>No it's not. China has banned most Western apps in the interests of national security.

Chinese law doesn't carry a legal precedence in the US court system. My concerns regarding free speech and the precedence for banning end-to-end encrypted apps remain in tact. Additionally, China bans end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, which bolsters my concerns regarding precedence.

>And that article you listed on analysing TikTok is hilariously incompetent. Didn't think to investigate multiplexing data With the video stream ?

Even if I concede that no one has proven the apps safety, it seems to me that the burden of proof should be on the administration to demonstrate that the app behaves in uniquely dangerous ways, not on security researchers to prove that it doesn't.

I think OP means:

> is largely unprecedented "in the US".

As others stated, if the US wants to start using China as a country to base its precedents on, that's even more concerning in my view.

Countries blocking companies from operating on national security grounds is hardly new in the US or anywhere really.

It might be the first US mobile app however I will grant you that.

I don't think anyone's arguing that it's not legitimate for a country to ban a company on national security grounds, but that this is stretching the definition of what constitutes a national security threat.

Which companies currently banned in the US would you say are comparable to TikTok in terms of the threat they could potentially pose?

I would say that mass surveillance by a foreign country is not a stretch.

Compare HK and Portland...