Comment by beeflet

It's not decentralized at all. It represents a total commercialization of the town square.

The situation you reference with regard to Israel/Gaza is only possible because TikTok is partially controlled by Chinese interests. But it also goes to show that TikTok could have easily been banned or censored by western governments. Just kick them off the App Stores and block the servers. For example, there is no support Net Neutrality in the USA that would defend them if the government wanted to quietly throttle their network speed.

Social media as it exists now is not decentralized in any meaningful capacity.