The legal argument is much more clear though. The US can impose embargo via executive order.

Keep in mind Australia dropped Huawei over security concerns for their national broadband network back in 2012. China is a totalitarian regime that suppresses speech and is reeducating an entire ethnic group, possibly even forcing them into factory jobs.

If you read the article, they are also contesting the fact the order was rushed and bans ByteDance from retaining US lawyers once the ban is in effect, which is a violation of due process.

So the legal argument from ByteDance actually has merit in that respect, regardless of the political debate.

> bans ByteDance from retaining US lawyers once the ban is in effect, which is a violation of due process

To counter the parent’s comment, this sounds like something a totalitarian state would do

Are you implying the USA is a totalitarian state now?

If orders like this are not overturned by the judicial system, then yes, it would be. But this order (or at least the lawyer-banning aspect) will be overturned because the US is not a totalitarian state.

Correct. It shows that Trump is subject to the law but the CCP does whatever it pleases. China blocks whatever it likes because it has no such legal standards.

Yes, the entire state apparatus bows to the whims of one man, which is almost definitionally a totalitarian state. We’re lucky, at the moment, that the totalitarian in charge has few concrete ideas and lacks the attention span to see through even those few.

Thank you. I can’t believe not everyone is seeing this.

"There are exceptions to that power that lawyers for TikTok will likely underscore in their litigation. For instance, the authority cannot be used to regulate or prohibit either "personal communication" or sharing of film and other forms of media, which TikTok can argue is the primary use of its app."

Saudi Arabia is also a totalitarian regime. It suppresses speech, executes citizens prejudicially and extrajudicially even outside their own borders, arrests and charges women's rights activists of treason, dozens of executions by beheading of non-violent drug offenders per year, human rights activists are arrested and imprisoned without trial, and so on.

Maybe we should just stop doing business with Saudi Arabia too, is that your point? No more Saudi Arabia oil for the U.S. or even all of the western world? In fact they're still treated as a U.S. ally.

No but we need their oil and alliance. It benefits us so that is ok—oops, I’ve said too much.

oh we totally should. The US has historically extracted resources from regimes who play nice. When they stop playing nice or might want something a little better, the US goes all Iraq/Iran/Libya on them.

The foreign aid of high income countries (US, EU, etc.) is always used to prop up autocratic governments for resource extractions. It's how high income states enforce autocratic policies outside their borders, in order to keep their citizens happy with cheap oil and cheap plastic crap.

What do you suggest doing though? It would seem that giving them lots of money and arms isn’t a good way of dealing with them either.

I wish I could upvote this 1000 times

Yes, we absolutely should stop doing any business with both Saudi Arabia and China, both of which are brutal murderous totalitarian regimes.

Failing that, however, considering the two options for global social networks are precisely limited to

a) there are no global social networks b) there are global social networks but only ones that are directly controlled by the CCP

I'm pretty alright with a).

It’s both.