And we should ban them too. I love this argument. We need better user data privacy laws, and this whataboutism does not change the fact that China is a hostile foreign nation.
I can appreciate that people view Google and Meta and so on as very similar in their transgressions. But as was pointed out in the original comment, this is a cost to benefit ratio type of analysis for the federal government and they gain more by keeping Meta and Google going and can enact other measures to prevent that from hurting them (usually reactionary), so to them this is fine. It is and always has been about what the US government can to do protect itself and enrich itself. Enrichment doesn’t always come in the form of monetary value.
If you’re upset at your own government (or government adjacent tech entities) gathering this type of data from users, you should be for banning them too, not keeping tik tok.
I am for severely restricting the ability for all corporations to gather and sell user data. You think I’m making a whattaboutism or whatever debate buzzword you want to conjure up; what I’m taking issue with is the argument that the reason they’re getting banned has anything to do with that data collection or “national security”. If that had any truth to it, Facebook would have gotten the same treatment, or at the very least would be in the conversation now since they do the same exact shit. If this was about data collection they would pass regulations about that instead of targeting one specific site to unilaterally ban.