Show HN: Erin – Open-source and self-hosted TikTok feed for your own videos

When I was 16, nearly all the media I consumed was vetted/regulated by the FCC.

Really? I'm a millennial and most of the content I consumed came from

  * Initially various Warez sources (KDX , eMule etc) (2000-2005 I think)
  * later on liveleak, 4chan,  digger (2006-2007? Not sure anymore), 
  * Then stumble upon, 9gag (08-10)
  * finally ending at reddit (2010-2014, that was the year spez edited user comments. Very rarely used it since)

I vividly remember watching pretty fucked up shit back then, like racists executions of teenagers by police officers (South America) and a lot of sexual content, which is pretty disturbing from today's perspective if I don't completely misremember them.

i bet before the internet?

However, none of that was fed to you by algorithms, but rather your own curiosity for weird stuff and your ability to find it. I am not saying that it is good or bad, but in my book, it is different from infinite algorithmic feeds we currently have.

Good point

this difference is that none of that was mainstream, less than one percent of my high school ever read 4chan or even knew what it was. almost literally every kid today has a smart phone, the vast majority of them are on youtube, and an absolute ton of them are on tiktok.

when older millennials were young, it was mostly television, movies, maybe some radio, and maybe some CDs/tapes. and as the previous person said, this was all extremely moderated and you didn't have unlimited access to most anything

Yeah, but OP was talking about vetting and policing content. I fully agree that addictive algorithms are bad though.

People in my school were constantly pranking each other with this type of content, so everyone even people who weren't seeking it out, were exposed to that. I assume everyone knew what 2 girls 1 cup is, and if you ask around my age right now, most people will know it from around secondary school. And at least most guys knew about the pain olympics.

Not really executions though, luckily.

> your own curiosity for weird stuff and your ability to find it

Ignoring the fact that my comment was about watching videos with age rating: Not really? The execution for example came under the name of some anime episode I wanted to watch back then.

Lots of trolls liked to upload terrible stuff under innocuous names.

But sure, once I was on liveleak things were moderately down to my own choices, whatever that means for a minor. It's also just as true today btw. The reason kids get these videos is because they're clicking on the thumbnails that interests them.