The automatic culture of the world's favorite new social network.
How TikTok Is Rewriting the World (Published 2019)
TikTok will change the way your social media works — even if you’re avoiding it.
How TikTok ate the internet
You don’t tell TikTok what you want to see. It tells you. And the internet can’t get enough.
TikTok’s Greatest Asset Isn’t Its Algorithm—It’s Your Phone
Escaping the platform's addictive grasp means first overhauling our relationship to our devices.
Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization
The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.
Everything we like is a psyop | TechCrunch
If culture is shaped by TikTok's algorithmic feed, then it's time for us to decide where we draw the line between necessary marketing and inauthentic growth hacking.
TikTok - Make Your Day
TikTok - trends start here. On a device or on the web, viewers can watch and discover millions of personalized short videos. Download the app to get started.
TikTok - Make Your Day
TikTok - trends start here. On a device or on the web, viewers can watch and discover millions of personalized short videos. Download the app to get started.
BORDERLESS | TikTok, Instagram
NYC's hub for all things international and cross-cultural 🌎🌍🌏
TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface
On the app, users drape themselves in the trappings of Black culture—and steal the viral spotlight. It’s exploitation at its most refined and disturbing.
Despite international hires, TikTok is Chinese at its core
Rest of World spoke to more than a dozen employees who said that TikTok remains answerable to ByteDance rather than its international leadership.
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
FR#151 – TikTok Won’t Be Another Twitter
The conditions that made 'leaving Twitter' a meaningful part of the open social web's identity don't exist for TikTok. What happens when people can't see each other leave?
Pluralistic: Tiktokification shall set us free (17 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Mark Zuckerberg has a problem with your friends: they're the reason you signed up to use his platform, but they stubbornly refuse to organize your socialization to "maximize engagement." Every time you and your friends wrap up a social interaction and log off, Zuckerberg loses revenue.
Social Networking Utopia — Matt
In discussing the network topology of social networks — whether centralized like Facebook or federated like ActivityPub — I think the ult...
The TikTok AI Slop Report
New research from Kapwing reveals that nearly 60% of TikToks served to new users and children are AI slop. But which categories and tags are the worst affected — and what does this landscape look like to kids?
