Why was TikTok crowned as King of Social Media?
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is a Chinese establishment, through which the Trump Administration tried to ban the app entirely. The Biden administration believes that the app is a product controlled by a “foreign element” and have stated that they will continue to try and ban TikTok.
But TikTok’s rapid-fire rise increases the concern of a rapid-fire fall. People follow one another on TikTok and keep up with individual influencers. But unlike moat social platforms before it, which emphasised follower- and- friend- style connections, TikTok’s main magnet is its automated ‘For You’ page, which places TikTokers at the bottom of a massive algorithmic content channel.
The BeReal app is best known for buzzing users into action by prompting them throughout the day to snap a photo of what they are up to, and suggests a familiar, small, friend- centric feed. It feels a bit like Instagram felt in its early days.
It turns out that social platforms erected around networks of people who personally know one another are quite durable. Compared to Facebook’s rise, TikTok’s was dazing but impersonal, the product of a supreme emphasis on content over connections, on breaking out of networks rather than standardising them.
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This article was originally published on:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/09/tiktok-social-media-perils.html
