I think is crazy we have to have this discussion: the principles are just so clear.
ByteDance and therefore TikTok are by Chinese law subject to the control of the Chinese Government aka the Chinese Communist Party . That same government is ethnic cleansing both Tibet (remember when Hollywood cared about Tibet?) and the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province. They have erected large prison systems to imprison and 'educate' large numbers of Uyghurs, some say over a million. Some are raped, some are tortured, some just never come home. You can check the BBC for details on that. And yet the TikTok apologists look away. And oh yes the Chinese are exporting Fentanyl or its component chemicals to the US and Mexico, where it feeds death, murder and mayhem, maybe as a retribution for the Opium Wars, maybe just another asymmetric warfare campaign being waged by the Chinese government.
This is not a First Amendment issue: the Chinese government does not have 1st amendment rights here. And through the famous TikTok algorithm, it implicitly editorializes the content presented to TikTok users. Would you allow the US Government the same editorial privilege? TikTok defenders, all of them, are choosing to trust the motivations of the Chinese government over the US.
Where there not many other platforms for users to communicate basically the same way you would still not have an argument. But that is not the case.
TikTok is a propaganda platform, despite the large measure of entertainment content. TikTok defenders have their heads in the sand. Maybe they should go to China, where TikTok, X and many other platforms are not available and try there to freely express their non-existent 1st amendment rights.