I mean it is a religion, and they are zealots. There have been schisms before over both more and less (purgatory / indulgences, ‘not my pope’) than “is empathy important to Christianity”.

“Religious” is not a synonym for “good” or “kind”. It’s about adherence to a belief system, which may conditionally include aspects of those attributes.

“To attempt to politicize this tragedy is absolutely unacceptable. This rhetoric from elected officials is beyond dangerous and incites even more violence,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor Monday.

It is incredibly frustrating that “political” has become a word so divorced from it’s meaning that someone assassinating members of a political party, for their political affiliation, due to demonetization of that political party by the political party of the assassin, can not be a “political” issue.

It can be both.

Agreed.

They’re also not materially different from Instagram or Youtube. Singling them out as “the problem” is short-sighted at best.

TikTok is shady in how much info it collects and how tailored the feeds it shows people get.

It is not unique about either of those.

Facebook/Google/et. al. being on this coast instead of that coast doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have exactly the same scrutiny. Literally the only evidence offered that TikTok was in any way special was “we can’t tell you but there’s classified info that means we should ban it.” Which is less than encouraging that the ban is for anything other than because of ‘those dang kids’ being annoying.