Comment by vannevar

Social media companies are in a bind. They're companies, so they have to grow or die. But they're invested in their current platform, and the likelihood of a particular innovation being successful is low, so it's tough for them to do radical R&D, they're limited to tweaking their current platform. This opens the door to startups, which can capture the new (young) users who aren't committed to a platform. A small number of startups succeed and experience exponential growth that starts cutting into the growth of the established players. The Instagrams of the world have to chase features to retain growth (a strategy ultimately doomed to fail), or they will have to acquire the upstarts. Because of its close ties with the Chinese government any kind of merger or acquisition with TikTok is fraught with potential problems. Instagram is taking the only path available to it, as unlikely to succeed as it is.