> Maybe taking over the recommendations algorithm (or banning any kind of algorithmic feed other than chronogical) would have sparked less concerns.

Literally all they had to do was sell the CCPs stake in the company to anybody not in the CCP and they were unwilling to do that, opting to burn the whole company down instead.

If they did that one thing all this would be avoided.

I find your phrasing funny, the ‘they’ in ‘all they had to do was sell the CCPs stake’ is the CCP (under the operative theory that the CCP completely controls ByteDance). So it seems rather odd to say that the CCP was unwilling to sell their ‘stake’. Obviously the CCP is not going to willing give up their massively influential, culture destroying app (I don’t support this version of reality, but it is how politicians are trying to sell this move), if the CCP can not gain use from the app what point would there be in keeping it alive? If ByteDance is just a tool for Chinese propaganda, disguised as a tech company, there was never any possibility that the company could disengage from its CCP control and all of this was just theater to make it look like there was some way to avoid the ban.

You say you don't "support this version of reality", and yet you've put up a compelling argument for it.

If the Chinese government benefits from TikTok's ability to influence Western minds, then right, they may prefer the company dies than lose that capability.

If they aren't running influence campaigns on TikTok that targets Americans, then they should be fine with a sale to a fully-non-Chinese owner. Sure, they lose future revenue, but I'm sure they could sell it for a pretty nice sum.

(Honestly, if the Chinese government is not using TikTok to spread propaganda to the West, they are wildly incompetent to pass up such a fantastic opportunity.)

China’s potential usage of the app for influence campaigns (propaganda, if you will) is a near certainty. I just do not agree with characterizing these operations as culture destroying to the US, or to the West. I have no qualms about suspecting the CCP of using TikTok’s massive cultural reach to push/suppress narratives they find beneficial/hurtful, I am just skeptical of how much cultural eradication can occur. Both major political parties claim the same regarding their narratives (push/suppress) by the American owned tech companies but they are both still here and both conservatives and liberals, in the American context, are still using Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.

tl;dr - Sure the CCP is probably doing ‘the thing’, but it is not going to lead to the downfall of the mythical ‘West’

I'm fairly certain the CCP is already doing this pushing topics that affect traditional national interests while making it magically seem "viral", and successfully mobilizing their user base to vehemently _defend_ the platform with the addiction of an alcoholic. If I name the issues here, I'll trigger said users, but it's not hard to see it as a non-consumer of the platform.