If I had children aged 7-17 and felt China was intentionally nudging them via algorithmic suggestions away from STEM and toward vapidness, and if I was unable to control their access to it, I guess I might appreciate that my government had banned it. But, as others have mentioned, it sets a dangerous precedent. If nothing else, this attempted ban has raised national awareness about the negative impacts of TikTok. What could the US Federal Government do instead, assuming it is important to consider such platforms as per their effects on the population?
If China sold candies that contained poison and marketed them to Us children, it would be easy, since the FDA prohibits this. If the FDA didn't exist, perhaps poisoned candy sales would prompt the creation of such a regulatory body.
So I guess I oppose the ban while recognizing the danger, and suggest we consider regulating digital goods in the same manner as consumable foods; if provable harmful effects are evident then that is grounds for a ban of a product on the basis of health protection.
The forced divestment is for national security reasons. Bytedance, as a Chinese company, is required by law (Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China) to provide full data access to the Chinese government on request, and they are compelled not to reveal when this occurs. Since this is done through legitimate channels (on Bytedance's side), this won't even be caught with an audit. So you have a situation where an app installed on half of America's phones shares all its data with China, along with any potential changes the government recommends for influencing the content.
I think the easier framework is this: China has banned her citizens from using most United States-based social networks. This prevents American companies from accruing profit from Chinese citizens and advertisers, and shrinks their potential pool of user data for refining algorithms or selling. As such, it's effectively a trade policy for us to in turn ban her social networks. Unless and until we are equally able to harvest Chinese data and suck yen out of China, she will not be allowed to harvest American data and suck dollars out of here.
> If China sold candies that contained poison and marketed them to Us children, it would be easy, since the FDA prohibits this.
The FDA was created by an act of Congress, as was this ban. These are identical scenarios -- the FDA has a mandate to block certain things, as does the TikTok ban. What's being debated is the constitutionality of it; and there are arguments both ways, but it seems very likely that the ban will hold.
A very naive and hopeful part of me would wish for Facebook, Twitter, and other vapidness-enhancing platforms be regulated too. But the untrusting, freedom loving red-blooded American in me is also wary of government controls and power consolidation bordering on censorship. No easy answers I suppose; we'll just have to find a way to thrive in spite of platforms that profit from our wasted time.
I think the US social media mega corps are kindred spirits and if TikTok is considered harmful/propaganda then so are the US products. The subject draws an uncomfortable amount of heat.
I think that's where we were with seatbelts in the 1950s, tobacco in the 1920s and alcohol in the 1850s. In all of those cases, society ultimately decided that guardrails were needed.
The authors Ashley Gorski and Patrick Toomey seem to think that the rule of law and advocating for consistent ruling on constitutionality will have an effect.
If I’ve learned anything about how the Supreme Court works, it’s that this is a political calculation, not a legal one. The outcomes are decided first, and then jurisprudence is employed to substantiate them — not the other way around.
I feel the same way about the supreme court justices today as I do about Senators for lightly populated states: people operating with little oversight and with little to no accountability to the people who they hold power over. The bigger problem with the Supreme Court is that, largely, the political calculus is mostly cemented for life of the justice.
The only way out I see for the Supreme Court is a Congress and President who are focused on fixing the issue. But, it still feels general awareness of the Supreme Court issues are still to low and not universally felt- maybe in another 2-4 years.
The cynic in me wishes the Democrat appointed judges would start openly taking such large and egregious bribes too to make judicial term limits a bipartisan issue.
>The outcomes are decided first, and then jurisprudence is employed to substantiate them — not the other way around.
I think this is the thing people don't get. Right or left, Democrat or Republican, it just doesn't matter anymore. You have nine of the best legal minds in the country, supposedly, and they constantly vote along party lines. There is no way that happens if the law is actually being respected.
I mean there's an irony inherent in the way the Supreme Court works in the modern American era: judicial review is not present anywhere in the Constitution, and yet the Supreme Court uses it to uphold or strike down law according to the Constitution. It's inherently a broken branch of government and it was a mistake for the Democrats to base the last 50-70 years of social progress on leveraging it.
The ACLU is staffed with extremely competent First Amendment attorneys and yet they seem to be intentionally muddying the water about this. As a 1A scholar (and ACLU supporter) myself, I find it extremely frustrating.
All of these posts keep talking about banning TikTok... The law doesn't ban TikTok. It bans its continued operation in the U.S. under the ownership of a foreign adversary.
The law:
> It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable
the distribution, maintenance, or updating of ) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the
United States, any of the following: ...
In order to take this seriously as speech infringement, you'd have to define software as speech. Precedent holds that the expressive part (source code) is speech, but that the functional part that operates is not speech. This law bans the software function.
Banning citizens from using the app seems unconstitutional, but is preventing the the company ByteDance to operate inside the US unconstitutional? Those two seems like two completely different questions even if the outcome is similar.
From a EU perspective, regulating what companies do is not in conflict at all with human rights. The privilege to operate a company, provide advertisement, sell products and services, to use the local economy, all that is regulated. It should also be mentioned that companies generally tend to receive some benefits that individual persons do not, especially when it comes to taxes, risk taking, and debt. Companies can own and operate things which private person can't. The distinction between the rights, responsibilities and privileges that a private person has compared to a commercial company are fairly major.
Why is the ACLU talking like TikTok is a US citizen which free speech rights are being infringed?
Really? From my reading of it, it seems to focus how such a ban would inhibit the speech of US citizens who use the application, not TikTok as an entity.
This is the best point I’ve read about this. I don’t think TikTok should be seen as a facilitator of free speech, because it has no obligations to allow it. It’s a private enterprise with their own community guidelines censorship, but most importantly they control the ”algorithm”. No matter how much these platforms claim to be town squares, they are absolutely not and thus serve no essential speech function. If they did, content would not require installing spyware to see. (In my opinion secret mandatory engagement algorithms don’t deserve even section 230 protections).
On the other hand, it doesn’t sit right with me that ”China scary” is enough to outright block whoever is successful in the surveillance capitalist game invented in the US. It screams of political hit job for hire by the tech oligarchs. It’s like banning Taco Bell for health reasons and leaving McDonalds alone. If the modern US was not a plutocracy, this would have been an opportunity for legislators to do real harm reduction and steer predatory mega-corps in a better direction.
Huawei and several other companies have faced this. Several American companies face this in China. Its not unprecedented.
Are you suggesting its unconstitutional because freedom of expression is being curbed? Thats not true, those creators have other platforms to post their content.
"The law’s supporters have, at times, minimized the ban’s impact on the First Amendment, citing the mistaken belief that TikTok users can simply move to another platform. From a constitutional perspective, this is nonsense. The government can’t justify shutting down The Washington Post because readers can simply buy The New York Times instead."
AppStore should have had some review mechanisms from the beginning. When an app reaches a certain scale, it should be required to ensure that its data centers are supervised by government technical personnel and accessible to the government.
This approach is similar to China's, because data is valuable—it can feed algorithms, making them more powerful and making the "candy" for kids even more addictive. The platforms where data resides can also do many things; just look at what Elon did on X regarding the election.
Otherwise, it's like shooting oneself in the foot.
By the way, I found a ridiculous website https://www.tiktok-alternatives.com/ Zack is just too funny.
From the ACLU amicus brief (linked in the article)
> Although the D.C. Circuit ostensibly applied strict
scrutiny in upholding the ban, it subjected the
government’s assertions to little genuine scrutiny in
the end
Does the author understand checks-and-balances? The DC Circuit found that Congress did a lot to try to investigate and come to an agreement with Bytedance that would resolve their concerns. After all that, it's Congress' power to decide what to do, not the courts. They are not just allowed to second-guess congress. They can only look at the "how" of the law, the "why" is largely non-justiciable. And if the goal is to stop CCP speech, through the TikTok algo, then there's really nothing to do other than ban TikTok.
Personally I think the ban is xenophobic and we should instead regulate ALL of these apps (X, Meta...) but it is legal
I think the times have changed. The Great Powers of the world are becoming more hostile to each other yet we continue to operate the naive way. We play by the rules but our rivals have no rules. This makes us weak, exploitable and ineffective.
As such, I support the ban, for the sake of doing something. I admit it's not ideal but we live in a messy and tense world. User's speech isn't really taken away, just use another dopamine feed. Better yet: use none.
You'll find it's in particular activists protesting this move.
I wonder how long until public discourse is willing to acknowledge that social media is not just a fun little way to stay in touch with old friends, but a straight up tool of surveillance and influence. For those that agree, do you think governments should do nothing? For those not convinced, what more evidence do you need?
Baking tik tok isn't a first amendment issue. As much of an advocate for free speech and the first amendment, I think Congress has the right to regulate trade and prevent a foreign company from doing business on American soil.
A foreign citizen or foreign corporation does not have first amendment rights so this is constitutional. However they should not ban TikTok if they want to hold any moral high ground over China.
> If the Supreme Court allows the government to shut down an entire platform on such a flimsy evidentiary record, it would set a disturbing precedent for future government restrictions on online speech.
The patriot act was supported by everyone when it became law. In fact, one senator had the unmitigated gall to ask the rest of congress, “but what about Constitutional freedoms?”. So the rest of us promptly removed him from office and replaced him with a more law and order type guy. That was pretty much the only resistance to that law at the time.
All that to say, you get what you vote for. And we’ve been voting very poorly for well over thirty years. In any organization, you hire that poorly for that long and you will naturally have some deleterious consequences.
I will say: Tiktok is very popular in many countries other than America. Forcing a company to sell its entire business just to continue operations in one country seems flawed, even if the US constitutes a major share.
The Supreme Court is bought and paid for by the group that wants to <s>ban</s> likely take over. So, regardless of what your thoughts on TikTok are, it's mostly all irrelevant.
The word around socials seems to be that users are just moving to Rednote, another Chinese social media app - doesn't that just defeat the purpose of this and end up with a cat and mouse game?
TikTok is not being banned. TikTok is being required to sell to a non-Chinese stakeholder in order to mitigate the national security threat of it being indirectly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
These are not the same thing, and it's depressing how vulnerable people seem to be to propaganda anymore. No one can even read a legal brief or a law.
Microsoft is not being banned from China. China just asks that Microsoft sell itself to a non-American company or they will be banned (but it's not a ban).
Absolutely, all of these articles are appeals to emotion. I imagine that works especially for the folks who have an addiction to the propaganda dispenser.
Another bad take by the nazi defenders over at the ACLU. If the same people behind tiktok tried to buy the Washington Post or CNN they would be blocked by existing laws prohibiting foreign adversaries from controlling American media companies, but somehow its fine if its social media? For better or worse social media is where a huge amount of people get their news these days, and unless we want Putin to run the NYT we need laws in place to stop foreign billionaires from filling the discourse with Russian/Chinese/Saudi propaganda (more than they already do).
First, let me preface that I despise TikTok and I think it is mostly garbage content-wise, however this proposal is simply un-American. Concerns about data privacy and foreign influence are legit, but banning an entire communication platform used by 170 million Americans based on hypothetical threats goes against core First Amendment principles especially considering the government's inability to provide concrete evidence of harm or to explain why less restrictive measures wouldn't suffice. If we allow platforms to be banned based on their parent company's nationality rather than actual demonstrated threats, what is next?
In a strange way, if it was a blanket China ban, it would almost feel less arbitrary than this, which was crafted to target ByteDance.
The fact they packaged it inside a funding bill that would have been politically unpopular for Congress to oppose also makes me speculate that they felt it wasn't strong enough to stand up to scrutiny on its own merits
I have to assume that either there is some ulterior motive at play, or the national security risks themselves cannot be exposed for national security reasons and that this is incompatible with the current justice system unless something like a secret FISA court is involved. Of course that would be a convenient excuse if it weren't actually real, but how would we ever know...
It's not a ban, it's a forced divestment from Chinese ownership. The real question is why Bytedance isn't willing to take fair market value for Tiktok instead of just losing everything, since that makes no sense if this was just "business" and there weren't ulterior motives involved.
Americans indeed have free speech guarantees, but I don't think it's quite so clear that foreign platforms have a constitutional right to provide a platform for said speech. How far does it go? Does a North Korean or Iranian or Cuban app have a guaranteed right to exist in America because some Americans use it for their speech?
Anyone who receives garbage content on TikTok has likely gotten themselves into a bad set of recommendations. I watched someone yesterday cycling through their feed and it was 100% brainrot.
My feed is very enjoyable: mostly neat cinematography tutorials, AI news, and just a little bit of OIIA.
We all know it's just a way for Musk and others to get a really popular social media for cheap. This ban has nothing to do with anything else than that.
ccvannorman|1 year ago
If China sold candies that contained poison and marketed them to Us children, it would be easy, since the FDA prohibits this. If the FDA didn't exist, perhaps poisoned candy sales would prompt the creation of such a regulatory body.
So I guess I oppose the ban while recognizing the danger, and suggest we consider regulating digital goods in the same manner as consumable foods; if provable harmful effects are evident then that is grounds for a ban of a product on the basis of health protection.
Salgat|1 year ago
_bin_|1 year ago
thehappypm|1 year ago
The FDA was created by an act of Congress, as was this ban. These are identical scenarios -- the FDA has a mandate to block certain things, as does the TikTok ban. What's being debated is the constitutionality of it; and there are arguments both ways, but it seems very likely that the ban will hold.
jimnotgym|1 year ago
ccvannorman|1 year ago
blandcoffee|1 year ago
IF there is a problem, let's solve the root issue (which may include looking at the algo feeds of all big tech, etc).
croes|1 year ago
A ban based on a feeling?
2OEH8eoCRo0|1 year ago
glitchc|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
ge96|1 year ago
Starts with an F ends in L
kelseyfrog|1 year ago
If I’ve learned anything about how the Supreme Court works, it’s that this is a political calculation, not a legal one. The outcomes are decided first, and then jurisprudence is employed to substantiate them — not the other way around.
philips|1 year ago
I feel the same way about the supreme court justices today as I do about Senators for lightly populated states: people operating with little oversight and with little to no accountability to the people who they hold power over. The bigger problem with the Supreme Court is that, largely, the political calculus is mostly cemented for life of the justice.
The only way out I see for the Supreme Court is a Congress and President who are focused on fixing the issue. But, it still feels general awareness of the Supreme Court issues are still to low and not universally felt- maybe in another 2-4 years.
The cynic in me wishes the Democrat appointed judges would start openly taking such large and egregious bribes too to make judicial term limits a bipartisan issue.
thinkingtoilet|1 year ago
I think this is the thing people don't get. Right or left, Democrat or Republican, it just doesn't matter anymore. You have nine of the best legal minds in the country, supposedly, and they constantly vote along party lines. There is no way that happens if the law is actually being respected.
emmelaich|1 year ago
FWIW, I think the Supreme Court will not uphold the ban. But TBH I don't know the details of the 'ban'.
qingcharles|1 year ago
femiagbabiaka|1 year ago
breadwinner|1 year ago
otterley|1 year ago
commandlinefan|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
"I'll burn down your house unless you sell it to me for $1"
See, that's not arson, because you always had a way out.
Ateoto|1 year ago
oidar|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
Social media platforms hosted outside the USA are going to be banned, because national security.
People may not realize or acknowledge it, but we are in the very last days of "free speech" on the internet.
aprilthird2021|1 year ago
slowmovintarget|1 year ago
The law:
> It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of ) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following: ...
In order to take this seriously as speech infringement, you'd have to define software as speech. Precedent holds that the expressive part (source code) is speech, but that the functional part that operates is not speech. This law bans the software function.
belorn|1 year ago
From a EU perspective, regulating what companies do is not in conflict at all with human rights. The privilege to operate a company, provide advertisement, sell products and services, to use the local economy, all that is regulated. It should also be mentioned that companies generally tend to receive some benefits that individual persons do not, especially when it comes to taxes, risk taking, and debt. Companies can own and operate things which private person can't. The distinction between the rights, responsibilities and privileges that a private person has compared to a commercial company are fairly major.
Why is the ACLU talking like TikTok is a US citizen which free speech rights are being infringed?
teqsun|1 year ago
klabb3|1 year ago
On the other hand, it doesn’t sit right with me that ”China scary” is enough to outright block whoever is successful in the surveillance capitalist game invented in the US. It screams of political hit job for hire by the tech oligarchs. It’s like banning Taco Bell for health reasons and leaving McDonalds alone. If the modern US was not a plutocracy, this would have been an opportunity for legislators to do real harm reduction and steer predatory mega-corps in a better direction.
DarkKnightKing|1 year ago
teqsun|1 year ago
"The law’s supporters have, at times, minimized the ban’s impact on the First Amendment, citing the mistaken belief that TikTok users can simply move to another platform. From a constitutional perspective, this is nonsense. The government can’t justify shutting down The Washington Post because readers can simply buy The New York Times instead."
stewardyunn|1 year ago
henryfjordan|1 year ago
> Although the D.C. Circuit ostensibly applied strict scrutiny in upholding the ban, it subjected the government’s assertions to little genuine scrutiny in the end
Does the author understand checks-and-balances? The DC Circuit found that Congress did a lot to try to investigate and come to an agreement with Bytedance that would resolve their concerns. After all that, it's Congress' power to decide what to do, not the courts. They are not just allowed to second-guess congress. They can only look at the "how" of the law, the "why" is largely non-justiciable. And if the goal is to stop CCP speech, through the TikTok algo, then there's really nothing to do other than ban TikTok.
Personally I think the ban is xenophobic and we should instead regulate ALL of these apps (X, Meta...) but it is legal
iteratethis|1 year ago
As such, I support the ban, for the sake of doing something. I admit it's not ideal but we live in a messy and tense world. User's speech isn't really taken away, just use another dopamine feed. Better yet: use none.
You'll find it's in particular activists protesting this move.
disambiguation|1 year ago
chrismcb|1 year ago
SmarsJerry|1 year ago
ranger_danger|1 year ago
Something something PATRIOT Act.
bilbo0s|1 year ago
All that to say, you get what you vote for. And we’ve been voting very poorly for well over thirty years. In any organization, you hire that poorly for that long and you will naturally have some deleterious consequences.
teqsun|1 year ago
NuSkooler|1 year ago
TheCapeGreek|1 year ago
4ndrewl|1 year ago
russdpale|1 year ago
thatguymike|1 year ago
yodon|1 year ago
lenerdenator|1 year ago
nyantaro1|1 year ago
egberts1|1 year ago
psunavy03|1 year ago
These are not the same thing, and it's depressing how vulnerable people seem to be to propaganda anymore. No one can even read a legal brief or a law.
cma|1 year ago
slowmovintarget|1 year ago
moralestapia|1 year ago
CryptoCoreMedia|1 year ago
[deleted]
oldpersonintx|1 year ago
[deleted]
wedn3sday|1 year ago
Jimmc414|1 year ago
teqsun|1 year ago
The fact they packaged it inside a funding bill that would have been politically unpopular for Congress to oppose also makes me speculate that they felt it wasn't strong enough to stand up to scrutiny on its own merits
ranger_danger|1 year ago
Salgat|1 year ago
pmarreck|1 year ago
Some of this is a tit-for-tat, I surmise.
<opinion> The embracing of terrorist sympathizers across the platform is not helping. </opinion>
thehappypm|1 year ago
qingcharles|1 year ago
My feed is very enjoyable: mostly neat cinematography tutorials, AI news, and just a little bit of OIIA.
qoez|1 year ago
xutopia|1 year ago
thehappypm|1 year ago
computerdork|1 year ago