Yeah ngl, I don’t really care for the more Elvish focus that Inquisition (and now I guess Veilguard) has. The best part of DA was always the mix of all the lores clashing.

The writing’s been on the wall for a while hasn’t it? Several of my non-Chinese classmates I graduated university with took Mandarin as their 2nd language since elementary school and speak it as well as the mainlanders (according to the Chinese exchange students, anyways).

You should play the original if you can, it really is the best Dragon Age game. Steam has a guide to get it up and running on modern machines.

Also, were you able to follow the story of Veilguard? I haven’t played it yet (and honestly I might never) but I got the impression that it was pretty tied to the story of Inquisition.

You are closer to living in a tent like the people in Gaza than you are to the oligarchs that want to level it for their beachfront properties.

Remember that next time you want to dehumanize the 50 000+ people that are dead.

(And, no, I don’t support Hamas)

No, we buy guns AND we organize our coalitions, just like the Black Panthers did.

We can’t intellectualize our way out of Proud Boys lynchings anymore, guys.

(Also all the stuff VerticaGG said)

And there are already so many conspiracy theories on there about why the shutdown even happened 🤮

In my circle, I haven’t seen anyone use local social media apps

That’s a bit sad, I was hoping to hear the Indian apps having traction.

No problem! A lot of commenters on Fedi/Reddit seem like they don’t have a lot of experience with Tiktok compared to Meta or Google platforms, so I’m always happy to speak on my experience with it.

For normal Tiktok creators, I’m not sure. But from what I remember, our TikTok revenue (combined creator fund payout + donations) outperformed every other source of revenue on a month-to-month basis EXCEPT the large local fundraising drives (which we only had quarterly).

The secret hack to the internet has always been animal content, lol. Animal videos performed very well, especially if you got into the creator fund. Youtube shorts only performed well for us when we had long form content the short could lead into. Before then we had 0 visibility on the YT algo.

Finally, Tiktok has better integration different payment methods through fundraising platforms (GoFundMe, Kickstarter, etc) than Youtube (or any Meta app tbh), or at least from what I understood from our accountants (I never bought anything off of Tiktok).

Again, this is only from my experience, and some other small animal rescues that we worked with. That’s why I express sympathy for these organizations. I don’t really care what happens to the drop shipping influencers or whatever.

That’s still just gambling in another costume 😭

The only thing I really feel bad for from this is the small town food banks/animal welfare societies/sanctuaries that were able to find alternative sources of incomes through Tiktok via their partner programs and through a wider audience. Apparently Instagram doesn’t pay as well, and Youtube shorts are abysmal for discovery.

I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and my city dropped funding for them in 2023. Tiktok donations helped a lot more than you’d think. Highly encouraged people reading this to drop some food/donations off at your shelter of choice if you have any to spare.

Hoping they shut down and open source their algorithm. They already released part of it on github, apparently, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it. Would like it if I could somehow use it for a personal Loops server in the future.

Self-hosting your own recommendations would be amazing. I’m on the Testflight waitlist for Loops, hope I can get access soon.

You know what, my friends who are still on it say that their FYP has been getting worse over the past 6 months or so. I wonder if you’re right.

None of them have the algorithm that makes Tiktok’s “For You Page” so attractive to most people. By far the best personalization algorithm of any social media I used during the pandemic. I basically never had to search for content or creators, the algo served me up a platter of people to follow that seemed directly tailored to me. That’s why it’s so addictive.

And that’s probably why American social media giants are salivating at acquiring it. Reels/Twitter/YT Shorts algo doesn’t even come close tbh.

think theProud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller bit explains perfectly why they released the bots onto the wild.

This was my first thought too. It’s a peek behind the curtain to how “sophisticated” disinformation bots have actually become, and it’s super interesting that there’s backlash to it as most FB users love AI slop.

Maybe Meta’s actually taking it down because they don’t want people to start realizing how much of the social media they interact with is actually AI/LLM/chatbots.

It really is a class war, not a culture war.

-puts on tinfoil hat- Is this why we’re suddenly getting so many remasters/remakes?

-takes off hat- No, it’s probably because the corporate gaming industry is creatively bankrupt and want to cash in on nostalgia with minimal risk. But remakes/remasters probably strengthen the “market harm” portion of their argument.

Thank you for this, I had to scroll down so far to find a subscription-wall free link. Makes me wonder if anyone actually checked the article…

Just a correction: it’s an actual remake like Resident Evil 4, not a remaster. Entirely new engine (Unreal 5), character models, environments, music/sound, and new content around the plot. Considering the original came out in 2001, the updates were sorely needed imo.