It’s pretty simple for me, really. Either forced technology transfers are bad or they’re not. Forcing TikTok to be sold to a U.S. company, which Bytedance will if given no other option, is a forced technology transfer.
This is not an equal exchange founded on principles of free trade and respect for any kind of free speech. So it is not simple either.
This (probable) technology transfer shouldn’t be happening but not because this shouldn’t now happen; we should never have been in this position to begin with but we are.
Apple is the largest smartphone brand in China. GM is a major car brand in China. China has bought huge numbers of Boeing airplanes. I could go down the list, but you get the point.
Social media is a special case, because China has political censorship, which Facebook and Google were unwilling to go along with.
I mean, you may not care about that discussion--and that's fine, you do you--but to ignore the circumstances around this situation means that once decided that it's going to happen, and therefore must be "good", we have to start asking other questions like, "Meta has been kinda lame lately, why don't we force them to sell to a someone we like better?" and "Probably Google, too?"
Why? Most things aren't binary.