> the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic.
It’s attempting to push the narrative that TikTok is somehow the exception and is being treated unfairly, and that this is the big bad USA violating constitutional rights when this is just exactly how businesses with adversarial governments are treated in America. We already know Chinese controlled social media bots are amplifying to far right and far left extremists who act as useful idiots to spread this bait.
The US government regularly intervenes in the free market, especially when national security is involved. It’s no different than banning Huawei from critical infrastructure, but allowing Nokia to stick around. Look at real estate, automotive industry, hell even construction has similar restrictions.
My concern is strictly national security, it’s my own opinion and I definitely could be wrong, but given what I’ve seen that’s public, there’s not really a downside here. Someone will buy TikTok, and they will make a shit load of money. People will call it a conspiracy, but at the end of the day the idea of China running a social media platform just does not seem very logical no matter how you spin it.
Protectionist trade policy is nothing new, and in the big picture that’s what this really is.