TikTok is uniquely frustrating, I wish I could engage with all the cool stuff that is happening there. I wish it wasn’t all being thrown into this awful exploitative pit. Twitter and Instagram and such are similarly evil, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out. There are privacy-minded frontends but they are only really helpful when someone sends me a video from there, not for browsing or keeping up with anything.
One of my partners is 49 and uses it. Then again, I have many partners under 35 who don’t.
I understand why many people avoid the platform, but I’ve always been of the mindset that anything on the internet stays on the internet forever and that everyone is always trying to monetize you and I made my own peace with that a long time ago. I don’t really have a choice when it comes to affecting whether this happens at a large scale (and I don’t think anyone individually really does either, it’s up to governments to regulate this) so it’s never kept me off invasive platforms.
With that being said, I agree that tiktok is even more exploitative than other platforms in that people don’t really make money off it like big youtubers or streamers or podcast makers do. It’s a shame, because the parent company is raking in plenty of money.
