I don't know about that. Your analysis is correct in that it's ultimately about business incentives, but those incentives lead businesses to choose certain formats over others, thus promoting certain kinds of content.
It seems very far fetched that an app that looks like HN might become as popular as TikTok, and that's because the TikTok format is excellent at creating something that pulls people in by delivering short term rewards.
I'm not a Luddite, I'm sure there are some creators out there making clever tiktok videos, but that format really isn't conducive to, as you say, "long-term, coherent narrative building and multistep reasoning".