It’s not a “QAnon-esque conspiracy theory”. Russia’s online influence in American politics has been fairly well documented. That being said, I think it’s somewhat unhealthy to assume everyone who says something controversial is dishonest or a troll. Not good for discourse.

I think it’s more indicative of how absurd 60° celsius is that it seems like it must be Fahrenheit.

Though I am with you in hating Western Big Tech apologia, I don’t agree with this point overall. Even the sources you linked show that TikTok collects an ungodly amount of data on its users. The Clario study shows that it’s in 6th place… is being lower than Facebook and Instagram supposed to be an accomplishment? And it’s much higher than Twitter and Zoom, which is definitely not a good thing.