TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. That's basically the whole story.
Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally useful sense of the word, people just like it and use it. You may as well write a blog post saying "TV is addictive and it's dying because of commercials". It's just not an accurate conceptualization if the landscape.
My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.
She can use custom apps for YouTube like Newpipe, which offer YouTube experiences without ads and Shorts.
I hadn't heard of newpipe before so just installed it and found that it had much more intrusive ads than regular YouTube.
There is no Newpipe on the Play store, it breaks the T&S of the play store.
Here is the official website for Newpipe https://newpipe.net/