> Is TikTok fundamentally different from HN in some way?

absolutely!

  - not ad driven 
  - not follower / likes driven (yes, there's karma but there's no concept of following people, notifications for likes, etc.) 
  - not engagement driven 
  - not algorithmically driven (yes, the home page is, but you can just do /active for example, or /new ; I rarely go the home page) 
  - there isn't an endless amount of "new content"
  - no hosted content (you have to link to something to show it)
  - no revenue

The short video platforms are almost exclusively individual-algorithmic garbage-recommending platforms designed for maximum passivity.

A couple major differences here are:

* Not video

* Meant more for commmunity/interactivity

* Not individual algorithmic

So a site like this optimizes for most-user-upvoted content, to try to surface content that is found interesting by people who are presumably somewhat like you. That seems pretty different from a self-serving platform that optimizes for whatever keeps you from blinking.

I don't think HN has ever claimed to be especially innovative.

Fundamentally it’s super different from HN, what do you mean?