Apple and Google can’t protect their smartphone OS from tiktok because the attack surface on a smartphone OS is apparently too large for tiktok as an installed app.
While an app that runs on Windows is usually able to do whatever it wants, on smartphones an app has to ask for a variety of permissions to do different tasks.
Apple and Google could basically say: You can install TikTok, but you are not allowed to use any permission to access any data on the OS.
They could say “TikTok used location data to spy on journalists, so TikTok is not allowed access to the location data of their users anymore”.
While an app that runs on Windows is usually able to do whatever it wants, on smartphones an app has to ask for a variety of permissions to do different tasks.
Apple and Google could basically say: You can install TikTok, but you are not allowed to use any permission to access any data on the OS.
They could say “TikTok used location data to spy on journalists, so TikTok is not allowed access to the location data of their users anymore”.
My bad, I was thinking about an exploit from a couple years ago. News articles are NOT saying this (currently).