It's odd to me that people seem to be mostly viewing this as a free speech/democracy issue. To me it's more like if newspapers were printed with toxic ink or something. The negatives of TikTok have nothing to do with the speech expressed by the "creators" on the platform, but rather with the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose. It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as…
One way the free speech angle might make sense is that TikTok (and other foreign-run social media) normally aren’t as susceptible to domestic pressure to throttle, shadowban, etc certain types of content (like airing of some politician’s dirty laundry). I could absolutely see that being the case. Trump and the Republican Party now have a solid thumb on US-based social media via Musk/Zuck, which makes lack of control…
TikTok has been uniquely subject to political pressure over the last half decade. They didn’t buddy up with Larry Ellison because Oracle has the best servers.