Also a good conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227166
EDIT: Changed the link to an archive.org version.
Westerners generally do not care much about privacy, democracy and critical thinking, and will attack whoever their government media dictates them to (foreign boogeymen like China/Russia/DPRK). We saw Americans calling Snowden a traitor, and Wikileaks a Russian op.
Even the moderators of r/privacy (ourari here) on Reddit subscribe to this. https://web.archive.org/web/20220418214833/https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/e9t4ck/a_user_here_threw_ad_hominem_at_a_wikileaks_tweet/
Today, its okay to ban exclusively Tiktok through RESTRICT ACT, a second coming of Patriot Act, but allow incomparably worse behaviours of indigenous surveillance social media companies because they work for NSA and CIA. Mind you, this includes Reddit with numerous US military/air force bases with redditor astroturfers.