The 1st Amendment does not apply to Chinese companies operating in the US.

And even if it did it isn't a suicide pact that forces the US to do very stupid things like let the CCP use TikTok to manipulate US citizens to the benefit of the CCP and detriment of the US.

The first amendment applies to US citizens using TikTok to communicate.

The first amendment applies to the communication of US citizens. If TikTok is found to be unlawful for non-free speech reasons and its distribution is outlawed, 1) Americans can still use it for communication and 2) Americans can use any number of other things for communication.

It wasn’t even the manipulation that was the NatSec concern, it was the amount of sensitive data they were pulling of not just TikTok users but any friends or family of theirs that they had in their contacts. This means they have data on people who work in sensitive departments, military bases, etc. and they had already been established as providing that data up to the Chinese Government. It’s the same reason India banned it, it was being used as an espionage tool.

Now the other problem is that Meta will sell much of the same data to anyone who is buying. We need to do something about surveillance capitalism from private industry too.

There is no First Amendment issue here. The Supreme Court already determined that:

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

The Supreme Court also determined that Long Island isn’t an island — that doesn’t mean they’re right.

The supreme court ruled that banning it because of "the risk that user data stored on American servers might be exfiltrated" didnt fall under the first amendment.

The head of the FBI (among many others) said the ban needed to happen because China could use it to spew propaganda.

When Russia is heavily critical of what one of its media outlet says and then bans it because of tax irregularities or something, only Putin supporters are under any illusions as to why it happened.

Things get a little weirder when they're mass media. A lot changed when the 'fairness doctrine' got thrown away… essentially you're arguing that adversarial powers should get to run mass propaganda operations with all the technological means we've learned, on the grounds it's 'speech'.

No citizen has comparable power to influence (and hide their tracks/sources) no matter how manically they post. It's rapidly becoming 'giant computer farms full of AI following scripts' and that still counts as 'speech', but rather than an individual's opinions it's targeted influence operations towards indirect goals.

It can be as close to 'crying fire in a crowded theater' as you like, except it's methods to coordinate teams of people all crying fire, knowing there's no fire, but intending to cause a mass casualty event through their actions.

Speech?

So many people think the freedom of speech means a right to your speech being amplified.

It does not.

You shouldn't care what China or Russia say. The first amendment works only for American citizens, not for foreign subversion agents.

It's more nuanced than that.

Foreign nationals have at least some First Amendment rights in the US. Foreign agents or countries may have restrictions on some other grounds.

<https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...>

<https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/aliens/>

TikTok tends toward foreign country / agent as I read it.