Is it? Does Tiktok track everything you do across the entire Internet, like Facebook and Google do? They might, I don't know, but I haven't seen "tiktok.com" in my NoScript list on 90% of websites like I have FB and Google.
Just your phone. Open TikTok on iOS and it will for sure try to access your location, clipboard or whatever weird crap people will just click "OK" or "Allow" on.
That doesn't seem anywhere near equivalent to Google & Facebook's privacy issues. They stalk literally everyone over the entire Internet. I don't have Tiktok on my phone (or at all) so I'm pretty sure they're not stalking me. So I disagree with the OP, Tiktok's privacy violations are not as bad as Facebook's.
I guess the difference is, if you don't install or use TikTok they don't track you. Whereas with FB, rven if you don't have a FB account, they still track you across the Internet.
It's one thing if you actively use the service. One could even argue that this might be the payment for using the service (I don't agree with that argument, but it has some merit at least).
The problem with Facebook and Google is that they've got their spyware littered across most websites and third-party apps, so you get stalked even if you do not use FB/Google nor ever read/agreed to their ToS/privacy policy.
Still not an equivalent to what Google and Meta are doing. Google and Meta are everywhere on the internet. Google controls the most popular browser. The volume of data that those two harvest is absurd.