It's about the long tail. If I look at the people that I have subscribed to on YouTube, and then take the mean of their count of subscribers, the mean is probably over a million. When I do the same on TikTok it's about 10k. There were probably the same people posting the same content on YouTube, but because there is no discovery, I never found them, and they never found viewers, so they stopped.

What you are subjected to on each platform is based on the discovery methods of that platform. There are probably very good reasons that American sites tend to have really bad discovery, it means that Ads are more impactful and it gives the creator of the algorithm all the power.

So it's not that bad people don't exist on TikTok, but because their discovery system is so good I end up watching content that I like. Whereas on YouTube, because the discovery system is so poor, I am subjected to watch things that the platform favors. YouTube favors high-energy, face-contorting, lowest common denominator content. Up until now because YouTube has been the only source of internet video, I had to go along with it as it was the best we had. Suddenly I don't.