TLDR TikTok is not comparable to the other services you mentioned because ByteDance is required to comply with Chinese intelligence, and China has made many public statements in recent years to the effect that it is a hostile, rival power to the United States. Allowing ByteDance to operate TikTok is granting a hostile government a tool to influence US public opinion as well as to track the locations and text messages of 170 million American citizens. Congress gave ByteDance the option to divest control so that they could get paid and TikTok could continue to operate, ByteDance refused.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-is-tiktok-being-banned-supr...
Why did Congress want to ban TikTok?
U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it as a vehicle to spy on Americans or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.
The concern is warranted, they said, because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence gathering. FBI Director Christopher Wray told House Intelligence Committee members last year that the Chinese government could compromise Americans' devices through the software.
As the House took up the divest-or-ban law in April 2024, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, compared it to a "spy balloon in Americans' phones." Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said that lawmakers learned in classified briefings "how rivers of data are being collected and shared in ways that are not well-aligned with American security interests."
"Why is it a security threat?" Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Friday. "If you have TikTok on your phone currently, it can track your whereabouts, it can read your text messages, it can track your keystrokes. It has access to your phone records."
If the Chinese government gets its hands on that information, "it's not just a national security threat, it's a personal security threat," Hawley said.
I see zero, little evidence that TikTok brought any particular sympathy to China.
Nor I've seen a single study that has demonstrated that TikTok is any more biased than other socials. In fact it was even less than some (such as Twitter).
I have always and will always say that the government does not have the sole right to influence me as a US citizen, and it is my right to slurp up "influence" from whoever and wherever I want to. The idea that Americans are too stupid to ingest whatever information is out there (edited or unedited, curated or not, propaganda or not) for the sake of democracy is a threat to the very idea of democracy itself.
The very fact that this argument has gained traction is the worst outcome of this entire debacle. I never ever ever thought I'd see Americans cheering that the government should limit the ability of their own fellow citizens to access information, and here we are.
What the United States has accomplish over the last 200 or so years is remarkable, but it's colossally myopic to believe that the US has never curtailed the rights of it's citizens in the name of security. The OSS was never legal. The CIA definitely should not be legal. And lord only knows what the NSA does. But I promise you that restricting access to a Chinese mobile app is not the most egregious thing the United States Government has ever done.
> "[...] it can read your text messages, it can track your keystrokes. It has access to your phone records."
Is that quote accurate though? For accessing text messages, you need to give them an OS permission. For tracking keystrokes, they need to install a keyboard app and you need to select it and use it in the app whose keystrokes they're interested in. For phone records, you again need to grant a separate permission.
I don't use Tiktok but the current gatekeepers of this world don't usually allow unnecessary permissions
Is the narrative on other platforms under their control? What does that even mean? US hardly has coherent narrative these days anyway or at least it changes every 4 years.
Regardless what benefits can you see in allowing the CCP to shape US public opinion in any way?