We should take inspiration from tiktok from what it does right.
I agree with this. If anyone's interested to work on a tiktok replacement, let's find a way to join up and work on making these various right things work in a privacy-respecting, fun, and FOSS set of projects. @[email protected] are you aware of any good rallying points? A new community perhaps or existing software project?
On the forks aspect, FOSS culture hasn't quite got things abstracted enough here. Yes, forks would happen but a lot of value would be destroyed in a sale of the upstream. Our goal should be to make it totally pointless and that's usually best done with copyleft and many copyright holders. Apt sources could also be more fluid and reputation aware about which repo they distribute from.