Tit-for-tat with an authoritarian regime is a bad idea on several dimensions.
A far better reason is that a nasty authoritarian regime is using Tiktok to gather intelligence in anticipation of doing nastier things. Just one example: one of the obvious things to do with Tiktok data would be to correlate it with the OPM hack[1]. Who knows what kind of insights into people's character you might find? I'm sure a trained handler who actually understands their capabilities can come up with far more interesting uses than that.
And note that in that context, stopping US citizens from foreign exploitation is a legitimate role for government.
A far better reason is that a nasty authoritarian regime is using Tiktok to gather intelligence in anticipation of doing nastier things. Just one example: one of the obvious things to do with Tiktok data would be to correlate it with the OPM hack[1]. Who knows what kind of insights into people's character you might find? I'm sure a trained handler who actually understands their capabilities can come up with far more interesting uses than that.
And note that in that context, stopping US citizens from foreign exploitation is a legitimate role for government.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...