My take on this was user generated content = content generated by people you follow vs network generated content = content generated by people that you don't follow that the network recommends to you.

There's a huge difference between TikTok's FYP and Following Page and Friends page. While content is all user generated, I expect something different from each of these three modes.

Same, but I think you got it backwards, at least based on their description.

User-generated content = content generated by all users (i.e., users you follow and users you don't)

Network-generated content = content generated by users in your network (i.e., users you follow)

Makes sense. I think my framing would make sense if it said platform-generated content. Network per your framing makes more sense.

The description by the author makes it confusing with "network" being used in both terms; definition of one and the term itself in the other.

Yeah had the same issue as above but this does help clear it up

It's just a poor description. Maybe a better way to frame this is user control of content served, from a black box based on your data (Tiktok) to fully deterministic by user action (RSS). This largely runs parallel to the time vs algo based axis though.

They are the same content, but they’re not the same product at all.

You could say that all TikTok does is repackage content for wider distribution across the app in a more aggressive way than social apps had before.

Agreed, I also found this confusing.