Users also create reaction videos to other videos, showing a selfie shot next to the original clip. Everything is participatory, and the nature of the algorithm makes it so that a video from an unknown account can go as viral as easily as one from a famous account.

Most of the work on TikTok is derivative of other work. Whether it's dance, music, or some other work. The majority is a remix of someone else's work. That in itself is very different from other social networks. Instagram doesn't have a reshare function by design.

TikTok enables and invites the pointed, witty, playful, allusive, zany and endlessly inventive combination of video, music and text. But the creative energies of its more than one billion users are circumscribed and channeled by the architecture of the platform.

TikTok’s spectacular success in enlisting consumers as producers depends on making

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