TikTok has all the worst traits of social media, magnified. I finally tried it out for a few weeks recently and I was shocked by how many social media dark patterns are at work there. It's like everything people claim to hate about other apps rolled into one toxic mass.
Came here to say this. Here's the quote for anyone else:
> Facebook’s user base has started to shrink after revelations by whistleblowers and leaks that showed how harmful social media could be to teen users, who are flocking to less toxic competitors like TikTok anyway.
Lot of it is about what kind of toxicity being discussed. FB toxicity is mostly associated with the right wing, so it has to be the worst thing on the face of the earth. OTOH I assume (I've never used) TikTok toxicity is mostly from Millennials and Gen Z, who tend to be on the other side of the political spectrum, so it's less toxic. The very same reason you'll never hear about toxicity on Twitter and how much harm it is causing to society. Because Twitter toxicity is the right type of toxicity a lot of journalists and intellectuals love.
I think also TikTok is newer. In the last two months I noticed TikTok reaction videos become a major genre on YouTube. In particular, TikTok has become famous for teen and 20-something girls making fools of themselves and I think it’s taken a while for the situation to develop, a while for people to recognize it, and that recognition facing the headwind that anything girls do is seen through the lens of ‘female empowerment’.
