep users on the app for as long as possible.

What keeps people on the platform longest? Why, just make it so time consuming to find content one actually wants to watch, and prioritise recommending shit that outrages people enough to start a flame war in the comments about it, send push notifications for each reply to these comments, and there’s the interaction and retention loop for ya.

This is an incredible method of distributing not just funny memes, but also rage bait, propaganda, and now with TikTok Shop existing, dick pill salesmen and other snake oil merchants.

Exploitable Ads

While I commend TikTok’s respectable effort to making a more sustainable advertising system than most other platforms do, this doesn’t change the simple fact that TikTok is rife with bad content. This is especially concerning when combined with the in-app advertising system, which makes the ads blend in with the actual content stream, making it hard to discern an ad from genuine content without carefully checking the content description each time you swipe, meaning any possible disclosure is therefore an afterthought in the user’s mind.

Online advertisers have a long lasting habit of poor quality control, and an eagerness to accept foreign political propaganda into the ads. Some astroturfing organisations and hate groups have used this method to spread their slop, but that’s an article for another day.

Push Notifications Galore

Imagine waiting for an important text message to come through, only to be flooded with random notifications that drown out the important stuff? Well, that’s the problem with platforms being too eager to escape the app they belong inside.

I’m a simple person when it comes to notifications. I enable phone calls, text messages, emails, and important web server notifications. Everything else can get bent.

Want to recommend content for me to watch? Wait for me to open the app and check. Online content doesn’t usually have that narrow of an expiry date. It can wait.

Want to notify me about comments and replies? Wait for me to check the app. It can wait.

I cracked down on this push notification stuff a long time ago. I realise that their only existential purpose is to hook you back into the app, and encourage an addiction cycle in the user. It’s sick, it’s predatory, it’s just bad for the attention span of the user (as if TikTok’s content format wasn’t already bad enough for that).

Chinese spyware concerns

One of the main concerns of the time is that TikTok’s business operations were based in China, and you know what China is like. The CCP want to spy on everyone.

Many people are relieved to hear that the US have obtained TikTok, but I’m afraid the US is no better than China, with all their bad privacy laws, data brokers and all that fun stuff.

I would go as far as to say that almost every centralised social media platform has this issue in common, as all the users’ data is stored in one place, easily accessible by law enforcement, foreign spies, or those participating in industrial espionage and social engineering attacks.

Don’t expect any of these platforms to be keeping your personal information safe, especially when many of them have a profit motive to sell users’ personal information.

TikTok Clones

The only thing worse that TikTok is a TikTok clone.

All of a sudden, every other platform started blatently copying TikTok, often with even worse results, which is funny. It’s usually the Chinese who make knockoff products of US goods, not the other way around!

YouTube made YouTube Shorts, which is somehow even worse than TikTok.

META/Facebook have cloned TikTok, with things like Instagram Reels.

Alternatives to TikTok

and other platforms like it

Decentralised and federated social media platforms like Mastodon, Peertube, and others exist, that can be self hosted on one’s own server if they wish. Loops is probably the closest to TikTok that these get (being an obvious clone), with Peertube being a close second (Peertube is a good YouTube clone). Most of these federated solutions are open source software, and can even cross-federate with each other in many situations.

While it is possible to gather metadata about everyone’s posts from a compromised instance, it doesn’t compromise the private personal information of users from other servers, as only their public profiles and public posts are available for public scraping.

Since these servers are operated by individuals and/or isolated groups, and the software is free and open source, there is no profit motive for predatory design over the whole social media network, or the software itself. Either find a server willing to accept you, or host your own.

These servers can even work and federate over darknets, like I2P and Tor. (I2P is probably the better one for this specific purpose, has much more flexibility, and better peer-to-peer capacity) The only requirement is that the network support connections over TCP either directly, or via a proxy, so other alternative non-anonymous networks like CJDNS and Yggdrasil, will also work with this.

Server operators can also blacklist servers they don’t want to federate with, or disable federation entirely. This helps administrators weed out bad eggs when it comes to poorly moderated servers.

I think the federated approach may be the future of social media, especially with things like age verification being enforced onto the larger centralised platforms. It also prevents one country’s stupid laws or one company’s stupid decisions from compromising the entire network.

While this might not be a perfect replacement for traditional social media, and may have their own problems, it’s certainly better than the alternative.

Conclusion

TikTok is garbage… plain, stinking, garbage… but it’s scarily well designed garbage, I’ll have to give it that.

A good analogy is to describe it like one of the original crack houses of social media: Many try to copy it, but most resort to lacing their drugs with fentanyl.

It’s just bad, and my mental health took a huge impact after this temporary use of TikTok.

Just stay away from it.