There can only be a finite number of broadcasters because of how radio works, so it makes sense to regulate. (A little bit of sense, not a lot.)

There should be no restrictions on who owns a website. There can be an unlimited number of websites, and every website's "reception range" is the entire planet.

Today's rulemaking pushes us one step closer to a Great Firewall. If ByteDance moves operations entirely to China, what measures will the government enact to prevent people in the US from using it? (It will probably be strong-arming app stores, but that will fail because they can just make it a web app. So the only option will be to have two Internets, one with everything except TikTok, and one with everything.)

It will be interesting if this extends to other apps. Will it be unamerican to play Genshin Impact?

In this particular case, the law targets financial interactions with the company in question. So it wouldn't actually ban the company from serving on the internet, but no US company can knowingly facilitate their services on their servers.

Ex, ByteDance couldn't go to AWS and ask for capacity, nor could they go to Hurricane Electric and ask for Peering.

If the ban was based on the context of the speech it would violate the constitution, but ownership of corporations is fair game to regulate. It's not uncommon for countries to have foreign ownership restrictions on other industries like banking, utilities, railroads, etc.

The other problem is the teapot calling the kettle black. If the US has precedent, and this action follows that precedent, then our bitching and whining about Google and Facebook in China previously makes us look really contradictory.

We’ll end up validating Chinese policies all these years if we claim this action has precedent.

If it doesn’t have precedent, then it’s even worse. It becomes a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them (or their practices).”

> The other problem is the teapot calling the kettle black.

You could say the same thing about China complaining about this. Actually, that's what people would think of first when you mentioned "the teapot calling the kettle back". Frankly, I think people in China are surprised we kept our internet open for so long. Anyways, yes, American is now admitting that they will play by the same rules as China, rather than giving them a pass.

What does it matter what China does? If they don’t want our stuff then that’s their choice. I mean, we voluntarily use an economic blockade as a weapon against North Korea, Iran, and Russia, and it is not to their benefits.

My whole second point about joining them is saying that it shouldn’t matter what China does or says. They are hypocrites so we can be too???

I mean, if you think like that, then it doesn't really matter at all. Americans aren't so bound to concept of Chinese face that they actually even care about this. Since we don't get face hurt, accusations of hypocrisy are pretty pointless anyways.

Saving face is not just about saving face. There's also your credibility at stake. There's only so many times you can invade a country under false pretenses before the international community, or even your own constituency, starts siding with the opposition. I guess also if we really don't have any principles anymore, we'll have devolved back to survival of the fittest principles. At which point we don't need thinkers, just people doing what they can to get what they can all the time. No need to argue or make points. Just fight it out and save some time.

China said "American companies not welcome in China's internet", well they didn't say it, they just made that the truth. America saying "Chinese companies not welcome in America's internet" 10 years later isn't going to raise many eyebrows abroad. For the most part, people are wondering why it took so long.

> I guess also if we really don't have any principles anymore, we'll have devolved back to survival of the fittest principles.

China has been very clear that the principle should be tit for tat. All of their economic and foreign policy is based on that, from the visas they issue to visitors, the tariffs we exchange on vehicle production, and the foreigners they throw in prison when one of their own is put on house arrest in Canada. This is just a very late counter-reaction to a policy China has held for awhile.

It's the sovereign right of any country to be protectionist. Protectionism is actually the default. Open markets is not the default. I'd like to think the open US market is what makes it great, and too much protectionism actually stifles innovation and the robustness of the domestic economy.

The US market hasn't historically been that open. We started this country with tariffs as the only thing funding the government. All the free trade market stuff we have today was carefully negotiated via the WTO, and even then there is a huge bias in supporting allies (remember, when China opened up in the late 90s, it was antagonistic with Russia and actually a US ally since the the late 70s, that is all history now).

But we're not. The mantra of the West has always been that government must stfu and let the people talk. Government is charged with protecting that right for the people.

China is a government, so, just like our government, it must stfu.

This is a pretty straightforward protection of the people from government that's very much in line with American ideals.

I'm seeing downvoters here. Do you guys mean that people shouldn't have a right to free speech? Or you believe that if we give foreign governments the right to free speech, that they won't use it to silence you? I can think of at least one example that did.

China.

It's like this: imagine your neighbor is a raging alcoholic, and you say - he can get drunk and beat his wife, so I should too. And anyone who says this is bad can clearly see that he was the first one to do it.

I think it's more like, "we've been telling him not to get drunk and beat his wife. Now he's coming to our house and beating ours."

China is using TikTok to suppress free speech, so I don't see how your analogy relates here.

Ummm... we only exactly copied the censorship that China practices? How this flies over people's heads is beyond me.

Because we exactly didn't. Look what's flying over your head.

China: censors free speech in China then makes a US speech platform and censors American speech on the new platform. Blocks US platforms in China because they refuse to censor speech for the CCP.

US: blocks China from owning speech platforms because the US doesn't allow censorship and doesn't trust China to stop censoring speech on the platform.

Literally the opposite thing. How you've managed to conflate two completely opposite things is very interesting.

Are you a habitual TikTok user? Or do you work for the CCP?

I'm openly suspicious that you might be getting paid to conflate these very obviously opposite things.

How would it validate China? China has made itself a laughing stock hypocrite. It tells everyone how bad free speech is, and then it begs for free speech?

Conversely America is holding to its core values of restricting governments from acting in the political field. That right is reserved for citizens, and is especially protected from government use. America is founded on restricting government so that free speech can exist.

This move firmly reestablishes America as a leader in free speech protection, as it protects citizens speech from influence by government, both domestic, and now, foreign.

This isn't the US joining China's practices, they aren't cracking down on all foreign ownership, they're targeting China as a tit-for-tat. Tit-for-tat is the right response to a defector like China, the US still cooperates with other cooperators like those in Europe.

>If the ban was based on the context of the speech it would violate the constitution

It still wouldn't violate the Constitution. Rights are reserved for citizens. It's perfectly legal to tell TikTok what they can or can't say.

That's not what Congress has done, but it would be legal.

Because freedom of speech is less protected (in practice) for foreign entities.

Maybe you can expand on what you’re trying to say because freedom of speech is protected afaik.

No because a US person can be called in to answer questions in a court of law or before congress. If the owner is Chinese living in London, where would you even begin ?

There is always the option to detain them in Canada and maybe, possibly extradite them to the US (or not).

That was for breaking sanctions law, but you supported my point. It's difficult.

Because freedoms apply to US citizens. It works just fine.

That's exactly it.

Freedom of speech is my right to be able to bitch about Biden or Trump without having to worry that I'll die in prison.

Freedom of speech is not a right of foreign entities sending me memes about them to manipulate who I will vote for in the election.

There's a law where foreign entities can't own TV or Radio in US. This might be controversial, but IMO it should be updated to also include social media as this is source where people get news from.

Well, no, that's not quite right. Even though we nominalize the concept of 'freedoms' as something that we have (making it possible to conceptualize there being people who don't have them), the actual legal framework in place operationalizes these freedoms as restrictions on the exercise of political power, without qualification.

In other words "freedom of speech" means that Congress doesn't have the power to pass laws that suppress speech itself, regardless of where it comes from. It's not that the first amendment applies to some people (and certainly not that it doesn't apply to others), but that it applies to Congress and limits what laws they can pass without qualification.

Your interpretation might have been right before. But now you're looking at a vast majority bipartisan vote that makes something inarguably clear; China doesn't have those rights as of the most recent interpretation. That's now true, regardless of previous interpretations.

That's not the way it works. Bipartisan votes in Congress don't alter the constitution, or expand Congress's own power under the constitution, unless the vote is for a constitutional amendment, which must subsequently be ratified by the states to become effective.

Yeah, I didn't say that.

Firstly, they didn't expand or alter the Constitution.

I'm not sure where you got that from. Reading back and I don't see it anywhere.

Stated again, hopefully more clearly; by exercising restrictions on China they've reestablished that China is not "the people" described in the Constitution. So, it's not protected from congressional acts.

And second, they didn't need to do that anyway. Foreign policy is a power reserved for Congress and the President. No amendment ever restricted that power.

See Article 1.

Amendment I takes precedence over Article I. Congress does not itself get to decide what "the people" refers to in the Constitution, and acts of Congress do not alter or establish any meaning of any terminology in the Constitution. Where there is ambiguity, the courts resolve it -- Congress does not have the final say in interpreting the rules that define and limit its own power.

Further, the protection of free speech in the first amendment does not even refer to "the people", but simply prohibits Congress from abridging the freedom of speech per se, without qualification or any exception for who is doing the speaking. Congress cannot pass laws that abridge the freedom of speech as a matter of actual effect, regardless of whether they are doing so under the auspices of exercising other powers.

Foreign policy powers don't come into it -- if the act restricts free speech, it is unconstitutional, regardless of what end Congress was attempting to pursue.

To clarify further, interpretation of what it means to to be a right of people vs a limit on Congress; FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life is one of many examples where we have to assume SCOTUS interpreted that it's a right of people as there was no congressional action for them to limit in that case. They are clearly protecting people.

These cases go back and forth.

I would argue that it wasn't necessary to spell out that constitutional rights apply to citizens because the law is presumed to defer to common practice in cases where no law exists. That is, laws go back to long before the Constitution and those laws are referred to as common law.

In that sense; the king has lordship of his subjects, and no obligation to subjects of other kingdoms. He collected taxes, and provided protection from foreign threat and justice for his subjects.

Likewise, citizens of China don't pay taxes to the US, they have not that obligation because they are not subjects of the US government. Neither do they have the rights that are afforded a subject thereof.

Congress has no need to clarify that. It's presumed to be the case. That they mention it in certain amendments is incidental, despite the creative interpretations I've read, mostly from immigration proponents. (Not that I'm opposed, I'm an immigrant.)

No doubt, lots of people prefer to interpret this differently, especially when it's a right they need for a specific reason. That's exactly what China is doing here.

They are arguing about why the law should be interpreted in their favor this time. And next time they will argue the other way, as they do against their subjects.

It's up to the judge what it means in each case, but as a generally accepted interpretation, applying US law and protections to a foreign nation without some kind of formal alliance specifying more directly what is provided, is an egregious stretch of the imagination. It's ridicule, at best.