It was explicitly written in this law specifically that the president can unilaterally decide that an affected platform has done enough to no longer qualify for the ban.

America is looking more and more like a fascist dictatorship.

Managed democracy.

Because a separate legislative power decided to give the President certain powers?

That’s the opposite of fascist.

It's only fascism when the guy has a mustache

That's exactly how Hitler came to power. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

No it's not.

The Enabling Act removed the power of the legislature. This is the exact opposite - the legislature still has power.

Only superficially: the dictator cannot be subjected to any judicial control, but the dictator’s party has a two-thirds majority on the top rung of the judicial system.

When you give the president additional power, the legislative loses some of its own power. The Enabling Act is just the most extreme example.

The President doesn't have additional powers in the Tiktok example.

The President has always been able to veto laws. Biden could have vetoed the bill if he wanted.

And a Congress that passes a bill that says the President has a say in it's execution isn't odd either. The administrative body always has powers of execution.

And Congress is free to pass a law to reverse the law and make Tiktok legal if they want.

Fair enough.

They are supposed to be separate. The obvious problem is that once you let money into the process (when was the last time someone was elected to congres without spending money on a campaign? And why is that?) and the president (current, former, next) has any control at all over the flow of that money, then the branches are no longer "separate".

You have a risk of ending up with one or more people in congress who owns favors to the other branch of government. Or who are afraid of having a harder time defending their seat if they criticize the wrong person. And that people shrug this off as "well, that's how politics works" is really dangerous.

> The obvious problem is that once you let money into the process (when was the last time someone was elected to congres without spending money on a campaign? And why is that?) and the president (current, former, next) has any control at all over the flow of that money, then the branches are no longer "separate".

I'm sorry but your argument doesn't make much sense.

If money had such a large influences then why did a Presidential candidate who spent about half the other candidate win?

And then you claim the President will control the money, but the President doesn't control campaign funds. They don't even control government spending, Congress does.

> You have a risk of ending up with one or more people in congress who owns favors to the other branch of government. Or who are afraid of having a harder time defending their seat if they criticize the wrong person. And that people shrug this off as "well, that's how politics works" is really dangerous.

Ok, this makes more sense.

But the issue you raise isn't unique to the US system. It's not even unique to politics. Any human interaction can result in people "owning favors".

If you criticism is just human behavior, then I agree. But not much you can do to solve that.

Are you seriously asking why the guy who owns a social media platform and is heavily endorsed by another only needed to spend half of the others "campaign finance" budget? Not to mention all the other money and propaganda that's off the books.

> If money had such a large influences then why did a Presidential candidate who spent about half the other candidate win?

Because there was more enthusiasm for the politics and/or they spent it better? But ask yourself if someone with even more support for policy but $0 could have won. And if not, why.

> Any human interaction can result in people "owning favors".

Economic favors we usually call "corruption".

When I look around the planet I find few places (among western liberal democracies) that have the same sickness with money in politics.

If you look at "democratic health" as e.g. "how many in a parliament were born to (very) rich parents", it feels like there is room for improvement.

it’s about to start looking significantly less fascist if Trump admin can pull off their various goals and shake off some of the entrenched regulatory capture

Views centered on revolutionary nationalism. Using judicial means to remove opposition and replace holders of governmental positions with followers. Commanding paramilitary forces into an assault at the capital. Consolidation of power to close allies and financial supporters. Alienation of democratic powers. Foreign policy aimed at expanding the nation’s possessions.

The parallels to Mussolini are not nonexistent.

would love to see some citations on these… you work for the weather channel severe weather department by chance?

America is a DeepState autocratic core with a veneer of Democracy.

No it wasn't. The law specifically states that the president can only enact an extension in the event that TikTok is credibly attempting to negotiate a sale. They are not doing that, hence an extension will not happen.

I don't see it in the law. [0]

If you mean section 2.1.a.2.a, it just allows the president to add additional apps to the ban list, not to lift TikTok, which is "hardcoded" into the law.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...

> The Act exempts a foreign adversary controlled applica- tion from the prohibitions if the application undergoes a “qualified divestiture.” §2(c)(1). A “qualified divestiture” is one that the President determines will result in the appli- cation “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” §2(g)(6)(A).

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf

> Maybe I'm wrong but is a president even allowed just unilaterally decide to revoke a law ?

No, but they can direct the federal government to deprioritize enforcement.

My understanding is that the law doesn’t ban TikTok. The law gives the president the power to ban TikTok. So the president can elect not to use said power.

The law quite clearly states bytedance aka tiktok so yea tiktok is 100% banned and the penalty is massive fines that would essentially bankrupt them.

The law quite clearly says it is the president's call. It is a new presidential power.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...

It is the President’s call for any _additional_ applications. It is not his call for TikTok or any other ByteDance applications.

if the law explicitly says bytedance and there is no way for bytedance to avoid it then its a bill of attainder and unconstitutional. presumably, they have worded the law in a way that avoids this for example by letting the president remove bytedance for being in violation if he considers them no longer in violation.

No, he can't. Congress would have to revoke it. But it has bipartison support. So its just more of the same charade BS that he rants on about. Its all nonsense from him. It will be worse this time around bc he is not all there (even moreso than 2016). The next 4 yrs are going to be quite comical. He can't even control his bowels and he has to wear diapers to stop leaking.

I'm no fan of trump, but the law explicitly states that the president can exempt a platform.

> The Act exempts a foreign adversary controlled applica- tion from the prohibitions if the application undergoes a “qualified divestiture.” §2(c)(1). A “qualified divestiture” is one that the President determines will result in the appli- cation “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” §2(g)(6)(A).

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf

> the law explicitly states that the president can exempt a platform.

This feels like a fast track path to an oligarch system ? Pay enough and get your exception..

What kinda system is it currently?

A Democratic Republic

Not since a year or two after Citizens United.

Also, in case you didn't notice, the world's richest man just about bought the presidential election by spending over a quarter billion dollars.

As of 2024, a representative strong-executive democracy with a large authoritarian leaning and an unhealthy obsession with oligarch-worship.

In 2028, who knows. The current president told his supporters that in four years, they won't need to vote anymore, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

Concentrating power in the hands of the few is certainly a good way to get an oligarchy, which is what the "checks and balances" system of the US government is supposed to prevent. It's strange to see so many people wanting the president to have more authority and power, but I guess it's a response to Congress's reputation of being dysfunctional and refusing to compromise.

Carry on with that:

> The President must further determine that the divestiture “precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between the United States operations of the [application] and any formerly affiliated entities that are controlled by a foreign adversary, including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing.”

The content recommendation algorithm is TikTok. It is developed in China by Chinese engineers. There is no lawful way for TikTok to operate under this law, and the SC has completely failed by not considering this. It's a really lazy judgement.

Probably the outcome Congress was hoping for is that it gets sold to a US buyer who would operate TikTok with the technology under license, and everyone would just pretend that now it's operated by a US interest despite that being impossible. Like sure, they would be running the servers, but the code would largely still be written in China!

Edit: Actually it would be kind of worse, because thinking about it TikTok has a lot of engineers outside China now, so how would it even work? Would they fork the code and then that would be it? It's such a crazy proposition.

Real time content recommendation algorithm can be rebuilt from scratch relatively quickly (weeks). At the beginning it won't be as effective as current TikTok algorithm so iterations will be required but frankly treating algo like something that can only be done by Chinese engineers is silly.

When TikTok developed recommendations it was novel and on the frontier but now how it's done is much better understood and with GPUs availability can be implemented by any good ML team. Similar to Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other, the secret sauce is content and users, not algorithm.

> Maybe the US should just create some privacy protections instead ?

But... But that would apply to Meta and Twitter as well Ö

I mean if a president is allowed to pardon a criminal then I guess this is nothing compared to it