An alternative hypotheses; TikTok really is horrible (along with many other social media companies) and it’s not old farts, ego, or groupthink.

The thing is, you can have negative feelings about tiktok (I am) without thinking that their jobs service is useless or doomed to failure.

I'm not much of a social media user, despite being of an age full of extremely active users. I find Tiktok in particular annoying, like someone took the inauthenticity of mediocre YouTube creators and decided that every user in the network should ape it.

But that has nothing to do with the jobs service, the fact that it may expand a company's recruiting reach or provide opportunity to those who don't fit well into the stodgy workflow of traditional job apps. Just because the tiktok application format wouldn't fit my co's hiring doesn't mean that there aren't tons of jobs for whom a short demonstration of personality and creativity is signal as useful as a resumé.

HN definitely has a negative attitude towards TikTok in particular, that goes beyond its normal hate of social media.

Not really. Facebook gets far, far more attention and negative attention around here than tiktoK.

The difference is that most people on here have used Facebook (wrote and read something) while I'm pretty certain most people here have not created a video on Tiktok.

I'd wager that's mostly because Facebook already had a decade before Tiktok to work its network effect magic, and nobody wants to subscribe to yet another social network that is Tiktok.

You don't have to be a creator to count as a user.

I was pretty sad when they banned it here in India. TikTok had become really popular among poorer people somehow. The income and class gaps in India mean that you don’t often get to know how the rural poor really live - TikTok was rare a window into that life. Helped me understand and empathize deeply.

The new replacements for it just don’t have the same vibe.

"<x> is horrible" if the judgemental attitude people are complaining about. As long as something doesnt eat babies, it's not horrible