The Algorithm Does Not Algorithm Over There
Why Reels and Shorts don't compare to TikTok
Millions of TikTok users went to bed emotional on Saturday night, only to wake on Sunday to a gift equivalent to Christmas morning — TikTok was back.
Many users compared the 14 hours spent on alternatives like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to being in time out. While the future of this app is pretty unclear, one thing is not: TikTok alternatives suck.
Comment data pulled from @octopusslover8 on TikTok at 7:45pm EST on January 19th, with the video captioned “That was super fucking miserable”.
If TikTok were to disappear more permanently, the other apps have some work to do, most namely in their algorithm. Under the comment thread on Jake’s video regarding the algorithm, @cyssecretspam said “mines tooo strict with it. i’ll like one video of food and the next 30 in a row will be of food it drives me NUTS” and riles.elizabeth said “literally i liked ONE makeup video and then my entire explore page was makeup like no 🥰🤗”. These comments resonated the most with other users, garnering 1.7K likes combined, shining a light on the importance of a social media algorithm that balances personalization, content variety, and inclusivity — something that feels significantly more dynamic and addictive than Reels or Shorts.
While the majority of comments touched on the dislike of Instagram and YouTube’s TikTok dupes, Rednote came through in an interesting light. @abbienorthrup commented “Rednote was fire actually I’m gonna keep it” and got 10.8K likes. We aren’t going to get our hopes too high with that app sticking around though…
What comes next with these apps remains a mystery, but what’s not unclear is why people can agree TikTok stays #1.