While I could not give less of a shit about TikTok except as a possible personal source of revenue for people who want to hire me to make videos for them, I'm a hell of a lot more worried about the influence of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now that you're allowed to do things like call queer people mentally ill pedophiles and immigrants are dirty criminals.
That's irrelevant to the fact that half the population is using a propaganda machine controlled by a foreign enemy's government. If Russia had a social media platform, banning it would be appropriate too.
I also think that Meta and Twitter should be banned, but that's a different conversation.
Twitter still falls under US law, TikTok doesn't and there's no way to make it, that's the problem.
China is actively helping Russia in Ukraine, it is using backdoors in their technology to hack our infrastructure, was caught with spying, actively prepares to invade Taiwan which of happens will set up our technology backwards as we won't be able to produce latest chips, and you're questioning why US is blocking an app that already has direct influence over 17 million Americans?
China isn't our friend, it doesn't do what a friendly nation would normally do.
Both sides can be bad, with TikTok the problem is that it is controlled by an adversary, a nation that doesn't have good relationship with the US and wants it to collapse.
Frankly if I had power I would go after Twitter and Meta as well.
I mean the owners of meta and Twitter also want the current version of America to collapse too. They're as much of a threat in that respect as any foreign country is.
I'm 100000% of the mind that this is purely a profit thing. Tictok got too big and no Americans are getting enough of a cut of that so they want to take it. Same with BYD. It's a threat to American electric car makers so they need to "do away" with it.
You won't find me supporting Twitter or Meta, and I won't deny that their owners do seem to be influenced by foreign governments (directly or indirectly), but TikTok is clearly information Domain Warfare and it would be hell of a stupid to continue allowing it if they are still controlled by Chinese government. This is why that sale is for.
The single one they banned was the only one that leaned more to the left in terms of content overall. (The left vs. right dichotomy remains a relevant descriptor as long as major parties define themselves in this way.) Even people who want all social media banned should see a problem in the lopsidedness of this outcome and the problem it poses for democracy.
Yeah they did do what they could to appease their critics/advertisers (a little over a year ago I think?) but the user base was ignoring it and still favouring leftist content even after the algorithm tweak you mention, if only slightly. In the Pew-Knight study from last summer, it was also only second to Twitter among users who use the site to get news on political issues. Keeping in mind that everyone whose job is to do or talk about politics is on Twitter and only some of them are on the other platforms, I think that means a lot.
That's the core reason for requirement to sell it. Right now there's no way to regulate it. It is an app that influences 17 million Americans controlled by a country that right now regularly conducted cyber attacks on our infrastructure. What could go wrong?