The People chose to use TikTok as their free press. The US government has banned a tool The People were using for speech. The government utilized a specious argument of "security" in denying The People to their free press comprised of TikTok. The government provided zero evidence of national security being compromised. If anything, the US government has called into question how they are using data from US-based social media companies such that we may now expect reprisals from all around the world - maybe that's what they wanted?

Programs like Prism [0] certainly lend credence to the idea that this ban reflects the US’ own behavior in terms of how it uses data. However Prism was markedly different given it collected data vs being a dial the government can turn to produce a given outcome in the consumers of the content.

All of the congressional hearings over the past ~15 years demonstrates how business in the US is still pretty much governed by the rule of law. I’m of the opinion that there isn’t some shadow cabal working with Musk and Zuckerberg to control our minds. However we know that the CCP absolutely manages what the public can consume, so personally while I’m no fan of heavy handed government intervention in business, this ban seems like “a good thing” to me. We must protect the short, middle and long term prospects of our population — it’s a fundamental duty of the federal government to do so.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/google-faceboo...

I agree that evidence would be nice, but let's not pretend TikTok is simply a 'speech platform' for 'The People'. It is an app on your mobile phone collecting data about you and making it available to a foreign adversary and feeding you content controlled by a foreign adversary.