> AFAIK they have also banned TikTok on official government phones. However they have not generally banned TikTok for everyone.
The US is not banning TikTok. The US is forcing ByteDance to sell it's controlling position on TikTok or else the company is no longer able to operate within the US.
How come the critical bit is repeatedly left out?
"I did not shoot this person: I asked this person to give me all their money or else I would shoot them."
No. The requirement is that ByteDance must sell it's position of a company. If you bother to learn about the law in question, it quite blatantly targets the ownership of the company, not the company itself.
ByteDance instead opted to shut the company down in retaliation, because it found it was desirable to just crash the whole company than to have anyone else control it, and in the process is fooling useful idiots into believing this has nothing to do with China's interference.
Did you just call me an idiot?
Saying "It is not a ban because if they give it to us then we won't ban it, but if they don't we will ban it but it still won't be a ban because they had a choice in the first place" sounds so ridiculous to me that I don't even know how to argue here.
To me this makes more sense since a back door in network infrastructure allowing governement communications to be intercepted is far more serious than some kid using TikTok.