The recent United States Congressional action to ban TikTok is a perfect display of US double standards. Banning one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world is a major attack on freedom of expression, and forcing a sale to ownership that is more politically acceptable to the US is extremely problematic. Civil society and digital rights experts have roundly denounced this effort. Furthermore, heads of the US intelligence agencies have explicitly stated that privacy concerns around TikTok are purely hypothetical, leading one to question what the real factors pushing this forw…