TikTok needs to conduct surveillance, data collection and sell advertising.

Books do not need any of that. They do not even need electricity.

The former would seem far more brittle over time.

Lest we forget that the existence of "tech" companies, i.e., commercial websites that do not sell anything to their visitors, is a teeny-tiny blip in the history of information, almost indistinguishable unless one is right up close to it. We are literally living in that blip, so our perspective is, for lack of a better term, severly nearsighted.