Since the For You algorithm favors only the most instantly mesmerizing content, its constructive videos—such as “how to” guides and field journalism—tend to be relegated to the fringes in favor of tasty but malignant junk info. Many of the most popular TikTokers, such as Charli D’Amelio, Bella Poarch, and Addison Rae, do little more than vapidly da

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TikTok is less a pure social network, the type focused on social capital, than an entertainment network. I don’t socialize with people on TikTok, I barely know any of them. It consists of a network of people connected to each other, but they are connected for a distinct reason, for creators to reach viewers with their short videos.

This is why TikTok's network effects of creativity matter. To clone TikTok, you can't just copy any single feature. It's all of that, and not just the features, but how users deploy them and how the resultant videos interact with each other on the FYP feed. It's replicating all the feedback loops that are built into TikTok's ecosystem, all of which... See more