I think there's a lot more going on here than most people appreciate - imho, the BIG/REAL reason the US government wants TikTok gone is because of it's potency for propaganda - specifically, just regular people, American and global citizens, communicating with each other in a format that just so happens (by chance basically, but it makes sense in retrospect) to be WAAAAY better for effectively transmitting ideas from one human mind to another human mind.
It seems like this is "just" videos, but that's not necessarily correct - it is true that it "is videos", but "it's just videos" presumes that there is no noteworthy metaphysical pheomenon going on.....but if you are on TikTok, and got these congressional hearings into your feed (tons of my feed was yesterday, since I hearted every one that came up), seeing video after video of congress people OBVIOUSLY reading from a coordinated script, OBVIOUSLY lying/acting, the emperor OBVIOUSLY having no clothes.....it is surreal. Video after video of different congress people doing the same thing, literally putting on a performance, demonstrating that American politics IS IN FACT fake, a literal illusion / magic trick, unmistakably....this is DEVASTATING from a geopolitics perspective.
And in trying to put this genie back in the bottle, my feeling is that they may have shot themselves in the foot. What I have experienced is being experienced by millions of other people (lots have made videos mocking their politicians, but I don't think many people see through it as much as I, see my "Boiled Frog" reference above) - the cat is out of the bag. A MASSIVE exploit in the armour of the US regime has been revealed, analogous to Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star. Nothing so dramatic will happen here at least in the short run, but the idea is now out in the wild, to some degree. And that's why TikTok is so dangerous: it's ability to transmit ideas from the mind of one human being into the mind of another human being - this is The Way. Of course, "duh, that's 'just' communicating, get out of here with your conspiracy theories[1], etc etc etc", I've heard it all before. This is sub-perceptual heuristics not just perceiving reality, but generating reality. Now if THAT idea ever got out into the wild, they'd have even more trouble.
May you live in interesting times!
[1] One of the most potent remotely callable algorithms that has somehow ended up in the mind of most every single node in this system we're stuck in - one of many. It would be a real shame if people started to figure out how this system runs, if they somehow learned how to think outside of the invisible box that's been built around them. Humans are very much like ChatGPT, it can be observed, in massive quantities - people are going to start noticing things like this, and I think there is a very good chance the puzzle pieces will start to fall into place...and then maybe, the gig will finally be up. If citizens of all nations came to this realization more or less simultaneously, I think it could literally change the world. TikTok may not accomplish it, but ~~the~~ A path to it is now known. Even worse (for those running the show): these large language models are also revealing many interesting nuances about reality that were formerly very difficult if not impossible to see.