Of course, I am big fan of #Loops video service, federated with us. But the trick of the TikTok was really the addictive algorithm. You can't expect Fediverse users to watch thousands of cool, but otherwise average videos, served more or less randomly.
I feel somehow funny, like we are trying to provide substitution therapy or so. Or kind of harm-reduction community center.
There are various reasons, why people choose to be online. One of them is having lot of time to waste, but the addiction, the "cheap dopamine" is one of reasons. The cheap dopamine without advertising breaks is interesting option, of course. Buy what TikTok really did was to encourage people to produce viral content. Some users were paid to create content and the professionally made content was what was consumed by passive users.
I would still like to see more content available in the Fediverse. But we need to understand the motivation of the crowds. Some of them like to be "where everybody is", but some people preferred place where there are less people, for various reasons. Some people like the idea of huge audience and chance to go viral. Some others were seeking more stable community.
Maybe, we would need some kind of "configurable algorithm", where we could choose from various filters . The emoji feedback would probably help. It all comes down to categorizing content, and while wisely choosing people to follow is one way to categorize content, but not really effective.
Perhaps some kind of algorithm, not optimized for showing ads, but simply to switch between different views quickly.
Eg. "popular among people, who I follow" vs. "popular among people, who follow me" - this is very basic socal-cognitive approach.