Comment by blackeyeblitzar

> The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

Personally I don’t think singling them out is anti democratic, because this platform and Chinese run companies in general have issues unique to them.

TikTok lied under oath about the location of data they claimed was stored in the US. That’s fraud and has concerning privacy and national security implications:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index....

This is why divestiture to an American entity with no ties back to a mainland China owner makes sense - it severs the tie that results in illegal surveillance. It’s not a ban on specific content or even the app - just a ban on the owner.

Another issue - it has also come out that TikTok (not Douyin) employees have to uphold the goals of the CCP as part of their job:

https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...

And then there’s the basic lack of reciprocity in market access, since all non Chinese social media is banned in China and yet their apps can access consumers outside China.