Since the copy/paste exploit was addressed (in ios) I'm not sure what useful information "chinese spyware" can gather from this app. As long as it's being used for goofy dance and lip sync videos, I don't see the harm.
A lot of people in comments are talking about how great the feed algorithm is out weeding out teenage dance videos and showing interesting content.
You can easily imagine a scenario where CCP tweaks its algorithms to favor content relating to one party or candidate vs. the other.
The scary part is that I think it wouldn't be obvious to know whether China is exploiting TikTok's American audience via algorithms driving a certain agenda since it can be done very subtly in non-obvious ways.
Due to China's "security" laws security and intelligence agencies have essentially full access to large companies' data. There's no real due process so a "private" company's data is essentially government data. There's also the overt and covert censorship and propaganda imposed by the government.
Company executives serve at the pleasure of the government. Anyone not towing the party line or acting with too much independence will get caught up in "anti-corruption" investigations or just be arrested for crimes they may or may not have actually committed.
Realistically it's better to just assume a priori that a Chinese social media company is pushing propaganda and building dossiers of users. It's certainly safer to assume that.
That's just "official" propaganda. The CCP's various astroturfing brigades are well documented (see "50 cent army" and "internet navy"). They show up in public forums of all stripes.
TikTok doesn't allow discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong, Free Tibet, or anything other topics the CCP deems inappropriate. That censorship is propaganda by omission. Content users see being primary algorithmic makes it trivial to add in pro-CCP or just anti-West content into people's feeds.
From a spying perspective, I tend to agree with you as well.
That said - China doesn't let FB or Twitter in their country, why the hell should the US let them in ours? To me it is akin to letting them buy the NY Times or CNN. They may be benign now, but if tensions were to continue mounting, they could greatly influence the content a significant portion of people in the US are receiving. I see 0 reason to trust them with that power.
If the Chinese government is going to aggressively moderate TikTok to keep that out... uh, cool, I guess. I'd be happy to see some popular entertainment that doesn't devolve into a screaming match. But it's a lot of work, and reduces audience (i.e. revenue).
Bytedance has an isolated version called Douyin.
I believe if FB or Twitter created specific versions that comply with China’s laws, they would be allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita...
Which does an excellent job helping to stimulate thought of just what the power and purpose of these types of apps as well other structures (alphabet) are able to do...