Comment by spandrew

Shorts, Instagram Reels and whatever Facebook calls its copy of it.

All of them are so bad it's not worth it.

This is true. Many people I know have uninstalled TikTok because it is too addictive, but no one ever does that with YouTube shorts.

It’s really not, not even close to the same. The algorithm is really, really bad compared to TikTok. You can’t pause videos, can’t download them, can’t use copyrighted music, the comments are awful and full of bullying and hate and anger. It doesn’t have the powerful tools to actually edit your videos. It doesn’t have the community. Instagram reels just feels like a bad copy of TikTok. It’s also not timely; on TikTok you see things as they happen. News arrives instantly. Stitching enables two way conversations. Everything on Instagram is just recycled crap from two weeks ago on TikTok. I only use instagram to talk to people really; the actual content doesn’t do anything for me.

The problem is that Instagram content is so ... fake? manufactured?

There is very little original creator content in there, it's all semi-professional "influencers" doing heavily scripted skits or just plain stolen stuff (vertical versions of TV shows, movies, stand-up sets etc)

The running joke for years is that Instagram Reels is where you go if you want to see last month's viral content from TikTok. In my experience it's true.

I don't know what people here are on about. I use both and they are exactly the same. I don't think TikTok's algorithm is any better.

The format is the same but not the algorithm or what people are putting on it. I’m not a tok tok user but the few times I’ve been on it they felt surprisingly different. Meta reels are less substantial in content.

You can follow accounts, and they offer a Following tab to keep track of accounts you really like, but the default consumption mode is to use it just like TV. When you're done with a video you scroll to the next. The app uses signals like how long you spent on a video, whether you liked it or not, whether you sent it to friends or not, etc to see how much you like a video. You can also reset your "algorithm" if you find yourself consuming content you don't like.

Most people just scroll the home page yea. Of course you can follow accounts but that’s not the main use case. The algorithm really is mind bogglingly good

I feel like they were really headed the product promo / integrated shopping route.

TikTok makes much less money than meta per time spent by consumers.