Next step, TikTok pushes people into their mobile Web app instead, and US has to order all ISPs to block their website, hum sounds familiar.

it's going to be way harder to explain how tiktok is able to collect more personnal data than the regular ecommerce website.

As PWA there is already plenty of device data to collect.

I imagine you aren't aware of what analytics engines are capable of, specially if crossing data from multiple sources is available.

my point was that analytics on the web is already quite known. Everyone tracks your every move, tiktok won't be able to do much worse.

Fantastic. TikTok should be banned on national security grounds alone.

You're right. But they shall apply the same treatment for everything from Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft.

TikTok is being singled out for having uniquely bad data practices, which is true, but banning a single app won't solve the larger problem. This 1-off is a distraction from Congress's inability to pass real data protection legislation, and will only serve to benefit Reels and Shorts (not smaller competitiors, nor consumers).

TikTok is being singled out because it’s controlled by an adversarial government which the US may very well go to war with in the near future.

if America goes to war with China then we're all dead

Not to be overly pedantic but China does not have the capabilities to inflict damage to the U.S. commensurate with U.S. nuclear capabilities.

I believe this implies that escalation would be limited and probably wouldn’t involve substantial incursions into either mainland China or the U.S.

The scale of consequences of a nuclear exchange with Russia remains much more worrying at the present time.

So the U.S. nukes aren't "Made in China"?

As long as The Great Firewall exists I see no issue with the US, or any other country, doing a little banning of their own.

Obviously once it’s for their own crusade, HackerNews has no qualms exploiting the walled gardens it so despises.