My wife would agree with you. She started TikTok back in 2018, prior to the merge with Musicly. She still posts, but not as much as she was doing prior to 2023. She has no desire to use TT for commercial purposes and it in the process of getting her self back on there, more in a format of what she was doing in the beginning.
Lemom-8 is an alternative to TT, in fact it's owned by the same original companies. It started in 2020 and currently runs similar to old school TT. Unfortunately people are always going to find a way to make use of something for commercial purposes.