I think this perfectly communicates why it feels so wrong that the government has banned tt. Its an implicit acknowledgement that our leaders feel that foreign influence will resonate with the public in a way that doesn't benefit the status quo.

Foreign manipulation of social media is literally why Trump was elected.

Yet banning it creates the largest opportunity for manipulation whereby Trump gets to play the hero to a very large number of Americans.

So many people focus only on TikTok instead of their fellow citizens' rights that are being trampled upon. Even NYT writers happily insinuate that all will be forgotten in no time. Cutting people's social links is not benign. An American may be happily watching Italian content, and when you cut her link it doesn't follow that the Italian creators will move their content to some other platform accessible to that American. Same for Americans with foreign followers. Americans may also have trouble reconnecting with American creators. It boggles the mind that these losses are given so little thought.

> america and americans should be able to view any media and still come to the best conclusions

I’m rather confused how do you think that is somehow connected with:

> horrible crutch that suggests america is already dead and gone

If you believe that then surely you must also believe that it was never “alive” in the first place?

Americans certainly didn’t have unrestricted access to any type of media in ta past. In fact it was heavily centralized and controlled by a small number of entities. One might argue that the decentralization starting with cable television/etc. and then internet led us to where we are.

Everyone used to be watching the same handful of television channels (which were relatively “apolitical” anyway) and a small number of available newspapers. It’s rather obvious why it was much easier to reach societal consensus on most issues compared to these days…

Half of the people are sub-100 IQ. It's very naive to understate the stupidity of some people and their capability to do harm if mislead. Especially when it comes to weaponized social media content from a main geopolitical adversary. Letting Tiktok continue will do far more harm to democracy than banning it.

they're not banning any media or expression though so its a non-issue