It's the scale, purpose and effectiveness that is worrying rather than the similarity. Actually, I wouldn't call them very similar beyond their intent - to keep

It's the scale, purpose and effectiveness that is worrying rather than the similarity. Actually, I wouldn't call them very similar beyond their intent - to keep people coming and making money but everything else is wildly different and doesn't make sense to compare. Many night clubs want users to have "fun" so they pay for a membership. TikTok wants users to stay so they can collect enough data to give it to advertisers or government to target them better. A single night club won't have more than 100 people at any given time. But tiktok boasts 1.5 billion+ users and millions of them are active at any given time. Few people going to night clubs won't decide the future of your country but millions on tiktok or other US centric social media might - facebook? instagram? This too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22611404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22611404 Other comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22612589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22612589