> The threat of tiktok is that the Chinese government has direct control over what content it's users consume.

The same can be said of every single website hosted in China, but they aren't (yet) banning all Chinese websites or all content hosted in any other countries. Why not?

The vast majority of the content US citizens view on TikTok was created by other US citizens and that content is no different than the content available on youtube or any other social media platform. Certainly China can influence what types of content people see (and they've done a lot of messed up stuff in the past like filtering out "ugly, poor, and disabled" people's videos) but it isn't as if they can flip a switch and start only showing children dancing to "The East Is Red" and expect to keep their popularity. There seems to be no evidence that TikTok is any more manipulative or dangerous than any other social media platform. Youtube is just as happy to push extremist content to increase engagement but nobody is talking about banning them.

Th difference is that none of those platforms have an interest in the toppling of western powers.

And yet every one of those platforms allows China, Russia, or any others who do want to topple western powers abuse them. They know their algorithms push the most extremist divisive content it can find to drive views/engagement and they know full well that while they're stuffing their pockets with cash they're also threatening our mental health, our safety, and our democracy. US owned social media platforms might not be dead set on ending America, but they'll happily help that along if it'll increase next quarter profits and they don't have to pay more humans to moderate or fact check.

> The same can be said of every single website hosted in China, but they aren't (yet) banning all Chinese websites or all content hosted in any other countries. Why not?

I imagine the US audience for tiktok is larger than all chinese websites combined.

I'm not very comforted by the idea that our government won't censor content from other countries as long as we aren't looking at it. If the content is legal, it should be allowed.

I agree completely but there's so many negatives in your sentence it took me a while to parse. "I am concerned about any censorship, regardless of how popular the content is"

I think you're right about it being a diversion, but I think it's because the American government specifically does not want to make this into a free speech issue because it would directly undermine American businesses that do exactly the same thing and pose almost exactly the same risk of being weaponised by foreign powers (... as we know they have been already) against American citizens.

If it turns out that maybe "good speech" simply can't counter "bad speech" when the latter is applied with the resources of nation states behind it, that doesn't feel like an argument the government can win (because of 1A).

Ironically, the data collection angle is still critically important for US businesses and limiting the access and use of citizen data would be great for everyone, but it seems very clear that is not on the table for the same reasons.