My hatred is not so much for TikTok itself, but for the controlling entity a few steps removed.

If I were to judge TikTok solely on its own merits as a service then I would just be sitting at a "smoldering disdain" with perhaps a dash of sadness for modern preoccupation with frequent dopamine hits.

It's about China... Everyone that can (US, China, etc.) tries to guzzle as much data from online users as possible. That said, there are checks and balances in the US, there is a certain level of accountability. China is an absolute black box setting up an Orwellian social credit system for its own citizens, and with no accountability whatsoever about the data they might collect from foreign citizens. So, even if everyone is playing a similar game, ultimately there are differences.

Bytedance's payout to creators is much lower than YouTube's and their content-moderation has been more harmful to people who are poor, queer, or not traditionally attractive than competing platforms.

These probably aren't the top of the complaint list for most social media and content distribution platforms so I'm not saying these are reasons to consider Bytedance in a different category than Google or Facebook but they are worth knowing about.