There's a a lot of laws binding those companies and then there's everything going on behind closed doors which people aren't told about. I'm sure they're already doing a lot of policing when it comes to narrative, data, all that sort of things. Why they let Russians act so freely, I'm not sure, I think there might've been an ideological or political reason behind that.
It's like how American movies and shows are pushing certain narratives. I doubt there's need for any laws and public acts to make it so, rather it's just understood and things happen behind closed doors. How much the US can control foreign, especially say Chinese media productions, of course it's going to be less capable of doing that.
Trump for example has bullied social media companies to do as he says without official acts, just threats and fear of possible action. Easier to bully local companies than foreign ones.
I'm not sure why you keep pursuing this circular debate. My entire point has been it doesn't matter if it's a foreign app or not if the government has no desire to control domestic social media due to the fact that the billionaires who own it are directly responsible for electing said government.
You keep bringing up the ability to bring them to heel like it's in any way relevant when I've seen no evidence of meta or X in any way being forced to moderate their platforms - in fact the opposite has been proven abundantly true in the last 10 years. Stop trying to rely on "well maybe a foreign app might be harder to control hypothetically, despite the fact that American apps are completely uncontrolled". It's irrelevant to the reality of the situation we have now and therefore a flimsy excuse to protect domestic billionaires interests.
I didn't wish a circular debate. You engaged in one, retreading things already said (by me no less) right at the start. It's baffling.
You keep bringing up the ability to bring them to heel
You were arguing about the ability. That's probably why... lol. The whole thing is really simple. American government would rather deal with local companies that they can exert more power over, had they the inclination to do so. Makes them more at ease.
It was never about ability, you brought it up and I countered with the fact that ability means nothing if you don't enforce it...... Aaaaaaand then you brought up ability again like it's relevant.