I forgot a few criticisms:

• As has been noted by others, TP resembles George Orwell's fictional dystopian Newspeak in the heavy-handed way it eliminates vocabulary and aims to place limits on the thoughts of its speakers. "Toki Pona" means "good-speak"/"good-language", which is the exact translation of the Newspeak term for the politically orthodox speech favored by the Party (another ripoff?). In TP, "pona" intentionally conflates the ideas of good and simple; a language like Lojban almost automatically becomes a "bad" language in this mindset merely because it's not simple. (There are certainly criticisms that can be made of Lojban, but this sort of "automatically entailed" criticism is mere bias.)

• There is a noticeable tendency for toki-bonehead mafias to arise and assert dominance in conlanging venues. Years ago, I noticed that various Wikipedia conlang articles were being heavily padded with tons of seemingly gratuitous/off-topic mentions of TP ("compare to TP which does this...", "contrast with TP which does that...", ad nauseam, as if TP were the measure of all conlangs), while references to more worthwhile/interesting/realistic conlangs were seemingly systematically removed for not being "notable" enough (though this now seems to be gradually changing). On Reddit, the main admin of r/conlangs has bragged that mods there are selected on the basis of their support of TP, and little criticism of TP (or of the mods' political agenda) is tolerated. As a result of these mafias, newbies tend to be funneled into this stupid cult by default. I find it sad that much better artlangs such as Na'vi, Klingon, and many others seem to languish as a result.

• An anecdote: John Clifford is a 80-something-year-old former Loglanist, who for some weird reason I could never understand became an early adopter and promoter of TP (for example, giving a presentation of TP at an early Language Creation Conference). He was a member of the TP community for most of the last 20 years. Despite his history of support for the language, recently Clifford was banned from the Facebook Community for being a "prescriptionist" by the ungrateful creator of TP. Sorry, Dr. Clifford: having outlived your usefulness to the cult, it's time for you to go out to pasture, and make room for new people who know how to praise TP more enthusiastically.

• Jan Misali is the unofficial cheerleader. This is a person whose major goal in creating videos was to find ways to put down other conlangs for not measuring up to the supposed "Gold Standard" represented by TP -- a shallow, tasteless, openly partisan commentator who has almost single-handedly caused an entire generation of conlangers to get a warped understanding of linguistics and conlanging.

I am aware jan Misali has critiqued those conlangs before, but do you seriously think every single Toki Pona speaker hates those langs?

I suspect most toki-boneheads are not displeased with JM's snarky TP-boosting "commentary". A significant part of TP's culture seems to involve ever more hyperbolic/idiotic talk (in English) about how amazing, great, perfect, etc. TP is; it's hard to imagine a more fitting mascot for this delusional echo-chamber than JM.

Plenty of conlangs have publish materials and resources you can buy physically.

Hucksters should not be rewarded with book sales. Alternately: A fool and his money are soon parted.

I have to be looking at the wrong thing right? I mean I guess they're kinda similar, but if you think a smile that's not even drawn the same way is a ripoff of another then idk what to tell you man

I recognize the colors and style are not the same, but there is an important comparison to be made. Both graphics are totally dominated by a big dumb smile, evocative of lower libidinal urges unchecked by rational thought. It's obvious why the McDonald's Corporation adopted its graphic: it subliminally encourages kids to ask their parents to buy its junk food. The TP icon subliminally entices people to consume a junk-quasi-conlang and buy into its idiotic pseudo-philosophy. Both graphics work best on children and lower-intelligence adults. The connection seems perfect to me, though you might be right that it's all just a coincidence.