A Jenner and two Kardashians shared the same picture on Instagram at some point in the summer of 2022. The image, which was created by Tati Bruening, had a straightforward message: quit attempting to be TikTok. You could learn more about the state of social media from the fact that three of the most popular accounts on the platform felt compelled to publicly and simultaneously state this in a protest-like manner than from any industry conference or quarterly earnings report. Instagram was evolving. Short videos from accounts that no one followed were automatically playing one after the other in a feed that seemed less carefully chosen and more unrelenting. Everyone could see why: TikTok had emerged, and all other platforms were frantically trying to catch up with something they didn’t fully comprehend.
On the surface, TikTok’s actions weren’t particularly difficult. It created an app based on brief videos. Years ago, Vine did the same, and Vine is no longer with us. The For You Page, or FYP, and the algorithm that generated it were different. The social graph served as the foundation for all other major social media platforms: you followed accounts, they posted content, and you saw it. The reasoning was straightforward and human. By deciding who to follow, you were able to control what you saw.
Key Information: TikTok & The Algorithmic Feed Revolution
| Platform | TikTok — short-form video platform owned by ByteDance (Beijing); U.S. spin-off under development as of late 2025 |
| Monthly Active Users | Over 1 billion globally — among the fastest platforms to reach that scale in internet history |
| Core Innovation | For You Page (FYP) — interest-based algorithmic feed replacing the social graph model used by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram |
| Key Distinction | Only major platform to position its algorithm — not social connections — at the centre of the user experience (Sage Journals, 2022) |
| Algorithm Reputation | “Almost mystical reputation” for predicting viewer preferences — studied by researchers at Penn State and elsewhere |
| Cultural Turning Point | July 2022: Two Kardashians and a Jenner publicly posted demanding Instagram “stop trying to be TikTok” — signalling TikTok’s dominance |
| Platform Model Disrupted | Social graph model (Facebook, early Instagram) — showing content from accounts you follow; replaced by interest/behaviour-based recommendations |
| Enshittification Concept | Coined by Cory Doctorow (Wired, Jan 2023) — describes platform decay: serve users → serve advertisers → serve shareholders → collapse |
| Facebook/Meta Comparison | Facebook forced publishers into a “pivot to video” based on falsified popularity data — companies invested billions; viewers never came; outlets folded |
| Amazon Parallel | Amazon Marketplace sellers now pay 45%+ of sale price in fees; first five screens of “cat bed” search are 50% ads — enshittification in action |
| U.S. Regulatory Status | U.S.-only spin-off with majority American ownership announced late 2025; algorithm ownership and content curation rules remain contested |
| Broader Legacy | Forced Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Video to pivot entirely toward short-form algorithmic video — industry-wide restructuring |
| Key Academic Voice | Kelley Cotter, Penn State (Dept. of Human-Centered Computing) — researching algorithmic literacy and bottom-up platform governance |
That reasoning was largely rejected by TikTok. The accounts you followed did not appear in its feed. Based on how long you paused, what you replayed, what you scrolled past, and what your finger lingered on for 30 seconds before moving on, the algorithm determined what you would watch next. It benefited from the discrepancy between what people claimed to want and what they actually watched. unrelentingly.
The outcome was an algorithm that researchers at Pennsylvania State University and other universities referred to as “almost mystical”—a system that appeared to comprehend its users more thoroughly than their own expressed preferences. Although that description seems flattering, there is something unnerving about it. You are no longer making decisions about what you eat if the algorithm knows you better than you do. The feed is making the decision for you. It is subtly altering your cultural experience in real time based on unintentional cues. According to scholarly research, TikTok was the first significant platform to make the algorithm—rather than the social network—the defining characteristic of the experience, placing this mechanism at the very center of its product. Everything else was incidental.
The impact on the remainder of the internet did not take long to manifest. Reels was introduced by Instagram. Shorts was introduced on YouTube. Facebook increased its efforts after encouraging its own users to watch videos. Within a few years of TikTok’s mainstream success, the industry shifted to short-form algorithmic video—not because the platforms wanted to, exactly, but because their own engagement metrics told them they had no choice. Users were spending less time elsewhere after spending hours on TikTok. The attention was followed by the platforms. They do it every time.
The term “enshittification” was created by author Cory Doctorow to describe what typically occurs next. Sadly, the pattern has persisted throughout the history of the platform. When a platform first launches, it truly benefits its users. For example, Amazon once struggled to make shopping affordable and convenient, Facebook once displayed content that the people you cared about had actually posted, and Google once displayed the results that were most pertinent to your search. After users are sufficiently locked in, the platform starts to extract value from them in order to support its business clients.
After business clients are locked in, it takes advantage of them as well, sending the excess to shareholders. Ultimately, screens of cloned products and paid placements are returned by Amazon’s “cat bed” search. Ads and content from accounts you never decided to follow are mixed together in Facebook’s feed. The useful item turns into a surface for monetization. TikTok’s current position in that cycle and the duration of its journey through the remaining phases are the questions.
The model that TikTok proved successful is more difficult to reverse than the platform itself. The For You Page was a debate about what social media ought to be, not a feature. And that argument prevailed. It’s still genuinely unclear whether TikTok will survive its regulatory struggles in the United States, whether a U.S. spin-off with a majority American ownership creates an algorithm that behaves differently, and whether ownership affects what gets promoted and what is subtly hidden. A reorganized TikTok might evolve into something significantly different from its current state. The people in charge of algorithms decide what content is elevated because they are not impartial. You can alter who makes those decisions by changing the ownership.
Observing all of this, there’s a sense that TikTok found a solution to a problem that the internet as a whole had been facing: how to display content that people genuinely want instead of content from people they just happen to know. However, the solution came with a set of unanticipated consequences. The internet is now easier to watch. Additionally, it is more passive in some ways that are hard to measure. The feed shifts. The finger moves. Based on how long you stayed, an algorithm is currently updating itself somewhere.
