Chamath’s prediction matches what actually happened.

1. Hostility increased through late 2023

• In spring 2023, Montana passed SB 419, the first statewide law attempting to ban TikTok for all users (not just on government devices), barring app stores from offering it and threatening large fines. This was a clear escalation beyond the federal and state device bans already in place.(euronews.com)
• By April 2023, at least 34 U.S. states had announced or enacted bans on TikTok on state government devices, and in August 2023 New York City banned TikTok from city-owned devices. Many public universities also blocked TikTok on campus Wi‑Fi and university hardware.(en.wikipedia.org) That’s a substantial broadening of government restrictions compared with early January 2023.
• On March 23, 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced an unusually hostile, bipartisan House Energy & Commerce hearing explicitly focused on TikTok as a national‑security threat, with members openly discussing bans and forced divestiture.(cnbc.com) This hearing crystallized congressional opposition and kept TikTok in the political crosshairs throughout 2023.

2. Hostility intensified further heading into the 2024 election year, materially worsening TikTok’s U.S. operating environment

• On March 5, 2024, House leaders introduced the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA) specifically targeting TikTok and other ByteDance‑controlled apps, creating a process to prohibit app‑store and web‑hosting support unless they sever ties with foreign‑adversary owners through divestiture.(selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov)
• On March 13, 2024, the House passed this TikTok divest‑or‑ban bill in a lopsided 352–65 vote, with supporters explicitly framing it as moving TikTok closer to a nationwide ban unless ByteDance sold the app.(nypost.com)
• Congress then enacted this framework as law (Pub. L. 118‑50). A congressional legal summary explains that PAFACAA makes it unlawful, after a set deadline (270 days plus a possible 90‑day extension), for app stores or internet‑hosting services in the U.S. to distribute, maintain, or update TikTok or other ByteDance apps unless a “qualified divestiture” occurs—i.e., ByteDance relinquishes control.(congress.gov) Contemporary reporting notes that the 2024 law requires ByteDance to divest TikTok within about a year or face a national ban.(theguardian.com)
• A January 2025 White House order implementing this statute confirms that TikTok and other ByteDance apps are expressly defined as “foreign adversary controlled applications,” and that the law’s prohibitions on distributing and hosting them in the U.S. took legal effect (with enforcement only delayed temporarily by subsequent executive orders).(whitehouse.gov)

Relative to January 2023—when U.S. actions were mostly limited to government‑device bans and ongoing CFIUS negotiations—TikTok was, by late 2023, facing broader state and local restrictions and intense bipartisan scrutiny, and by 2024 it was subject to a federal national‑security law that threatens an actual nationwide ban absent forced divestiture. That is a substantial, sustained increase in political and regulatory hostility and clearly a “significantly worse” U.S. operating environment, so the prediction is best classified as right.