Socialist Social Media for the New Days: Long Live TIKKIT! [review]

annnarkehmedia.com subscribers will be aware that following the most recent social mediapocalypse, I went dark for a little while on Big Tech’s social media monopolies, while I investigated what alternatives are currently available. I’m still not posting much to the old platforms. Spending a little time away from them has been really good for my mental health. Particularly in terms of getting a better perspective on the state of it all.

This will be my second review of alternative social media platforms.
You can also read about my first week on steemit.com, here.

One of the first new platforms I joined recently was tikkit.co.uk – which was only launched about a month or so ago. If I’m remembering correctly, it’s been endorsed by the great George Galloway on his radio show, the Mother of All Talk Shows. (I’ve not been able to find the link to that endorsement yet, so could be remembering it wrong. Apologies if so. I’ll update this post if and when I find the link).

INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW

(From tikkit.co.uk‘s ‘about’ section)
“The aim of Tikkit is to become the most used site on the web, replacing Twitter to make mobile social media a truly free experience, no data collection, no location collection, no care for whatever app or site you last visited.

The software is owned by one person and it’s use has been gifted to everyone. The owner, admin and moderators are all left wing socialists based in the UK.

Together we have the power to make this the first socialist media platform based in the UK, created by the left for us all, not just the profiteers

Zero tolerance to fake news.”

The ‘one person’ who owns the software is a chap called ‘Tony X‘, who appears to be a proper old school socialist. Tony has been very responsive to every issue I’ve raised since joining Tikkit and he’s answered every question I’ve asked regarding Tikkit.

For example. When I first joined, the site only had the traditional binary gender designations; male or female. Being a genderless, anarcho-punk emoji, I tagged Tony asking them to add an ‘other’ option, which they did almost immediately. Similarly, when selecting which nation state you belong to, I wanted the option of being a ‘Citizen of the World’ which again, Tony made happen almost instantly. They even took some time to answer a few questions for this review.* (Thanks Tony, much respect)!

*wiixiiw is a new video hosting platform which Tony’s also been developing.

#AdvertisingShitsInYourHead

There’s currently no advertising on Tikkit, which is of course a most welcome and r3V0_|utionary change from the big social media monopolies’ abuse of our data. For me, the advertising industry’s mass manipulation of human thought and behaviour has been one of the most pernicious aspects of Big Tech in recent decades.

Apart from a distinct absence of corporations trying to sell you ideas and material shit you don’t need, Tikkit feels very much like a facebook/twitter hybrid. There’s a top trending hashtags column which displays the current top 5 trending hashtags. Another key distinction, is that the main prolefeed looks like it’s literally just a chronological list of posts. Seemingly no algorithms silently deciding which content you get to see and which you don’t.

ECHO CHAMBERS AREN’T NECESSARILY BAD

Initially, I was concerned that Tikkit would, by definition be a bit of a ‘Leftist’ ideological echo chamber. It is, though I’ve actually come to quite like that about it. It’s been great to have a space which is overtly and deliberately ‘left’ leaning to retreat to when the post truth, post satire world gets too much for my poor little brain. I think because everybody knows it’s a left leaning platform makes it an interesting and useful echo chamber to have.

However, having only launched recently it’s still quite sparsely populated. I decided to just follow everybody who’s joined so far, to get a decent overview of how it’s doing. It looks like there’s only about 330 users there so far but new people have been joining almost every day I’ve been there. As with all the burgeoning new platforms, it seems to be a question now of how many of these new users will start actually using their shiny new accounts or not.

You can create groups and 8 have been set up already; Disability, What About The Workers, BizEpeople, memes, inforapenny, Occupy2018, Philosophy and Jineology.

I didn’t know what Jineology was and had to look it up. So even with a smaller user base, Tikkit is already providing me with a useful social experience, ie: teaching me about stuff I didn’t already know.

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM OF TIKKIT

At the moment, only a small handful of people seem to be posting regularly. Most of these seem to just be ‘hit and run’ or ‘flash’ posts, or flash floods of posts. (We’ve all done it…) That said, the quality of posts has generally been higher than on the old platforms and the few interactions and discussions I’ve had there have been generally friendlier and more interesting than on the old social media.

There’s scant other information about Tikkit, on the website or elsewhere on the internet. There’s no wikipedia entry about it and no FAQ, yet. I quite like this ‘mystery’ angle about it too. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out but my gut tells me that they’re good people.

I like Tony X and team Tikkit’s style. If enough comrades migrated there (and started using their accounts) it could become a powerful Leftist space, for both networking and possibly also for organising.

Onwards comrades, to the new days!

Long live TIKKIT!

PS: Little toes ARE really weird, but essential.