>

The issue is that if data resides in the United States ifs usage can be governed by United States law like CCPA.
No one would complain if the data lived in the European Union, because it’s usage is governed by GDPR and we have high trust in our allies.
The issue is sending data to China where it’s usage is no longer in our jurisdiction, and instead goes to a rival with generally terrible intellectual property and human rights issues.
It’s not about arbitrarily favoring companies. It’s that TikTok can and does store data in China.
The difference is, and this is true, the American apps aren't owned by an adversarial foreign government. >

why does that make it justified? its not like the US has an outstanding record of doing the right thing. >

Not real sure what your argument here is....are you saying that because you think the u.s. government is spying on people that you should let an enemy government do it to you? Or are you saying because the u.s. Government does questionable things it should allow a foreign government do it to us. Either way you sound ridiculous >

enemy in what way? >

Pardon. Adversary. >


Adversary

Same question... adversary in what way? >

Not playing this game. Good try. >

so despite china being an 'adversary' and thus 'should not be trusted' ... you cant actually tell me in what specific way it is behaving that would justify that its a danger more than say any other country or the US itself. >

China’s interests are increasingly directly opposed to those of the United States. It’s very obvious that China is angling to usurp the U.S. as the dominant power in the region. That alone makes them an adversary, not to mention whatever global ambitions the CCP might have. >

lol.. yeah.. I think youll find that many countries interests are directly opposed to those of the United States.. because countries are sick of the US thinking it can do whatever it wants with impunity like it has for the last 50 or so years, ignoring any notions of international cooperation and law. 
Why shouldn't China be the dominant power in the asian region.. or more pertinently.. why should the US be the dominant power in the asian region? 
And just because the US wants total global hegemony doesn't mean every other country does.  That was the big line during the cold war "the soviets want to take over the world" and yet it turns out they never wanted much more than for Germany to never ever pay them a visit again. The US however went around destabilizing or straight up overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing dictators just on the off chance that those countries might not completely cave to US demands. The US was even found guilty of state sponsored terrorism, its response, to deny the legitimacy of the international courts.  It refuses to sign treaties establishing international law because it wants to do whatever it wants without having to listen to anyone else. 
Now powers are emerging that have the potential to stand up and say 'no' to the US and because its been a bully for so long that is considered as 'aggression'.
The only reason China is an 'adversary' is because the US keeps trying to stick its dick in places it doesnt belong.  Pretty sure China would be more than happy to ignore America >


admits that Chinese-based employees can see the data

This is the critical difference.
If China based employees have access to the collected data, then the Chinese Communist Party absolutely does as well.
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc, are all American based companies and are not subject to Chinese laws concerning government data access.
The federal government has a very real and easy to understand desire to prevent a hostile foreign power (at this point the hostile foreign power) from having direct access to the data produced by federal employees, members of the armed forces, and similar.
It's a one-sided ban with an easy to understand and accurate reason behind it. >

You know the US government has access to your data too, this is why they want Snowden extradited, for confirming this fact.  The CCP has no interest in your tiktok ramblings, but the NSA can absolutely do something against you if you reside in the USA and a populist government takes over, and now we know it cam happen easily. >

Here is the key difference: The US government is not concerned about the US government spying on the US government, but is concerned about the Chinese government spying on the US government.
​
The whole OP is absurd. It is like saying "It’s one-sided to ban strangers from picking up Frank's kids from school while allowing Frank to do the same." >

I think tracking tiktok users doesn't qualify as spying on government.  Every digital platform does the same, and the data ends up in private hands and can be misused, hence lays like gdpr and coppa. >

Which is why the U.S. is banning the app for federal employees, members of the military, and those in civil service. 
They don't want an app the Chinese government has access to on federal devices, in federal facilities, and being used by federal employees with access to sensitive or even classified information. >

That would make sense.  Do they let them play World of Tanks? >


Some of TikTok’s data goes back to China (not the CCP),

Article 7 of China's national intelligence law states:

All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of. 

The data goes to the CCP. >

Sure, but Americans data all goes to the NSA.
The Snowden leaks revealed that the NSA has direct access to pretty much everyone's data that runs through major tech companies. The protections in place in the US are symbolic at best. The NSA has the right to grab any bit of data that even briefly touches an international server (which basically all communications do), most of these companies voluntarily provide all this metadata to the government, and even those that don't are very quickly forced to through rubber-stamp FISA courts that aren't open to the public, and which almost never see an information request they don't like. >

It really depends on your opinion of the US Government. As someone that's from neither country, they're both shit at certain things. We all know the US government actively spies on citizens, however, a genocidal dictatorship having that data is significantly worse.
Arguing from a data privacy point of view is fine though. >

China is the CCP, the CCP is China.   There is literally no distinction in any business. >

I think OP was looking for a more complex answer than "China bad", because I don't think they dispute that. Metadata from American social media platforms are all subject to collection and review by the NSA. If we're panicking about China getting our data, perhaps we should also show some alarm about our government collecting our data, and about multinational corporations selling our private info on an international data market. >

Do you think Chinese citizens should be able to vote in the in presidential election as well? The nation makes a difference. >

the difference is we don't want China to use our data.
We live in America, our data is collected by America. We're not giving it to the literal communist dictator >

Why do we want America to have it? >

While I agree that the amount and type of data collected by most social media apps is a huge issue the problem with tiktok isn‘t that it does the same things everyone else is doing. The problem is that Tiktok is a chinese app developed by a chinese company. And thus all of that data can be sent to chinese servers (and fun fact: US employees of tiktok have less permissions when it comes to the data of US citizens than chinese tiktok employees (the same is probably true for every other foreign subsidiary / etc.)). And we already know that chinese companies have to obey the chinese regime (this includes giving them access to the data they stored). 
Don‘t get me wrong: I‘m not happy that google, meta etc. send my data to the US due to lower privacy standards in the US. And I do know that US intelligence agencies probably either try to access the data or are allowed / able to access that data. And that sucks. But at least the US isn‘t lead by a regime that constantly supresses and/or kills opposition, doesn‘t care at all about human rights (the US can definitely improve but china is a whole different story) and the US isn‘t working on a holocaust light. 
So yeah… I‘m not really happy about the things the US (and especially it‘s intelligence agencies) does but if I have to pick between a relatively private US based company and the CCP… yeah I won‘t choose the regime that killed more people than hitler and could very well be it‘s equivalent in the 21st century.
Oh and btw since you seem to believe CCP propaganda: companies are legally required to allow the CCP and it‘s intelligence agencies access to all the data they stored. Major companies need to have a „politbureau“ to ensure that employees and the company act according to the wishes of the CCP. That‘s the same reason why huawei should never be allowed to build any infrastructure outside of china.
Chinese companies are the property of the CCP. Chinese citizens are the property of the CCP. If data is handled by chinese companies / most chinese citizens (except for those fleeing the country) it‘s handled by the CCP. If it‘s saved on chinese servers it‘s property of the CCP. THAT‘S the issue. That‘s why chinese companies shouldn‘t be allowed to operate outside of china. >

I agree data harvesting overall should be illegal. It turns customers into products, people need to stop expecting everything on the internet to be free and start switching to subscription models. But the reason the govt wants to ban it is not because it’s data harvesting it’s a national security concern for them >


Tiktok vehemently denies this,

I really don't know anything about tik tok but if I was an intelligence asset I'd deny it.