I was fine with memes over the past few years ... sure they are a quick dopamine hit that make you laugh or think
But now when my friends send me tiktok videos ... especially when someone has been watching these video streams for hours or days ... they start sending out the most random, inane, mindless content ... it's the kind of material that keep a monkey occupied.
Oh shit!
This post actually made me look for a solution and I found one!
Solution to opening tiktoks without using tiktok app or site, not how to stop ur friends sending u garbage.It made me think... mpv player can play basically any link you throw at it (thanks to yt-dlp), and we also have mpv on Android, so why can't we do it there as well. And sure enough, I found this https://github.com/mpv-android/mpv-android/pull/58, someone baked yt-dlp in mpv for Android, making it possible to open link in mpv (share >> play in mpv)
It works for instagram and all other shit.
As always I like promoting open source frontends for these pages. For tiktok I use proxytok. For changing any tiktok link to one of these instances use the libredirect extension for firefox, it also works in mobile
Have you heard about our lords and saviors the alternative frontends?
i shall retaliate with fediverse links
This is why I wrote a Telegram bot that uses yt-dlp to convert videos and send them directly to people. My friend group all use different socials, Facebook, tiktok, Twitter, Lemmy, etc., and the bot will take the link, download the video, then send it back to the person, and then they can forward it to whatever chats they want.
It's been pretty fucking handy. That is, if your friends use Telegram.
Ugh… I can feel this in my bones.
I'll usually tell him that the sound isn't working when I open it in the browser and I'm not downloading the app. But he keeps... on... trying...
Copy link, paste into browser incognito
Share -> Save Video
Facebook videos for me
Tiktok sucks so hard, but then occasionally I find a minor nugget of wisdom or a piece of information so helpful that it makes me keep the app. Just the other day, some said he applies antiperspirant to his feet in order to keep them warm, because then they'll sweat less, and will get less cold in the socks. I didn't even really know that was a problem I was really having, but now, I will never have cold feet again. There's also always eelfeel, so I'm alright with it as a whole.
More broadly I do hate how kind of walled off the app is. I try to share videos on snapchat, oof, snapchat cuts it off so it's only the first five seconds of a video. Best to send the link, but then, if you don't have tiktok downloaded, it takes you either to the app store, or it hits you with the shitty web browser. Maybe fine for seeing a single tiktok, on mobile, but it's pretty bad on desktop since it's not formatted for it, and overall it, just is kind of ass to deal with, especially on repeat. Hate the modern internet.
Edit: Sorry, nvm, I guess I didn't understand that we were fearmongering about the evil chinese technology brainwashing our youths with their wiles in this comments section.
This is my wife in a nutshell after Reddit died.
