None of these platforms really seem to be algorithm driven to me at all. I spent pretty much all of last year creating and uploading content, and also watching content on TikTok, and if you ask me, I think most of the content is controlled simply by keywords that moderators tag onto videos and whether or not the poster pays to promote a post. There were even reports that manual post visibility boosting was an option that moderators at TikTok frequently use. If the platforms can pre-select what goes viral, then nothing you see is organic at all, and it only gets worse and more unfair to creators that don't pay for visibility as profit making becomes the primary focus for any social platform.

These platforms run teams of content moderators to tag posts within seconds of their upload... Despite faster than ever mobile networks and ultra-compressed video files, content often takes longer than normal to upload for this very reason. With a quick manual review and (taxonomy) tagging solution, content can be grouped in any number of ways for tailored playback by partially scripted (not necessarily algorithmic) methods. Money generated from content on the platform is carefully engineered to make certain sounds (which are used to track royalties) most popular on TikTok. The process of selecting a popular sound for most videos means that a huge amount of the royalty payments go to only a few owners of the most popular sounds on the platform (This also explains why certain sounds repeat constantly even though you choose not to hear them any more or block them in controls).

There is little intelligence in what TikTok plays for people from what I observe, the reason why TikTok looks intelligent is that they heavily gaslight content creators on their potential for success on the platform, and frequently make posting competitive and challenging to dictate what creators post. The end result is a vast stream of daily (relatively high quality and topical) free content generated by legions of young (and even old people) who are desperate to be seen, in hopes that it will earn them income. The platform also creates a competition between rich and poor, in which trust fund kids (and drug dealers) can pay vast sums of money to dominate the for-you feed and to gain tons of followers, while middle and lower class participants are encouraged to think that content is viral and liked for fair reasons or because the posters know secrets that no one else does.

Many people are dropping from using the most dominant platforms now because they've spent time chasing the schemes and found that there is no reward after long periods of hard work. These sites are run like the lottery now, and manipulated like casinos, where only a few people are permitted to win, primarily to encourage others to play, and where the super rich, connected and influential people, and platform owners are usually the only potential big winners..

Children are the worst victims of this social media culture now, because in the process of creating content and being encouraged to participate, they waste time out of their lives not doing more rewarding things, they can get exploited by others in the process, they also suffer the mental stress of being manipulated and viewing things they're not ready for, and they often resort to oversharing and being sexualized in the competitive environment in hopes of popularity that, more often than not, is not rewarded or that returns little long-term career value.