Time to drop TikTok from app stores?

One can doubt, as Milton and Rose Friedman did, whether free trade is even possible with China as long as the country suffers under the yoke of a communist dictatorship. One can even hold such doubt but still oppose U.S. government regulation of TikTok, the social media giant owned by Chinese company ByteDance, on the grounds that it will invite further Washington regulation of technology in general. But there’s an increasingly strong case for Apple and Alphabet-owned Google to decide on their own that, consistent with their stated values and long-term business objectives, TikTok should be suspended at least temporarily from their app stores.