I get the sentiment here. TikTok is in a lot of ways dubious. The links to the Chinese government are very scary (even if TikTok was resisting China, it cannot ignore laws that allow the government to access basically all user data), privacy isn’t great either, and poor moderation. However, something not being made clear enough is that the bill currently making its way through the US government titled “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” isn’t just targeting TikTok, that’s what it is being used for right now, but it allows the president to declare any "foreign adversary-controlled applications" that are deemed as a significant national security threat to the US. This feels quite a bit like a slippery slope, sure, banning TikTok might be reasonable, but what if in the future the US decides to ban another social media in the name of national security when it’s more about ideology per se. There’s also the issue of whether you’re okay with ALL future presidents having this power. I’m not defending TikTok, but come on, banning something won’t actually stop TikTok, VPN’s exist. What would actually have not perfect, but some real effect is if the US would adopt strong privacy and data laws like the EU’s GDPR - this would rein in TikTok, and all tech companies, because let’s be real, they’re all evil and vying to sell our data, Meta has been accused of election interference y’know. The current solution IMO leads to some real issues in the future.