Why does who runs the app matter? Stopping someone from saying something is still silencing them, even if someone else saying it would be okay.
This is just setting the groundwork for the government controlling social media even more than it already does, because they know how influential it is.
I'm not defending the PRC in the slightest. I fundamentally disagree with the government forcing a sale of a company due to its social media app. This is different from every other example of banning PRC-backed companies (ex: Huawei, TP-LINK, etc) because there is genuinely a plausible argument for natsec. With TikTok there just is no such argument, other than the video content being controlled by a foreign hostile entity. And I just fail to be convinced that that's enough to ban it. Do we ban Russia Today?