Comment by somenameforme

Social media and other such things were gaining explosively popularity (and addiction) long before 'the algorithm' was even a thought. Even in the pre-social media age, newsgroups and other such social venues had a similar effect, but relatively low reach because it wasn't mainstream and there were some significant barriers to getting started.

I'd look at trends as well. There is a time when Facebook was hot and trendy, whereas now it's a place for people's parents and grandparents - while all the cool kids are on Instagram. I think it's safe to say that the shift there was more social than technological. Younger generations wanted their own thing.

And I'd see TikTok as being in the same vein there, especially as YouTube has gradually shifted away from being YouTube and more like CorpoTube. But there weren't any especially viable stateside competitors. The few that did exist basically just tried to be YouTube, but with less content and worse CDN networks.