They were targeted for being Chinese. If they sold to a US company they could double the privacy invasive practices and you wouldn't hear a peep. It's not about privacy, none of your legislators give a fuck about that. In fact they use private companies to spy on you to get around that pesky constitution which says they need warrants or special legislative carve-outs but nothing about them buying your data from private companies who collect it anyways.

The US could easily have passed a nearly guaranteed to pass judicial review (unlike this) broad bill aimed at forcing better privacy practices for all social media that would either force better privacy for users or drive these companies out of business or out of the US market. But that would target Facebook which has been one of the primary lobbyists behind the anti-tik-tok scare campaign because it is murdering them in the young people market and ad dollars for retirees are not quite as good as for the younger crowd and any social media stuck with only the old is destined to whither to irrelevancy.

This is a hit job, make no mistake. By Facebook and by western investors who have been unable to invest in it and thus profit from it unlike western social media so it has to go.

If anything actions like this prevent more people from having an honest conversation and understanding of the privacy and other issues of modern social media. By putting all the blame on it being Chinese and not examining the psychology, the privacy invasiveness, etc of all of these social media apps they prevent an honest conversation, honest questioning and discussion.