I will just say that the ban is short-sighted. The Chinese gov't, just like any country, can readily buy all of our marketing data profiles from third-parties like so many companies do today. The fact that they're vacuuming up this data via their own platform is just convenience, by cutting out a middle-man. It will do absolutely zero to keeping our country safer or keeping the kind of data that tiktok collects out of China's hands.

But that's what our gov't likes to do -- waste time on symbolic measures like this because they're popular with some sub-group of Americans (most of whom don't know what tiktok is or use it). Tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of Americans rely on tiktok as their primary source of income, as creators. A ban like this would put those people out of work.

I don't think tiktok should allow mean-spirited trends on their platform. But I did find similar videos on other platforms, so I guess it's not specific to tiktok.