China: Okay hey we need you to follow our local laws and legislation, for instance this terrorism in our west, we need Facebook and others to ban those people and hand over their information to national security investigators because they're posting pro-terrorism content in accordance with ours laws which demands action.

US companies (Google/Facebook/etc): Fuck off evil CCP, we will never censor, this is literally oppression, you can't tell us what to do!! We're leaving.

China: Okay fine, we'll block you because you won't follow our laws, we'll also help encourage domestic alternatives so our population gets to live in the digital age.

China in another instance: US companies need to have a partner or locate the data on Chinese citizens on Chinese soil so they're under our control in case of conflict and kept a bit more safe from US national intelligence spying which they may be subject to were they stored in the US.

Some US companies: Sure sounds fine (they're still in China)

China: Sounds good, here are the relevant regulations and rules all companies must abide by, thanks for doing business in China

Other US companies: Evil CCP oppression, never!

China: Okay, bye.

By contrast...

US government: Tiktok is an evil CCP spy platform, they're propagandizing our youth

Tiktok: Very well we will not only locate our servers in the US which we were already doing but we will transfer custody of them to Oracle, a US intelligence aligned US company that is trusted, they were verify we are complying and not stealing all this data or acting improperly.

Tiktok: We also of course follow all applicable laws, relevant and legal requests from US law enforcement and intelligence will be followed through and we will respond. We have also taken the liberty of hiring tons of "ex" CIA, NSA, and FBI agents to directly work in our company so you can be sure we're following the rules and doing nothing untowards, we're happy to follow the laws of the countries we operate in and will even allow their spies into our operations.

US: government: .... tiktok is stealing American data and must be stopped.

China: It follows all relevant rules and laws, it has done what you asked, you just hate China and want to crush Chinese companies

YOU: These are exactly the same. China and the US treat each other's companies exactly the same 🤡

Said social media apps could probably launch tomorrow if they followed local laws. They don't want to, so they aren't allowed to operate. I can't think of a single world government that would allow a company to operate within their borders without being subject to that government's rules.

However if they did comply and try to do it now they'd probably struggle since China made their own [arguably better in many cases] alternatives since the US companies didn't want to play ball.

I work for an international company. Due to the nature of my industry we had a LOT of new laws and regulations to follow in China, probably more than most social media companies. We did the work to comply and we are more than welcome to operate in China. It is our biggest market by far, and growing faster than any other.

They didn't ban them. Those app developers refused to abide by China's information technology laws. Apple products and their services are available in China, for example.

Last I checked they refused to follow chinese law, not banning of them. Ontop of that they do not make it hard to access from what I have been told