Is it silly? It's already being banned from US and European government devices. It is just one more sentence away from being banned for general population in those huge regions.

There is big chasm between banning an app from fleet devices and banning both an app and a website in an entire country. Especially one that is so enormously popular.

I cannot recall the last time I've seen such a bipartisan push for something so monumental. Just within the past week, Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mark Warner (D-VA) have been saying virtually the same thing: TikTok is an unprecedented national security threat.

they're literally just forcing them to build datacenters to keep the data for Americans in America (and Indians in India, etc). TikTok is already publicly hiring a ton of people for this

Once the data doesn't leave America this is going to go away.

This is not that much different than just complying with the type of regulations the EU has. The American version is just involving a lot more chest pounding and fluff because there's no existing laws to enforce to make them do this. So they just have to do it through threats and relatively minor policy changes (like banning on government phones).

I'm honestly more surprised that any social media apps were ever allowed on government devices.

Yes it is. The government is just trying to get the data to stay within the US. TikTok only needs facilities here (and maybe some sort of air gap) to comply.

Were US and European government officials/workers really big TikTok'ers to begin with?

TikTok got banned in India. I don't see why it can't get banned in US given CCP's complete control over Chinese companies

India regularly bans sites.

just last month https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156726845/indian-tax-authori...

USA is different

Our state has passed SB 20. There are 4 days left in the current legislative session. The House had the 2nd reading of the bill today, and it is scheduled for passage on tomorrow's House Orders of the Day. Once it passes tomorrow, it goes to the governor.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb20.html

The current version bans TikTok on all state owned computer networks (this includes banning web access). This includes public libraries, schools and universities. There's a substitute pending that would exclude universities from the ban. There's no guarantee that this substitute will be part of what gets passed.