> Other platform owners are bad, I don’t need them to be equal to China before doing something about it.
I agree. But by the same token, we don't need to do something about the others before doing something about TikTok. Where would we be today if we accepted the argument that before addressing tobacco companies we must first address alcohol companies, and before addressing alcohol companies, we must first address tobacco companies?
Arguing that X shouldn't be regulated because Y is not yet regulated is never a legitimate argument.
> ... before addressing tobacco companies we must first address alcohol companies
> Arguing that X shouldn't be regulated because Y is not yet regulated is never a legitimate argument.
Either you've got the question wrong, or your position is more disagreeable than you think. It seems to me that the question is whether Chinese X should be regulated when American X is not regulated. It is still technically X vs Y but the justification is far less obvious to me (when compared to justifying that we can regulate tobacco despite a lack of regulation of alcohol).
The problem with "not X until Y" arguments against regulation is you can swap the Y and X around depending on the context of the conversation and use this to disingenuously argue against all regulation while pretending you're only interested in fairness.
