>What have Google and Facebook been doing all this time?
Trying their hardest to replace quality results with things that will generate ad revenue while still making the user feel like they're getting the results they wanted.
>With all the data Google and Facebook have on everyone why is Tiktok, which I'm using with an email unconnected to anything else of mine and all iPhone privacy settings enabled, far better at showing me what I want?
I checked out TikTok for half a second and noticed that it's just damn good at going, "Hey, tenebrisalietum asked to see how to hang drywall, so show them how to hang drywall". Google sorta does that, too, but as you said, they're going, "Hey, tenebrisalietum wants to see how to hang drywall, does one of our advertisers have a video about that that we can show them? Lowe's does? Cool, fuck the quality of it, let's get that money".
TikTok knows that people just want to be shown what they ask for without all the extra bullshit. FB and Google started down the path of adding bullshit for money, and they won't go back at this point.