TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy
Ok I’m not saying the OP is wrong, but couldn’t almost all of these arguments be made for Facebook / Instagram / Snapchat / etc as well? In general, social media has all these problems with addiction, platforms actively try to exploit that, and harvest data to monetise upon their users.<p>From the article:<p>“With these astounding numbers, TikTok must have something special, right?<p>“Well it has. It uses manipulative user experience (UX) design to keep users glued to it. It is built to trigger compulsive use, especially in more impressionable audiences such as teenagers. It is also harmful to privacy.”<p>Nothing of this list makes TikTok special, the only thing that makes it special is that it’s Chinese, and therefor subjected to more scrutiny (not claiming whether that’s justified or not, that’s another discussion in itself).