What Instagram Can Learn from Tiktok

A post that hopefully gives non-users a better understanding of why Tiktok is so popular and what the other social media apps are getting wrong

The future of Tiktok in the United States is still unclear. Legislation was passed under Biden back in April 2024 that required Tiktok to be banned if it wasn’t sold to an American company with the law supposedly going into effect this past January. It went dark briefly on January 19th (the night before Trump’s inauguration), returned about 14 hours later with an unsettling pop-up that thanked our new president and just last week, it became available to download again, reportedly after Apple and Google both received letters from the Justice Department giving them clearance to bring the app back to their digital stores without facing fines. Obviously, Trump wants Tiktok to continue to exist in the United States, speaking often about potential deals with American buyers, but to my knowledge, Tiktok has never indicated a willingness to sell. Why is Trump so interested in delaying the ban and saving Tiktok? He’s said it’s because he thinks Tiktok likes him. Which might be confusing to many of Tiktok’s left leaning users who feel like Tiktok is one of the few places they see their views reflected online. I think both perspectives help explain why Tiktok is so popular— it puts you into algorithms where you feel like you belong, which is reflected not just in the content you see, but perhaps even more importantly, in the comment sections. If you are a non-user struggling to understand what makes Tiktok so special or a social media app trying to replicate the magic, I would argue that you need to stop focusing on the content and start paying attention to the quality of the comment sections.

While all the other social media apps seem to play into this idea that rage bait, hate watching, and comparison culture keep you on their platforms, Tiktok’s algorithm is all about matching creators and content with the people who will actually like it. When people like the content they are served, it means you are more likely to have a comment section that is positive and supportive. This is the main reason many people think Tiktok is a left leaning platform— they are just put into a left leaning algorithm where most people are in agreement. Now you could argue this is bad because it gives you a false perception of what’s going on in the world, or you could argue that it’s good, because it lets you more easily use Tiktok for what you want from social media— entertainment and community. Positive comments, in addition to making users feel good about the Tiktok community, also help content creators feel more comfortable posting on the platform, which is why they tend to post more often than on platforms like Instagram.

Please understand, I love Instagram. But I feel like my love for the platform is specifically around my own community. When I go on Instagram, I’m not scrolling. I am posting and then interacting with my own audience in my comment section and in my direct messages. You guys are absolutely lovely. I chalk it up to the fact that Instagram very rarely shares my content outside my current audience, so almost no one finds me or follows me by accident. In talking to friends who aren’t creators, it seems to me that they are also on Instagram mainly to keep up with very specific people (whether that be people in real life or creators they are invested in), and not for the Instagram experience as a whole. This is because the second you click on the comments on almost any other account, other than the ones you follow, it’s a deluge of angry messages and haters, posting extreme views even on the most innocuous of content. I don’t think it’s overstating to say this, but the hatred in Instagram comment sections can often leave me questioning all of humanity. Are these bots? Or are people really this awful???

Meanwhile, over on Tiktok, whether I follow that account or not, the comment sections are absolutely delightful. So delightful that I often spend more time reading comment sections than I do watching the content. Was anybody else a big fan of Gawker back in the day? I know I’ve talked about this before, but Gawker was my people and my homepage for years. What made that site so great was not the content (although it was in the early years), it was the quality of the commenters. And that’s very much what Tiktok feels like. The comments sections are often hilarious. And the more you are clued into what is happening on Tiktok, the funnier they become. Because there are LAYERS. Inside jokes within inside jokes that stretch from video to video and compound over time, so that you feel like you are in a secret club of incredibly clever people. It’s very satisfying when you get the joke. Or when you don’t get the joke, so you go down a rabbit hole to figure out the joke, and then you know the joke for the next time.

On Gawker, the comment section was great because you needed to prove yourself a good commenter before they would make your comments public. On Tiktok, it’s because the best comments get likes and then rise to the top. Often I’ll watch a video and go straight to the comments, spending the majority of my time there, because the communal response is the best part of the platform. And sometimes the funniest comments are from brands, which as an advertising person, I really appreciate. Just imagining a 25yo sitting in a cubicle somewhere putting on their Duolingo or Cheeto hat to make a perfectly on brand comment on something like the Couch Guy or Doug’s Winter Party brings me immense amounts of joy.

Now this is not always the experience when you first join Tiktok, which is what the majority of the naysayers have experienced. When you first go on Tiktok, it serves you up funny videos, but then as it starts to get to know you, it can send you down some weird paths. This is because for many of us, our natural inclination is to spend more time with content that scares us or confirms our bias. This is why Facebook, Instagram and X have taken us all to such bad places at times. But what makes the Tiktok algorithm different is that it is very easy to manipulate. You can course correct and do it quickly. When you tell Tiktok you don’t want to see something (even just by scrolling past it), it immediately recognizes your preference and adjusts. And what Tiktok has determined, more than any other platform that I’ve used, is that what keeps you scrolling and engaged is not rage bait or divisiveness or comparison culture, it’s escape, enjoyment and humor.

There have been very few times in my 15 year career in social media that a platform’s content has compelled me to consume more than I wanted to create, but that’s been the danger for me with Tiktok. It’s too damn fresh and entertaining. It’s a way to feel like part of the culture, understand the inside jokes of a younger generation and relate to things my kids are talking about in real life. It’s a very weird feeling to realize that so many trends and jokes and songs and celebrities originate with Tiktok, and then to be there as you see them launch themselves into the real world, like you are partly responsible for what made them popular. So much of what we see on mainstream media comes from mainstream media people scrolling tiktok.

It’s not just your mom sending you an Instagram reel you saw on Tiktok three wekes ago. It’s the New York Times. It’s the New Yorker. It’s pretty much every mainstream publication who scours Tiktok for inspiration. For instance, Mike sent me a article from New York magazine yesterday which used real life examples of how wealthy parents have helped out their adult children. Immediately, I was like— the author 100% got that idea from a tiktok I saw a few weeks ago. Someone posed the question and then people gave examples in the comments. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author not only got the idea from Tiktok but reached out to those commenters for his sources, meaning the content sparked the idea but the comments provided the meat of the article.

I have mixed feelings about the potential Tiktok ban. I get the danger of China owning an app that could influence Americans, but I also fear that if Tiktok were to sell to an American company, that company wouldn’t understand what makes it great and would ruin it. More than anything, I hope American platforms like Instagram can learn a lesson from Tiktok. That it’s not really about motivating creators to make more content for reels or giving us more and more tools to do so. What they need to do is better cultivate the culture of the comment sections. The greatest reward for content creators is not the amount of views, it’s positive feedback. The greatest reward for consumers is not a funny video, it’s sharing a laugh with a group.

It’s not the content that makes a social media app great. It’s the community.

What social media apps are you most active on and why? Please share your thoughts in the comments. And if you liked this post, please click the heart. It’s the only way I know if my substacks resonate!