Exactly. I've been on Tik Tok for a few months and I feel like I've seen a hundred times as many interesting and relevant videos that have actually improved my life and inspired purchases as I've ever seen on YouTube, mostly just on my For You Page (aka its recommendation algorithm). As a user, it doesn't feel like magical AI, it just feels like Tik Tok quickly grokked my most basic demographic information and frequently tries feeding me things that anyone would guess might be relevant to a 40 year old American dad who likes videogames (aka stuff Google knows). It's perplexing that Google, masters of A/B testing, can't figure out that parenting advice or retrogaming content might be relevant to me.

Granted the interaction model is very different, and who knows if I'd ever commit to watching even a 5 minute YouTube video on something I'm not primed to watch, but after Tik Tok, Youtube feels like a stale product of yesteryear.