Even if it didn't share data.. it's designed from the beginning to be addictive. While other platforms like Facebook and Instagram grew into being platforms with aims to be addictive, I believe they started in a more neutral place. This type of app should be treated like smoking imo.
Queue the "you can find educational material on tiktok!" posts by the subset of HN who really love the app and the company.
Yes, as Cal Newport would point out - it’s not that social apps aren’t in some way useful, it’s whether the value they deliver is worth the price they exact by “stealing” large amounts of your time.
It's too jarring to me with the constant playing of the next thing. It's just content content content with no free time in between for you to be alone with your own thoughts. You could spend three hours on the app and have no time for a single independent thought of your own at all. At least three hours in front of cable TV would mean you'd do some introspection when you got up to pee during the commercials.
Queue the "you can find educational material on tiktok!" posts by the subset of HN who really love the app and the company.