> Why do people keep repeating this point?

Probably because like 1/4 of the American economy at this point is held up by surveillance capitalism firms like Meta, Google, Amazon, etc. all of whom's bread and butter is violating privacy on an industrial scale, so saying "TikTok is dangerous because it spies on people" is flagrantly hypocritical.

The fact that the big scary Chinese Government can tweak algorithms to elevate content and potentially sway public opinion is a fair criticism and I would agree with it, if not for the fact that the hypothetical situation being used to justify it is America equally openly funding and supporting an ongoing genocide. That barely qualifies as propaganda, that's literally just pointing out what the United States is doing and why it's ethically indefensible, and we could stop doing it tomorrow and utterly defang the aforementioned propaganda. But we don't.

And, lastly, TikTok is not going away. It's simply going to enrich Americans now, instead of the Chinese. A bit. And I'm sure plenty of that money will find it's way back to the Trump administration because our country is corrupt as all hell.

So forgive me if I've just absolutely not one ounce of patience for this bullshit.