I don’t see anything that they said about TikTok or ByteDance

Smfh, so then you didn’t read what they said, since they specifically said.

I acknowledge that TikTok is a problem.

And given that Whataboutism is a tactic to discredit the severity of an accusation by pointing to similar or worse behaviors by others, this not only isn’t “textbook Whataboutism”, it’s not Whataboutism at all. Their point was that the scope of the issue exceeds TikTok, and as such, attempts to solve the issue by focusing on TikTok are either misguided or of suspect intent.

In no way did they try to make the point that what TikTok does is okay, nor did they claim that TikTok wasn’t censoring content. I’d accuse you of trying to strawman their argument, but you just flat made up a different argument and pretended that was theirs instead.

They are saying the forest is on fire, and you are accusing them of Whataboutism because they aren’t focusing on your favorite tree.