“Insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page,” Patina Systems founder Tyler Angert posted on X earlier this month. “Even better, an infinitely scrolling Wikipedia page based on whatever you are interested in next?” replied Bloomberg Beta VC James Cham. “WikiTok,” added Angert.
insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page
— Tyler Angert (@tylerangert) February 3, 2025
New York-based app developer Isaac Gemal stumbled across the discussion the following evening. Within two hours, WikiTok was live.
If you’re the type to instinctively pull up Wikipedia to fact-check anything and everything, this app is made for you. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way.
“Damn this is really cool, much better for the brain,” one X user posted. “The rabbit hole we didn’t know we needed. knowledge discovery powered by attention span instead of search terms. finally, a productive way to waste time,” another added.
Free from invasive tracking and endless notifications, this app offers the closest thing to guilt-free scrolling. Instead of feeding you content based on an algorithm, it delivers a truly random selection of Wikipedia articles, pulled straight from the Wikipedia API and displayed in a TikTok-style interface. Each entry appears with an image from the corresponding article—and if something catches your interest, a simple tap on “Read More” opens the full Wikipedia page in your browser.
Gemal made the code for WikiTok available on GitHub, allowing anyone to modify or contribute to the project. Currently, the web app supports article previews, sharing capabilities, and 14 languages across both desktop and mobile browsers. As the community grows, new features are expected to roll in as contributors get involved.
The app is currently algorithm-free and Gemal plans to keep it that way. “I have had plenty of people message me and even make issues on my GitHub asking for some insane crazy WikiTok algorithm,” Gemal told Ars Technica. “And I had to put my foot down and say something along the lines that we’re already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our everyday life; why can’t we just have one little corner in the world without them?”
One little corner, in other words, without doomscrolling.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91276081/this-app-combines-wikipedia-and-tiktok-to-fight-doomscrolling?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rssInicia sesión para agregar comentarios
Otros mensajes en este grupo.
Social media users have been having a field day with Waymo’s autonomou
If you’re not on TikTok, you may not have heard of Aaron Parnas. But for many young people across the U.S., he’s a prominent political news source, with over 3.5 million followers on TikTok and ju
Getting a sense of the scale of social media platforms can be tricky. While tech companies often share self-serving metrics—like monthly active users or how likely users are to buy products after
Fun fact: The saying “work smarter, not harder” is coming up on its 100th birthday. Coined
If you’ve followed Apple for any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across the notion that the company doesn’t rush into adopting cutting-
Every now and then, you run into a tool that truly wows you.
It’s rare—especially nowadays, when everyone and their cousin is coming out with overhyped AI-centric codswallop tha
