With its recent halt on implementing a legally mandated ban on TikTok, the United States is learning the hard way that when it comes to Chinese technology, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The US and like-minded democracies should no longer permit any social media platforms with direct ties to authoritarian governments with political censorship regimes to operate without restriction.

For years, technology and national security analysts have sketched out scenarios of what might happen if a democratic population were to become dependent on a Chinese-owned technology. Once such a technology becomes embedded in people’s daily lives and livelihoods, removing it stirs up a host of domestic political controversies, making it politically untenable to mitigate the national security risks.

That is exactly what has happened with TikTok. Around 170 million Americans—about half the country’s population and an even higher percentage of those using social media—use the short video app, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. Millions of Americans have become dependent on their TikTok followings, built up over years, for their income or to promote their businesses. Tens of millions more use TikTok as a key source of information, community, and entertainment.

In classic American fashion, those users have refused to go gentle into that good night. As a law banning TikTok was set to go into effect on 19 January, many users downloaded the Chinese social media app RedNote, which isn’t just Chinese-owned—it is Chinese itself, based in Shanghai and subject to all Chinese national security and intelligence laws. Self-styled ‘TikTok refugees’ said they moved to RedNote to express their disregard for US government concern about the risks presented by Chinese companies. Overnight, RedNote, which presents even clearer security risks than TikTok, became the top download on the Apple app store in the US.

TikTok called on US President Donald Trump to offer a reprieve, and he did. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order authorising a 75-day extension on the law taking effect.

But it’s unclear what will happen next. We will need to see how a Trump administration navigates this issue. The law mandates either a forced divestiture or a ban. A previous US effort to force the sale of TikTok failed when the Chinese government issued new rules requiring Chinese companies to obtain a license for such a sale. Beijing did not grant ByteDance a license, effectively blocking the sale. Discussions are now reportedly underway for the sale of a 50 percent stake in TikTok to a US company, but that would not fulfill the law’s requirements.

This situation demonstrates the need to act early to inhibit the widespread adoption of social media platforms tied to authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China, that implement sweeping surveillance, censorship and manipulation of public opinion.

Western governments had all the information they needed about the risks of social media apps operating under authoritarian systems when TikTok took off in 2018—the year it became one of the world’s most downloaded apps. That was the time to act—the same time action was being taken to prevent Huawei from dominating the 5G telecommunications sector. The question now is whether we learn from our failures. While it’s too late to prevent TikTok from becoming a beloved American online space, it’s not too late to prevent the widespread adoption of similarly problematic apps. RedNote, for example, remains untouched, as do a host of other Chinese platforms.

The main argument against a sweeping ban on problematic foreign-owned apps is that this would infringe on free speech. But the opposite is true—as the US Court of Appeals essentially found. A social media platform under the sway of a foreign government obsessed with censorship and surveillance is an impediment to free speech. Democratic governments should act to preserve free speech by preventing these platforms from dominating online spaces.

Trade experts and economists understand that free markets don’t just happen naturally; creating and preserving a free market requires a strong government hand. There must be laws against unfair market behavior, mechanisms to bring cases against potential violators, means to investigate those claims, and strong enforcement. Sometimes the biggest violators are governments themselves.

In the same way, a free speech environment doesn’t happen naturally. There must be laws and practices in place to protect it. Put another way, it sometimes takes a strong government hand to create and preserve a free market for speech. As with free markets, sometimes the biggest violators of free speech are governments. And just as the public in a democracy has the ultimate power to vote out its own government for violating freedoms, protecting the public from foreign regimes and their intelligence services is the job of democratic governments.

The Chinese government has no right to censor or manipulate information on US soil. The Trump administration should act as soon as possible to ensure that no other social media companies linked to authoritarian governments can again play host to America’s virtual public square.