There is a well known saying in TikTok - that you are responsible for creating your own For You Page (FYP).

Everytime I get a pretty girl doing a thirst trap little dance or anything else a not productive use of my time, I click 'not interested'. Everytime I get something of interest I click like or follow the creator or comment on it.

I get most of my tech news from TikTok. If open ai drops a new model or whatever Tiktok knows I want to know.

So the article is wrong, it's not wasted time if the algo is tuned well.