I’m sorry but I just can’t believe that you’re being downvoted so much. It’s the exact same point I was trying to make, is it not obvious - or at least a valid argument of discussion - that the significant difference between TikTok and other social media companies is that they’re Chinese?

Nobody is defending China here I think, but the elephant in the room is that TikTok isn’t that much different from other social media platforms in terms of addictive behaviour, data harvesting, etc. The fact that this is done by a Chinese company, however, is what makes it significantly different.