The same could be said of the US, perhaps with the exception of I.P. where there hasn’t been a real need to date.
Either way, if this leads to a ban of TikTok in the US, it’s going to be interesting to see how boards of teenagers react.
Take India for example. Either of the following is happening:
Users use VPNs to bypass the ban, Influencers move to Triller, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, or just give up altogether.
What's certain is like all social networks, the teens just find the next craze which the celebrities and influencers are. Even better if it makes them more money than before.
I won't be surprised to see the same happening in the US.
Even assuming that there are no vulnerabilities in Android and iOS, the Tiktok app has access to video, audio and GPS. If the infrastructure would be hosted in the US and the Tiktok source code has been reviewed, there would still be the possibility that the Tiktop application has a hidden backdoor that allows a third party to execute code within the context of the app and to locate a user (at least when the app is open) and listen to any conversion she has.
But the US government has been very thin on details on how serious the security concern actually is, and whether moving the infrastructure to an American owned company would actually change anything.
The US appears to regulate data protection under a number of sector specific regulatory acts. It will be difficult to restrict the flow of data between US and China without a recognition of social media as a sector that needs its own regulation without it affecting Google and Facebook.
Considering how powerful US tech companies are I can't see this sale making Americans safer through a legal framework.