Apparently many (predominantly younger) people use TikTok as a search engine. I've never used social media, so I don't see the appeal, but more recently I've started to use HN as a kind of search engine.

I mostly use it when I want to find software (there's plenty of software projects posted here because of Show HN), but I also search for specific topics and keywords, hoping that interesting results might pop up.

I think, that for me, the appeal is knowing that many HN posts are really interesting and things that you wouldn't find on a normal search engine. Search engines, like Google, have become very commercial and because I delete cookies, google does always deliever the best results (this is only in my case).