The last twelve months, full of geopolitical negotiations, panic attacks by influencers and calls to the hashtivism (the postmodern form of political activity based on repeating a hashtag) made it clear that TikTok is at the center of conversations about the Internet. However, these analyzes sometimes forget the most important thing: TikTok will never die because today all social networks are TikTok.
According to the American journalist Hana Kiros, we are witnessing the “tiktokenization of the Internet.” Although the Chinese app is not the first to use AI algorithms to capture the attention of its users, it is the one that has done it best.
And its logic: a virtually infinite waterfall of short and vertical short videos that entertain while leaving you wanting to see more, has been so effective that its competitors have imitated it.
In fact, until three or four years ago, social networks showed us content that our contacts shared. Today, however, they show us “what is viral”, those things that are popular and that a recommendation system evaluates that it will attract our attention.
This betrayal of the fundamental principles of apps (what is social about a social network that doesn’t show me what my friends are doing?) can be seen as another example of what the Canadian critic Cory Doctorow called “enshittification” from the Internet: the degradation and decay of our experience online thanks to the excessive advance of platforms and social networks that operate with logics opposite to what we expected at the beginning of the century when hyperconnectivity emerged with great possibilities.
According to Doctorow, it is a process that has three stages. First, platforms seduce users with an attractive offer. Then, they modify their rules to turn them into clients of their advertisers and, finally, they betray their advertisers by preventing them from developing their businesses outside the platforms.
This is, in fact, what happened with Facebookwhich was born two decades ago with the goal of connecting us even more with friends, family and co-workers. Then he began to use those connections and the information generated there as basis of an advertising business with an unprecedented level of customization so far. Today it is not only full of advertisements but even small businesses must use its tools to sell or they cannot operate.
Similar processes can be found in Snapchat, Instagram and especially in X, where Even if we block a person or company, we will continue to see their posts and paying for a membership is the best method to get more people to see our content.
Is there a way to transform these networks and make them better? Europe is trying with greater regulation and our neighbor Brazil managed to bend the will of Elon Musk last year with high fines and bans. A less explored path is that of competition: what if the experiment of moving to more transparent networks such as Bluesky o Mastodon works? Maybe it’s time to test the power of users.