TikTok has stepped over the point between the familiar self-directed feed and experience based on algorithmic observation and inference. When you open the app, you don't see a feed of your friends, but a page called "For You" - It's an algorithmic feed based on videos you've interacted with or just watched.

It's not full of people you know or things you've explicitly told it you want to see. It is constantly learning from you and builds up a model of what you tend to watch. In short, it is like an Instagram centered entirely around its "Explore" tab.

The first step to showing your content on most social networks is building an audience or having lots of friends.

With TikTok, you can make stuff for your friends. But those looking for something to post are immediately recruited into group challenges, hashtags, or shown popular songs. The pool of content is enormous.

TikTok is far from an evolutionary fluke. Its parent company, ByteDance, is first an artificial intelligence company, not a creator of mission-driven social platforms. It's content platforms enable people to enjoy content powered by AI technology, not humans.

The unintended consequences of these services are:

• Isolating users into worlds of points of view - a sort of "filter bubble.
• Capturing too much user time. TikTok's "Digital Wellbeing" settings include an option to enforce a password-protected time limit.