To me, the interesting question is why a foreign company is doing a better job of understanding what American teenagers wanted than domestic firms with seemingly infinite bankroll to work with.

Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize?

I know, you can't really set out to manufacture "cool", but maybe we need to get back the spark in this sector. I don't think the existing players are capable of creating an appealing blank-slate social platform. They might have the cash and technical chops, but they have negative social currency. Facebook/Meta's brand is hopelessly tainted: if it's not creepy spying, it's still where Mom and Dad hang out to swap antivax memes. Google might have a little more cool left-- not much-- but they're also attached to such teen favourites as "crappy limited school-provided Chromebook" and "we have 92 chat apps on our phones and still can't reach each other".