Netflix wants you to believe it is not competing with TikTok. Yet during a recent on-stage interview at the Disrupt’25 San Francisco conference, Netflix’s Chief Technology Officer, Elizabeth Stone, laid out the company’s latest strategic push. This is set to include more interactivity, more short-form vertical video, and a return to live programming formats like ‘Star Search’ (the 40-year-old TV talent show), complete with real-time audience participation. But the insistence that these moves are somehow separate from the ongoing fight for mobile attention minutes is difficult to reconcile with the reality of the digital entertainment landscape. “Vertical video isn’t an attempt to become TikTok,” we are told. Instead, Netflix claims, it’s merely a discovery layer, a snackable pathway into Netflix’s…