This will definitely not make me use TikTok. I can only imagine what kind of garbage people will post on text form. I'm obviously not the target demographic for that platform but I cannot comprehend what people enjoy about it. I had some old coworkers who used to send me tiktoks daily and they were annoying, insane, made no sense. Now put that in text format.
The way social media companies just chase each others features is ridiculous. They can't be content with being unique or offering a specialized feature set. No, they all have to do image posts, then stores, then video, then short videos.
However, anything that helps kill the trend of every goddamned thing being a video even when it doesn't need to be is a very welcome change
If TikTok starts allowing standard hyperlinks it would dramatically reduce the platform's peak harm potential. Tiktok's single biggest problem rn is that it is literally impossible to cite your sources - that's why it's the runaway global leader for misinformation. Adding text would help, bringing it back down to regular Facebook levels of social erosion and election distortion.
My instagram usage nowdays consists of me scrolling past 20 videos untill I reach the end of my feed and then close the site and realize it gave me zero content. For some reason I still go there once a day.
Every app wants to capture all of your time, but what these app companies don't realize is that it's sometimes better to do one thing really well and capture 100% of time spent on that particular thing.
TikTok already handles text posts - it's called "teenagers pointing at captions on their videos and making faces". It's the culture, and TikTok has excelled at this very video-focused culture. Adding text posts will bore the sorts of people who are on TikTok for videos and may result in less engagement, not more.