Riot was drawn on as an example of other widely-used, Chinese-made software that could influence Americans, not spy on them (remember, both these aspects are concerns in the anti-TikTok argument). As I said, it may not directly influence minds in and of itself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have pull. Look at the rhetoric from the height of console wars, or the way people came out strongly in support of either Epic or Apple during the Fortnite/Appstore lawsuit, or even the backlash by people who are deep into TikTok as a platform against the original legislation, the President when it was signed, and now the justices the case is now in front of, and tell me people won't raise their voice based on things their favorite brand tells them are a problem. It may not be full psy ops like many fear from TikTok, but properly applied it leads to the same endpoint.
And again, the reason I even reached for those examples in the first place is to go with the assumption that China's involvement specifically is where the concern is over, but neither China nor any other power is stopped from using any other platform to accomplish the same goal. The only difference is that with TikTok the opportunity exists for them to put their thumb on the scale behind the scenes and artificially boost or supress certain types of content. Remember, in 2015 it was known that Russia was using Facebook to spread propaganda and disinformation, Ukraine even asked us to force Zuckerberg to do something about it. And there was evidence in 2016 of foreign bots on Facebook and Reddit trying to influence the results of the election. And let's not forget that one of Musk's ill-fated attempts to get out of his committment to buy Twitter was to argue that the company had misrepresented how much of the network's activity came from bot accounts. At no point did any of those sites become the subject of a proposed ban, despite the fact that their potential use as a tool for China, Russia, or any other external power is only slightly less pointed than TikTok.
At the end of the day though, this is one of those subjects where reasonable minds can differ.
