Digital Culture
The Biggest Problem With Each Social Media Platform
Social media is cool and all, but each platform has individual issues that need to be addressed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: no product is ever seamlessly perfect, but some of these bugs and errors are so obviously dumb that they may make you laugh out loud.
YouTube
YouTube’s biggest problem is an obvious one. We accept it even though it worsens our user experience, mainly because we know that YouTube as a whole is a good product.
For some reason, YouTube makes you PAY to watch and listen to videos when you’re not on the app screen. Apple recently introduced a feature that allows you to continue monitoring your Netflix show while doing other things on your phone (responding to texts, scrolling through social media platforms, etc.).
YouTube, however, stops the streaming as soon as you exit their app, which can become extremely inconvenient. Instead, you have to buy YouTube premium, something that nobody wants to do. Great job, Susan.
In my opinion, Instagram’s user interface was made with near perfection. That is, besides one gleaming problem.
Instagram’s comment sections can be the best place to view drama, discussion, and entertainment. Instagram, however, seems to be intent on steering you away from them.
When looking at comment threads, you have to work from the bottom up. This means that you basically have to read every conversation backward. It’s not fun. It’s cruel and unusual. Why would I want to see the end of an argument before I read the start?
Genuinely, Facebook is so hard to use compared to other social media platforms. Everything about it has become increasingly difficult over the past couple of years. From the profile setup to the feed navigation to creating business pages, it’s really complicated.
This isn’t to say that Facebook is terrible; it’s just complex and irritating at times.
TikTok
TikTok claims to have a “for you page,” and I don’t doubt it. But sometimes, they miss the mark by a mile and a half.
TikTok’s for you page gives you two types of content:
- Content that is WAY too specific to who you are, what you do, and where you live.
- Content that has seemingly no relation to you whatsoever.
They’ll sometimes show you videos from people who live 30 minutes away from you, and that’s downright creepy. Other times, however, you’ll end up watching a video from a foreign page that you can’t even understand. TikTok is a great social media platform to use, and the never-ending surprises on your for you page make it worthwhile, but they’re nonetheless dropping the ball on the content that users are seeing.
I love social media, and I’m a frequent user of all these platforms. Sometimes, however, it can be beneficial to laugh; it’s the impracticalities that they perpetuate.