> In this case, TikTok isn't even doing anything illegal as far as we know, because the United States has basically no data privacy laws that would be relevant here in the first place. The solution to that problem isn't to ban TikTok, it's to create a regulatory framework where companies are obligated to follow certain rules.

That's the thing: TikTok is basically state-sponsored, Apple/Google approved spyware. I don't have a link handy, but I remember reading that security researchers found the tiktok android binary had the capability to receive code remotely and execute it, meaning that the CCP can make millions of Android phones do whatever they want, especially if the code uploaded includes exploits.

But how do you legislate against that sort of thing? Especially when Congress demonstrates how tech illiterate it is?

It's also clearly being used to attack our society and infrastructure via children with poor judgement and little to fear from our criminal justice system. The platform does not not moderate in the slightest any of the various "tiktok challenges", most of which are dangerous to both the participant and general public, as well as causing lots of expensive damage. They could block or de-emphasize any number of the tags used in these "challenges", but instead they seem to boost them.

So we have kids sticking forks into electrical sockets in their classrooms and destroying the bathrooms, breaking into Kias and joyriding them at insanely dangerous speeds, purposefully causing people to fall in the most dangerous way possible (kicking their feet out from under them so the brain's natural protective instincts can't protect the head from trauma)...the list just goes on and on.

Did anyone notice that damn near every single one of these tiktok challenges seems almost perfectly tailored to cause a lot of damage or injury, and utilizes a population which essentially has nothing to fear from criminal repercussions thanks to our criminal justice system sealing their records once they come of age?