Basically the plan was just to force bytedance to sell the app and the ban was just to make pressure to achieve that goal

You can’t even search by tags. People want to search about a top then follow creators that have more videos they like and not like in loops where you need to visit creators you never heard about and then explore their content

and most people would never hear about it

It’s like trying to stop piracy. No matter how many app the government try to ban, new ones will appear

You shut down one app, ten other apps get more popular