throwaway129012

I'm far from understanding the legal complexity, but one analogy I consider here is what it'd be like to ban a particular brand or country of origin of pens, or cellphones, or routers.

Those things are definitely used for speech, and banning them all would likely be an issue. But banning a brand of pens because you don't trust the chemicals in them as safe or routers because you're concerned about potential spy ware, seems reasonable.

In that sense, TikTok is just one of many alternatives and if the motivation isn't to regulate speech, it feels like it could fit with other bans that seem reasonable to me.

I'd assume the claim here would be that it presents national security risk, though of course I think that's probably not why the ban is really happening, and it makes sense for it to be challenged.

It's worth noting, that wine/beer/liquor also have sin taxes, which as far as I know are also a result of coming out of prohibition.

I mention this because you said we should tax it like we do wine, but also appear to be fundamentally opposed to such taxes. It wasn't clear to me whether you realize alcohol has them tucked into the price, or you're just okay with the level they're at. California's are fairly low, but they are quite a bit higher in some states.

https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/california/alcohol