The “je ne sais quoi” of TikTok:

It’s an unambiguously positive change in social media, on pretty much every front. To try to get it down to a bulleted list:

• Organic audience acquisition without need for self promotion.
• Types of content that can flourish is much broader.
• Incredible collaboration tools, leading to mixing and remixing art on the platform. The only other example of this I can think of this on other social platforms is textual. Quoting someone’s tweet and commenting on it and the like.
• Manages to maintain a platform-level “zeitgeist” of sorts, similar to Twitter, while also giving users highly customized experiences. It does this without the need for trending topics or curated hashtags, it’s all in the algorithm.
• Fosters empathy instead of sowing division. Much less emphasis on “culture war” and politics.