[bar94]

Wouldn't the middle ground be to have ISPs ban TikTok? The US doesn't need to create a firewall themselves, they can just rely on the fact that internet providers are in effect an oligopoly, and simply tell all 5 or so of them to prevent their users from accessing the website/service. This would, of course, be circumventable by a VPN, but that's a degree of rigor good enough for China, so it should be fine here.

[saveferris]

The issue is under what authority does the government have to put such a ban in place. There isn't one today. The article discusses some attempts to work around that issue, all of which are problematic.

The article does not mention it but all the work arounds also rely on the fact that ByteDance is a Chinese company. So far they have been reluctant to change that but they could easily incorporate in the US. The parent company today is Chinese but the parent could become a US or EU company and then all of this banning talk gets even more dicey to pull off.

[torstenvl]

What's your reasoning for why import/export controls are insufficient legal grounds?

I haven't dug into it, but I'm not aware off the top of my head of any court ruling that such controls cannot apply to software, e.g., encryption export controls in the 1990s.