Tiktok is aimed at 13 year-olds or younger people who waste 8+ hours on their phone. Lot's of screaming, cringy repetitive video creations (same video recorded by millions), people proudly admit the algorithm of tiktok is the best because it keeps the user's dopamine levels high. And on top of that, blatant Chinese data collection with likely evil intend. I will not say more than this because whenever I criticize tiktok or twitter I get flagged. It is detrimental to our society on many levels. Seeing educated and technically sound people using tiktok especially on HN is surprising to me.

TikTok has a very efficient algorithm which rapidly tunes to your personal interests. If you only see screaming and cringy repetitive videos beyond the first 15 minutes of use, you've got nobody to blame but yourself. For example, my personal feed is for a large part educational content, and I don't think I have seen any person under 16-17 since I first started using it.

It's still probably a net negative on society, but I definitely consider Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to be far worse. TikTok is getting a bad reputation solely because of its Chinese origin, while its Western counterparts are doing exactly the same thing.

Have you tried using it? If not, you'll be surprised how quickly the algorithm manages to give you a constant stream of content that is genuinely deeply interesting to you. I won't argue your other points, but to me it would be more surprising if HN people weren't using it, rather than were