Any app built and run by any country can capture data unlawfully. The keyword is unlawfully.

It doesn't.

If that is happening then cases under those legislation would succeed. But those legislation don't somehow magically forbid practices that people on HN don't like.

It doesn’t mean that, and the comment I was responding to wasn’t talking about that, but merely the fact that the app is Chinese.

Exactly.

Given they are operating in countries like the EU, US, etc and they are doing the same privacy violations and actions like what Facebook did years ago but worse, and even after regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, etc and Facebook was fined in the billions by the FTC, TikTok should be no exception and must be fined in the billions for this invasive and repeated privacy violations.

Nothing has changed, even after the invasive tracking done by Facebook, and Instagram.

You will find that HN is full of American business owners that are happy to unlawfully capture data protected by GDPR.