I hate how I got rid of TikTok because of the addictive short form content and now I find myself somehow in Instagrams short form content. Now YouTube are also doing it.
These companies are just selling attention crack disguised as "creativity".
I'm still baffled about how TikTok hooks people. I installed it to check out an AI filter and look for a certain person doing live videos I found on YouTube. I've browsed the main feed a few times now and it's honestly 90-95%+ garbage and altogether just super annoying.
Why would you expect it to immediately know what to show you? This isn't YouTube's front page in 2007 where everybody gets suggested the same popular videos. You need to give it some input data first. The types videos you stick around and watch will be shown more frequently, the types you scroll past without watching will be shown less. It'll seed you stuff that it shows to people who watch similar stuff to you, and narrow your taste down. Everyone's feed becomes pretty unique, and chances are if you have any interests or hobbies, there's creators out there making something for your tastes.
In my experience it does a pretty good job of figuring this out. Especially compared to YouTube which seems to mostly show me videos from channels I've been watching frequently, and not necessarily similar types of content.
These companies are just selling attention crack disguised as "creativity".