Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.

https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-scotus-tiktok-ban-violates... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...

It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.

Like with tik tok, the ban itself isn't a speech issue because there's nothing bytedance can change about it's communication to not be banned, it's an ownership problem.

Of course there is. It’s obvious that a huge chunk of the momentum behind the TikTok ban stems from a desire to suppress anti-Israel content.

The actual purpose of a law or system is the actual outcome of it and not what it's dressed up to say its purpose is. A law that says "we don't allow mosques unless they're owned by people not descended from countries on a terrorism watch list" is still an infringement of the freedom of religion. We don't have to pretend there's good faith here.

This is at best vacuously true. Since China is the most powerful adversary of the US, you'd say that literally anyone else is more under the thumb of the US government than they are.

Yes. Foreign-ownership rules have been a thing in America for almost a century [1].

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...

Clearly it's not.

Yes, the government can make laws that effect speech platforms just like we can make them pay taxes.

The physical equivalent would be if China was hosting a TED-talk-like conference where anyone can come and hold a presentation, and after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in, neither to hold presentations nor to listen to them.

Technically that doesn't violate the constitution, but it's not difficult to argue that it does violate the spirit of the constitution

Those Americans can host the exact same content on youtube or any of the many other video hosting sites.

This is not a free speech issue, it is a megaphone issue.

So if the alternative places where such speech could be hosted were extremely limited, expensive or very difficult to use then the law banning a platform could create an unreasonable burden.

Of course, plenty of comparable alternatives do exist.

>>>> It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.

>>> Nonsense. You can easily find another piano teacher.

>> Right, just like people who use TikTok can easily find another short form video platform.

> That's a terrible analogy.

Nonsense. If TikTok was convicted and shut down because of rampant financial fraud, your First Amendment rights would be similarly unaffected.

TikTok was told to close because they refused to bring their corporate ownership in line with requirements set out in US Code passed by Congress. The content of any video was never at issue.

I think if that were the situation then yes the first amendment would be in issue. But I don't think anyone is saying that this is happening here. As I understand it this has nothing to do with what anyone is saying on TikTok and there are no social or protest movements gaining ground on TikTok that the government is trying to suppress. The only issue here is the foreign ownership and how that ownership is used. I don't think anyone is saying the government is doing this to silence any TikTok users

At some point, it becomes State Propaganda masquerading as grassroots activists.

Control over content can influence and distort public discourse and understanding. This is also against the spirit of free expression envisioned in the constitution and instead injecting an intentionally divisive voice.

The First Amendment case would be much clearer if this was actually about banning access to TikTok (it's not: TikTok self-blocked US users, Amazon/Oracle shut off servers, and app stores stopped distributing to US users). TikTok could choose to operate their service (like many other Chinese companies) using only non-US infra and without relying on American companies to distribute their app; indeed, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, hosted entirely from Chinese servers, continued to work just fine.

This case is also a reminder of why the iOS App Store is so bad for rights: at least on Android, you could sideload a 'banned' app; Google can comply with the law and US users can still download TikTok. On iOS, you don't have that option.

It is a big sign that we live in a police state that the courts are willing to be politicized to the point that they are willing to ignore this obvious trampling upon the human rights of both the app publisher and the app’s users.

Also, iOS users can go buy a tablet or phone that can sideload. Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.

This isn't about censoring content, it's about preventing ByteDance from collecting personal data from 170M Americans that Chinese law requires them to hand over to their government.

> Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.

Sounds like you're arguing against yourself. TikTok hasn't actually been banned.

Furthermore, the 1A is a restriction on the government and isn’t related to whether or not someone is a citizen.

There are lots of things congress is prohibited from doing under the constitution, including against foreign entities. Congress can’t ban a foreign religion operating in the US, for example.

You’re quoting the Declaration of Independence.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...

And it's also important that divesting was an option instead. In your analogy, they couldn't ban the books outright, but could demand they be published somewhere else.

Forced corporate divestiture is a thing, for example Merck.

And this ruling had little to do with any of that -- the first amendment challenge was that the ban imposed content-based burdens on the speech of the users of TikTok, and the court ruled that it did not. So the ban therefore survived the challenge under intermediate scrutiny.

The domestic vs. foreign ownership element of the ruling only pertained to the evaluation of whether there was a compelling government interest in enacting the ban, not whether the government was exempt from first amendment scrutiny at all.

Corporations are considered "legal persons" for the purpose of applying the law to them in a convenient and organized way, but in real life, corporations are just organizational models employed by human beings for the purpose of coordinating their activities.

The restrictions applicable to what the government is allowed to do to "people" as defined in the constitution apply regardless of what organizational models those people are using to coordinate their activities. Ultimately, everything in society reduces to people, and the government is not entitled to use reified abstractions to escape the constraints on its authority.

That Constitution also includes numerous clauses granting Congress the authority to regulate international commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3). TikTok is a foreign commercial enterprise. We have restricted foreign products and services since the Boston Tea Party.

Sort of true. Sometimes the constitution just says "persons", which has generally been interpreted to anyone.

But it's not material, because the 1st amendment is a restriction on congress. That's why it starts with "Congress shall make no law...". The argument isn't about if TikTok has rights, it's about if congress is authorized to take this action. They're inter-mixed a bit because if TikTok does have the rights they claim, then congress automatically isn't authorized, but they are separate.

There were some people on here saying that national security is just a pretense and the government is actually doing this because they dislike some of the content being posted on TikTok. I don't know if that's the case but if it were then I would concede there is a first amendment issue. But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.

I still think it does, but it's Apple and Google's right to propagate the app, not TikTok's right to be on the app store. And since neither Apple nor Google are party to the lawsuit, nobody really has standing to take that particular line of argument.

You can say the same thing about an antitrust law that forces Alphabet to sell Youtube.

Shocking news: different players have different motivations.

In cases from "Roe vs Wade" to "Masterpiece Cakeshop" and "Hobby Lobby" the ACLU came out against things supported by the religious right. And although the ACLU regularly supports the free speech rights of swastika-tattoed nazis - Republicans don't see that as supporting their side, because no reasonable person wants to think people with swastika tattoos are on their side.

In September 2021, the ACLU wrote a New York Times op-ed defending vaccine requirements, arguing they actually advance civil liberties by protecting the most vulnerable and allowing more people to safely participate in public life. David Cole and Daniel Mach, the authors, wrote that individual liberty isn't absolute when it puts others at risk.

Surely, one can be pro vaccine mandates. But I would not expect a civil liberties organization to hold this position.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/covid-vaccine-man...

Or feel the need to comment on it. (I say this as someone who believes in vaccine requirements.)

I am personally happy with vaccine requirements, but IMO the ACLU should have been defending the people who weren't.

That’s a clear curtailment of their civil liberties. And assuming they’re in a rural area may not harm anyone else either.

This is an obviously extreme example but the point still stands. Any civil liberties organization cannot focus absolutely narrowly on that question in every situation but has to apply a broader approach.

>but the point still stands

On what, exactly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon

All individual rights are balanced with the rights of other individuals/society. You can be given the choice to vaccinate or be forcefully quarantined. This has occurred many times in the US and the right of the state to do this has been upheld.

While corona was weak we will eventually seem some dangerous bullshit spread and the anti-vax dipshits are going figure out exactly what their rights entail as they are being drug from their house at gunpoint with the express will of the majority of the population.

Edit: Maybe they didn't.

Interestingly, the myriad freedom of travel cases happened so long ago and were so decisively settled as a strong right that everyone has kind of forgotten about them because there is little interesting left to decide. Not as controversial as questions around the meaning of speech. But I think the last significant questions were addressed around the Second World War.

A broad, sweeping quarantine in relation to COVID would have been so unpopular that you can see why they went about it in a "softer" way, but sometimes the government can't have its cake and eat it too.

Those vaccine mandates were broadly ruled illegal, even in light of the quarantine power. These sorts of civil liberties are complicated, and the ACLU found themselves on the wrong side of this one.

It is unambiguously unconstitutional to prevent everyone from traveling, even for quarantine purposes. It must be evaluated on an individual basis subject to judicial review to establish that the individual presents a clear and present danger, and only for a very limited duration. No different than restrictions on speech.

This is the reason no State anywhere, regardless of who was in power, instituted hard lockdowns during COVID. This is known to be settled law to such an extent that attempting to prevent the population from traveling without clearing the strict scrutiny standard would be met with an instant Federal court injunction, likely coupled with a withering public statement questioning the competence of the State’s Attorney General. There was no upside in taking that risk.

The idea that you can forcibly quarantine someone solely because you don’t like their choices is wishcasting, not based on credible Constitutional foundations.

If someone actually went to court over this, I would hope/expect that the NRA would send some lawyers. The ACLU isn't that into the second amendment and has never been. However, nobody has gone to court over this. They did go to court over vaccine mandates.

By the way, the only grounds the government would have to stand on here are radiation-related. It is broadly legal to use explosives on your own property unless you're too close to someone else's property. It is also broadly legal to build your own weapons.

There is "freedom to" and "Freedom from" lots of people not getting vaccinated affects people's freedom from getting infected.

Requiring inoculation/vaccination, shut downs, masks, and quarantines was generally considered a legitimate use of state power to prevent the spread of deadly diseases and not an infringement of civil liberties.

Actually this goes back to even before the US was founded. George Washington imposed mandatory smallpox inoculation on his army during the revolution. This probably contributed significantly to his victory because both the British army and native tribes that had sided with the British were heavily weakened by smallpox but Washington's was not due to that inoculation requirement.

There may have been isolated examples in the past, but the degree was not the same.

It always seemed to me that the US was fuzzy when the very clear text of the Constitution rubbed up against the realities of a complex State. For example,

- the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here. But the US has security services, and legitimately there are cases where to allow speech does harm. But if you are going to be honest, shouldnt there be an amendment giving the State an override of 1A?

- 2A is infamous, of course, and for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here, but why does "not abridged" get overriden by bans in, say, machine guns, which have been on the books since the Chicago gangster era? Either you abridge or not. Or at least be honest about it .

- Some speakers in the covid era made a very strong appeal to personal bodily autonomy when it came to vaccine mandates. Ok, let's follow that. Does it not then also follow that a woman cannot be forced to carry a baby to term? That would seem logical, but the connection is not made. Conversely there is no "commonweal" override written into the Constitution and we are left with random SCOTUS decisions over the last 240 years.

No it isn't. The argument here is that it isn't a restriction on speech at all.

An amendment process that in practice is impossible to exercise is just as good as having no amendment process at all.

No, and no one is saying they can. The law says American companies can't do business with a certain foreign-owned company.

It is beyond settled in law that this is something that the US government can do.

Sure, the government can do that, and when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information, it introduces First Amendment questions that must be addressed.

“The government says CNN can’t post stories from BBC” isn’t immediately resolved by “it’s a foreign company.”

But this doesn't do that. Everything that Americans could post or watch on TikTok, they're still allowed to post or watch anywhere else.

Is the government allowed to shut down Harvard because the same classes can be taken at ASU?

The courts have various categories for how important something needs to be to allow certain levels of unconstitutionality, eg suppose I have "legally" built the nuclear device featured in a recent kurgesatz video with enough kiloton to start by itself a nuclear winter kill every person on the planet... I seriously suspect SCOTUS will be ok with the state taking the ignition keys away from me

Neo-Nazis are a subset of Nazis though, no?

In the context of "literal Nazis" the ACLU had argued for the rights of - like the German American Bund, which contained actual members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not exactly.

I would very much agree this is the case. But it's not how a lot of people think

Tolerance is a social contract of leaving alone others whose ways differ from your own so long as they do the same for you.

One must not tolerate those that call for violence and subjugation of differing groups, which is almost the exact opposite meaning your comment seems to be implying in my reading of it, instead calling for wholly unfiltered speech by whosoever should deem to speak.

Racists and similar hatemongers calling for others to tolerate them while they are screaming for those they disparage to be caste down and out cannot be tolerated in any reasonable forum.

As such, any reasonable forum must ban some facets of free speech.

That we disallow this power for governments is a reasonable limit on the powers of the elected to rule, lest those powers be abused.

Thank you!

You seem to be confused between principally defending everyone having the same rights vs defending everything anyone can do.

The ACLU defends Nazi’s rights because they believe Nazis should have the same rights as everyone else irrespective of who they are.

That doesn’t mean they defend every possible action that can be considered a civil liberty.

Eliminating traffic laws would make individuals more free in a literal sense, but those rules also make it so people can get from place to place quickly and safely. The liberty interpretation is that what people actually want is to travel, not to drive however they like. So you trade a freedom most people don't miss to enable another.

Vaccine mandates are a great example of this contention where under normal circumstances nobody cares about having to get vaccinated but they do care about not getting polio. Covid was strange in that the number of people opposed was significantly larger than I think anyone expected.

> Honestly these "civil liberties" orgs have lost the plot a long time ago, or are just at "useful idiot" mode

Exactly. When I read "many American civil liberties organizations think," my first thought was "they think a lot of things, that doesn't mean what they think is true or a good idea."

Additionally: they're all essentially lawyers arguing one side of the case. Just listening to them is not going to lead to the correct outcomes (e.g. if courts only listened to prosecutors only, tons of innocent people would go to jail; if they only listened to defense attorneys, tons of guilty people would go free).

I think “trying to pretend” is just one of those thought terminating cliches to pretend that you have a winning argument.

Go read the SC unanimous judgment. It’s very clear and lays out exactly why they’re wrong.

In fact they do a lot more than that because they state off the bat that there isn’t even a first amendment question (a Chinese corporation doesn’t have first amendment rights in the U.S.), but they go beyond, assume the first amendment does apply, and still explain why that isn’t valid.

How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content. That is the First Amendment issue. SCOTUS simply asserting that it's not in order to make their ruling convenient does not actually make it so.

Is that also free speech? Again, it's just the law and how it is enforced.

"Foreign governments saying things" also existed at the same time the 1st Amendment was written, and there were no carveouts from 1st Amendment in light of that.

In any case: If SCOTUS during its early cases on copyright law (or copyright on the Internet) simply asserted "this has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment," they'd also be wrong. That would be a clear avoidance tactic not to wrangle with the substantive issue. In reality, the big cases on copyright are riddled with 1st Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.

The law indeed needed to be carefully written to "skirt" any first amendment violations, and SCOTUS unanimously agreed it had done so successfully.

Universal City Studios v Corley

No, it fines American companies for providing services to a certain foreign-owned company.

If this isn't permissible, then sanctions can't be a thing and OFAC can't do its job. (Whether or not that would be a good thing is a separate issue.)

A SCOTUS that simply asserted these questions do not exist would also be laughable.

One very recent entry on this discourse:

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/knight-institute-and-foun...

Haven't these people heard of Wickard v. Filburn?

How can the first amendment be interpreted so broadly that large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians is considered free speech, yet so narrowly that social media isn't part of the media?

You do realize that Rupert Murdoch was forced to become a US citizen because of the same laws that are in question about US media ownership.

Social media is 100% the media. Social media has freedom of speech. Businesses don't have freedom of ownership, including media business. Kinda fucky, but this is very long standing law.

As for social media - it's an advertising platform. The algorithm is deciding what you see based on what sells ads. Who is exercising free speech there? Tiktok and Meta are exercising corporate speech in the name of profit making. They have no right to host such a platform, and the government certainly has the right to regulate it if they do have one.

The government can't compel Meta, Tiktok or individual users to say X, Y, or Z, they can declare the ads-based algorithmic-content business model illegal or subject it to strict regulation - especially when its in the furtherance of free speech, like preventing Facebook from deplatforming people for having the wrong opinions that advertisers don't like.

And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.

Look up Mitt Romney’s comments where he plainly says they need to ban TikTok because they can’t control the narrative on Israel-Palestine. Narrative being his word.

Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.

Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.

Why would the US government be involved in paying tens of billions ?

The idea is that ByteDance would sell it to Meta, X, etc and would be a private transaction.

Just like happens in China and in many other countries.

The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.

Congress doesn't appear to care if TikTok survives or not. TikTok bans are not news.

* If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets.

* Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high).

* ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?

They should have seen a law like this being passed coming years ago. That is more than enough time to divest.

Too late now for them, I guess. They can take the financial hit for being so bad faith.

Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it?

My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.

In your example, Musk could stop the app in the EU, much like TT is/was doing.

With this said, is the EU law written like the long standing US laws that give the TT law the power it has? If they have to enact new laws that would conflict with its member states wishes/dealings with other nations, expect it go to nowhere.

Your interpretation would make shutting down any place where people assembled unconstitutional which was clearly never the intent.

First I've heard of this.

The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.

Ironically this would be enforcing the very same law that exists in China, where all companies have to be majority Chinese owned.

One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.

You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.

It's like saying the Pope isn't Christian. It's really a hidden statement about gatekeeping.

To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.

With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.

But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.

For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.

That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.

> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.

Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.

Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.

See, names are meaningless.

So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.

If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.

Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.

https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-recent-conten...

A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):

> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.

In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.

It is not. A company would be (financially) punished if it didn't follow regulations. DiDi was an example. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/23/investing/didi-us-delisti...

It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?

The law doesn’t fine TikTok. The law fines the people who let me download an application I’ve chosen to use. At $5,000 per instance.

It’s not about TikTok’s rights being violated. It’s about mine, and yours.

So if I wanted to hold a speech how corrupt the government is and then the government passed a law that a PA supplier isn't allowed to sell me a Microphone or speakers, that wouldn't infringe my first amendment right because I don't have a right to a microphone or a stage? (Im not American so I don't have any first amendment rights anyways but for arguments sake.)

It's the PA supplier would be in a better position to argue that their rights are being violated. Especially if a single customer was targeted because of their political views / protected characteristics etc.

The problem with the TikTok scenario is that no specific group is being targeted for restraint. And the government does have the right to regulate trade. E.g. there are embargoed countries, export controls, etc. The fact that you can't sell raw milk across state lines is different from a hypothetical restriction on selling raw milk to, say, people named Todd.

Your comment however draws a weird parallel later on though but first let’s take a moment here:

> Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok

That is what the court found but it opens some interesting questions that really do have impacts.

I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.

As would a law which banned foreign ownership of venues while also introducing a regulatory scheme for domestic ownership stakes of sensitive industries and defined news and commentary as a nationally security sensitive industry. (Which this law essentially does for certain types of apps.)

So at some point a law can be “content neutral” and about access to venue not content but I bet almost any reasonable person would agree it’s an unreasonable restraint.

Now for a situation you draw the above as a parallel with but is very different:

> just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.

Bluesky can do whatever they want but if the government were to get involved in defining regulations around which users could use BlueSky… yes absolutely I would expect it to be thrown out on first amendment grounds and expect it’s a significantly stronger case than any of the examples above.

It’s a much weaker and almost irrelevant case when directed at a non-governmental organization in which some folks are using “free speech” as an argument over what entities which are not enjoined from almost any actions may do with their own venues. But yeah, if it was the government telling BlueSky who to ban? You bet that’s got first amendment implications and I’d expect a court to review it under strict scrutiny. (And I wouldn’t expect it to survive.)

That's a poor analogy, because allowlists and blocklists are not the same thing and do not have the same effects. The government only allowing a list of certain approved media outlets would be an obvious 1A infringement. The government blocking certain media outlets is not.

This is like arguing graffiti laws are censorship.

Graffiti bans are unquestionably constitutional. Graffiti laws that regulate the content are not.

Telling people where they can speak is precedented, legal and necessary. Telling people what they can say is against the principles of free speech; the government doing so is illegal.

Is the difference really about whether you can post on the platform or not?

Another huge difference is broadcasting is about usage of a shared resource and has always had regulations on who is allowed to do what. They don’t ban RT from setting up their own venue or printing a newspaper. RT and other outlets are able to operate in the US and people are able to chose to watch them.

Why do people on hacker news keep drudging up freedom of speech ad nauseum??

“ At the same time, a law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny”

And the opinion talks about foreign adversary, those exact words, at least 30 times. It mentioned freedom of speech twice

And “free speech absolutism (for me, not for you or anyone else)” is the current right-wing cause celebre.

It's not a free speech issue.

Given that the infra for serving US tiktok customers is in the United States(inside of Oracle Cloud), I am curious if Tiktok/bytedance responds to US law enforcement requests.

You have it backwards. The US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is 100 percent beholden to the Chinese gov.

It is just such a ridiculous argument but if you repeat nonsense enough times, people start repeating it back as if it is real.

We never had to deal with this before because the WW2 generation was obviously not stupid enough to let the KGB publish children's books and Saturday morning cartoons inside the US and have a KGB influence campaign that says to ban the books/cartoons would be a free speech issue.

Obviously a non-starter. What you see with Tiktok is how completely infiltrated and corrupted things are in the US in 2025.

The unrestricted war from China started a long time ago and the IMO the US has already lost.

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." ― Sun Tzu

As is "everybody is installing Red Note." The people who think this is true are the people who use tiktok.

You are being ridiculous now. None of those are forms of speech.

And restrictions on your ability to perform certain actions is literally what being in a society is about. If you don't like it then find another society. Just like you can find another ISP, place to publish your video or platform to use apps you want to use.

The foreign-controlled part in particular implicates Congress's obvious and explicit power to regulate international trade, and it seems obvious to me that there would be something less than strict scrutiny applied to alleged violations of the 1A when that Congressional power is in play.

(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)

Not that the case is relevant because restrictions on the availability of products is well established under the law. I can’t just buy nuclear weapons for example.

They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.

That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.

Isn't use of any non-violent means to advocate one's belief to change the society is the whole point of the democracy? Your point is rather very totalitarian.

This is incompatible with living in a society.

I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.

It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.

Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.

I don't agree that it is, though. The restriction is on where you cannot put your speech[0], not on the speech itself. If there was nowhere that you could put your speech (or if the available avenues became much much much smaller in reach), then I would say that your speech is being restricted.

But that's not the case here. You can publish that same speech on YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and a host of others where you can reach more or less the same audience you can reach on TikTok.

You also mention elsewhere about not being permitted to download a particular app onto your phone (and/or that a service provider isn't allowed to provide it to you). That just isn't a free-speech issue at all. And besides, if you have an Android phone, you absolutely still can install the TikTok app on the phone, because Android allows sideloading. If you have an iPhone and can't sideload, then your beef is with Apple, not with the US government. Beyond that, www.tiktok.com still works just fine, and will still work fine even if/when it ends up hosted on infra owned by non-US companies.

[0] Note that I did not say it is a restriction on where you can put your speech; it is a specific restriction on where you cannot, which I think is an important distinction.

The law (and the US constitution) does not guarantee any particular platform for your speech. It just guarantees that you can speak, and courts have interpreted that to mean that you need to have some reasonable platform, and that laws can't put an unreasonable burden on your ability to speak on some platform.

As an aside:

> Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?

The law does not target internet providers at all. They are not required to block traffic to *.tiktok.com or any of their IP addresses.

The short term "number go up" mentality is breeds is a cancer.

I really hope this changes your mindset. The number go up mentality is purely a result of avarice from those enacting it, it has 0 to do with any laws, it's all personal greed.

https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...

A lot of folks here are saying that the TT ban had nothing to do with free speech. A couple of indirect rhetorical questions that might be relevant to help illuminate opinions about TT:

1. If there were a single newspaper (in the pre-internet era) that developed and printed a lot of reporting with a particular political outlook and was the home of many columnists known for being the premier thinkers with that outlook, and a law were passed that had nothing to do with the content but had the effect of shutting down that paper, and only that paper, would this be a speech issue?

2. If a political rally were assembling to petition for redress of their grievances, and a law were passed that told them they could say what they wanted but the rally was only allowed to occur in a specific field 30 miles outside the city and 3 miles from the nearest paved road, would this be a speech issue?

3. Given that deadtree-books-in-physical-libraries are not the primary point of reference for most people anymore, if you wanted to block access to certain kinds of information and/or make a statement about doing so, what action would you take in the 21st century to do the equivalent of a book burning? And would this be a speech issue?

There are obvious and easy things you can point out about how the TT law is different from each of those three scenarios, don't @ me about that. But it seems to me that most people who are serious (or, publicly serious, which is a little different) about supporting the TT ban give reasons for it that would be inconsistent with their answers to one or more of those three questions.

That's a pretty substantial difference.

(2) Also doesn't match the situation, there is no requirement that TikTok restrict the reach or audience of their content in any way AFAIK.

(3) The situation is more akin to "foreign government owns the local library, and can decide based on the identity of the person walking in which books the person is allowed to see and check out" - seems obviously problematic at least /if they do that/

As an analogy you could imagine that all the people in the cases above are neonazi pedos and you might conclude that they do not deserve free speech, but the point of the parent is that in all of those cases the free speech of the people was being infringed upon (the question is whether that is justified or not)

I am shedding tears for those poor shareholders.

This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everything they need to run a global competitor to TikTok, including software, infrastructure and userbase. Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.

Giving in here would be the beginning of the end of TikTok and could well be argued to be a violation of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders. It would be the ultimate version of chasing short-term gains by selling the long-term future.

Wouldn't that be a no-op if they already did so?

This has been a possibility for a lot longer than 8 months. Trump was talking about it during his first term more than four years ago. You can take the time to line up buyers even if you don't end up having to sell, but if you have the time and then don't use it, whose fault is that?

> Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.

Of course it's not free enterprise. It's a government regulation.

If the US passes a law that says US companies aren't allowed to do business with Russia, that's not free enterprise either. Should those laws be unconstitutional? Maybe, but not any less than this one.

"Free enterprise" is a fantasy. We don't have that, pretty much never had. And I think that's a good thing. Free enterprise/free markets tend to monopolize and prey on workers and consumers.

This is not strictly true - when a company leaves a huge market, it is imprudent to leave behind a well-resourced competitor in place. If I were a ByteDance shareholder, I'd hate if it spun off TikTok America LLC, and then having TikTok America compete against ByteDance in Europe and the Rest of the world on an equal technological footing, but perhaps even deeper pockets from American markets.

Now, expect Musk and his billions to push lobbying weight around to ensure Brazil paid dearly for it.

International politics is a treacherous game.

We are talking about a single country.

TikTok has the power to sway any election how they want. The data available to them about what reels sways what people in what direction is immense. The only question is if they are doing it.

In 20 years I expect either democracy to vanish, or algorithmic social media to be widely banned, or control over algorithmic social media to be viewed more like control over nuclear weapons...

Is a freedom of speech issue.

Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical

1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.

2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.

3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm

4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US

5. China is Tesla's second largest market

6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China

Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?

Your argument is a false dichotomy, and it's made in bad faith. You argue that they should have taken a 10B pay day, meanwhile they are alive today and arguable worth over 100B.

Chinese nationals know how to deal with Party officials because necessary to get ahead in China, not because it's some racial trait.

Not between corporate influence and no corporate influence.

> I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.

For me that's a naive stance that ignores the problem of corporate influence on politics.

Apart from that, how is US corporate influence necessarily better than foreign corporate influence? Neither care about the US general public. Some US companies knowingly harm their own citizens (Philip Morris, Exxon, Purdue, etc.)

One can argue the problem with TikTook is that it's controlled by the government of an adversary nation (from the viewpoint of the US), but it's not just the fact that the company resides in a foreign country.

I clarified someone else’s statement, like a busybody, because their position deserves to be supported or supplanted based on its own merits.

The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice. You are discussing fair systems.

There’s a common ground between both these positions, and I would have liked to see that conversation occur.

For what it’s worth, I can sympathize with a desire to support in groups, however fair systems are the practical way to achieve that.

> The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice.

What I wanted to point out is that it really is a false choice because it assumes that US companies have the interest of the general public in mind.

Not equating the two questions.

Have you been paying attention the last few weeks?

NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ "As the first Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach."

Companies aren't stupid. They know that in order to be successful in today's world, you have to personally fellate Trump. Thanks to the American voters for bringing us this reality.

i’m no trump supporter but it was pretty obvious for a few years that the dems were sowing the seeds of their own issues

Trump proposed the TikTok ban and even tried to enforce it via executive action during his first term. He also said he would put Zuckerberg in prison and attacked big tech companies for almost a decade at this point. The reason Silicon Valley is aligning themselves with Trump’s administration is for strategic reasons. If there are any ideological reasons I doubt these would stand the test of pendulum shifts.

Republican speaker Johnson also still wants to enforce the ban and only considers Trump’s interference as a delay to have TikTok sold to a US entity (which the bill explicitly allows as an alternative): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...

This line in particular sums up the cynical stance of these billionaires:

> We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.

They simply don't care about society as a whole, they want their businesses to thrive, no matter what.

I think they should have tried to adapt, they decided to focus their efforts on putting the genie back in the bottle.

Technological progress has made us more affluent and better off. My father grew up in Europe and his family couldn’t even afford shoes for him or education past the third grade. I am wholly uninterested in anti-tech politics or a politics of stagnancy as seems popular in Europe. Democrats need to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and become the party of abundance, redistribution, and human capital investment. How can we make everyone better off, rather than focusing our energies on finding the next bogeyman to blame.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...

The ban was and remains deeply bipartisan.

(P.S. Given your deep involvement in the bill and the sheer amount of comments you make on this site trying to convince readers that it's both popular and necessary, I think you should absolutely disclose your position on the bill. I'm a transit and modeshare advocate and I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers.)

Trump is doing what the law permits, granting a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days. In the meantime, he’ll find a way to remove the national security threat.

> why did it need to be combined in a foreign aid package to Ukraine rather than stand on its own?

This is how all bills are passed. I also advocated for the Ukraine bill; that was the weaker (and far more partisan, though not entirely so) of the two.

> I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers

Cool. I do not. (I’ll disclose my involvement if I need to add gravitas or if there’s a conflict. But it’s not a conflict to be arguing for a thing I advocated for, or vice versa. I’m not professionally in politics, after all.)

You've got things reversed. The ban is what the Republicans wanted and the Ukraine support was bundled in to take advantage of that. They wanted the Tiktok ban so much they allowed the Ukraine funding (as part of the larger funding bill).

No. Heads up, he wins; tails up, blame Biden.

The gay marriage bill was at Israel’s bidding?

I worked on the TikTok bill. I really don’t care about Israel. While it’s tempting to see everything through the lens of your pet issue, it’s myopic to believe everything is motivated by a single cause, particularly a foreign-policy line.

No. It was national security risks that have been amply disclosed. The Cuban Missile Crisis was still a crisis even if the Soviets didn’t launch.

This has been publicly litigated well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xTxAilSF0

Tiktok ban bill was due to it being more pro palestinian. It's no coincidence that most congress members get funded by Israeli lobbyist group.

Not sure who "we" are, but they're wrong.

It's not a war I have strong views nor knowledge about. I've never visited either place and while I respect people who have strong views on both sides of the debate, my pet war over the last few years has been Ukraine. (Though even there I'm aware enough not to paint everything through the lens of Russian meddling.)

Nope, just worked on it as a private citizen. (Don't have an account with any Meta service.)

In an ideal world, we'd regulate social media. I've tried and failed advocating for privacy legislation--the people who are passionate about privacy in America, unofortunately, also tend towards political nihilism, which makes the cause a political nonstarter. I'm also concerned about Chinese influence over American society, and care about Taiwan's security, so TikTok sort of aligned between my views on privacy, teen mental health and national security.

Wasn't it Republicans that initiated what would eventually lead to the ban of TikTok? Maybe I remember incorrectly.

> How can we make everyone better off

Wasn't it a really long time ago that was the goal in the US? It seems capitalism leads to a very different goal than "redistribute so everyone is better off"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

How much time? Because the way free speech absolutists talk about these ideas always seem to imply that we are mere moments from a country like Germany collapsing into authoritarianism. What evidence do we have that the US's level of free speech is truly better than a country like Germany which does specifically restrict the speech of Nazis?

The internet has created a global town square where the loudest voices are the ones that catch people’s attention, regardless of the veracity of their claims. There is no truth any more, only the cult of personality.

Tomorrow the US installs a racist, rapist, treasonous kleptocrat as president because the majority of people are unable to think objectively and swallow his promises at face value, despite every indication that life will be immeasurably worse if you’re not a billionaire oligarch.

A lot of people see the culture shift and start posting less or leave, and then the ratio gets worse and worse. Freedom from government restriction of speech is a good thing, but I disagree that this new era calls for throwing out norms of discussion platforms curating their communities' cultures.

I fully acknowledge there are valid, interesting philosophical reasons to host a site like Twitter or 8chan where "if it's legal it's allowed", but on net I think the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

*(Even many 4chan boards are less obnoxious. In part due to its linear format.)

Populations being persuaded into harbouring extremely bad ideas is a thing.

Trump is a criminal? The Dems are wrong. Trump brings up trans issues during elections? The Dems are wrong. Trump lies constantly? Somehow, the Dems are still wrong.

Let’s be fair: we can only blame the Dems. Because how do you blame a force of nature like Trump? Bring up any substantiative discussion, and you get identity politics and gotchas.

Facts don't matter, because "everyone has their own facts.", even when they dont.

People arent really discussing reality. They're fighting for their teams. But the least thing we can agree, is that the Dems had to have made some mistakes, since they didnt stop it. They didn't win. So the Dems are wrong.

Trump won. So Trump is right. Even if he isnt.

Because we can agree, the dems are wrong.

The reality distortion field that the world builds around Trump and against democrats is literally insane. I unironically believe the source is an IRL SCP object (they have to exist otherwise no explanation for no cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo) - and trump lucked out into being in possession of one or being that object!

Biden said it best: The USA has gone through the greatest economic recovery story NEVER TOLD. Democrats do great policy work and NEVER get credit for it.

Obama was a great president, Biden was a great president, Carter was among our very best of presidents, and NONE of them get the damn respect they deserve.

Trump, yet again, on day 1 gets an insanely good economy, an insanely good geopolitical situation, etc. Why? Because of those no good horrible marxist dummicrats!

Trump voters tomorrow will magically gain 100,000$ in their bank account, an extra house, 1$ gas, eggs, and groceries, and 500 more guns. And the day trump walks out in 2028 (if that happens) and a democrat comes in, they will instantiate become papurs again.

Whats the realistic alternative? Standing up to Trump? The president who has explicitly said he will retaliate against firms and individuals who oppose him.

The same president who was re-elected even though everyone knew this was coming?

If this bothers you, and you want to address it, focus on identifying the real root cause and work toward changing that.

And if you genuinely believe firms would act differently, make the case. But let’s be honest—how many rational people would stand up to someone who:

- Faces no accountability, - Has the Supreme Court and legislature backing him, - Is in power for a second term, - Commands an incredibly effective political machine (Fox-GOP), - has die-hard voters behind him?

I will give you excellent odds we're going to immediately see a definite difference between presidencies here.

Given the past four years have seen things like shutting down labor strikes, support foreign wars, expanding arctic drilling at record pace, increased police budgets, erosion of women's rights, erosion of lgbtq rights, and a steady increase in corporate power... I think the difference we'll see is in degree, not in direction.

I hear exactly what you are saying, clear as day.

For example, consider a male convict who desires to be incarcerated in the female prison estate. Is it really civil rights discrimination to deny him this? If so, how?

Most importantly, what about the civil rights of the female prisoners he would be incarcerated with, if this were permitted?

If I was under constant threat of rape or murder, I would do anything to get to a situation that I thought might be less dangerous.

> Biden removed anti lgbtq discrimination rules

It also affirmed that they felt they could supersede state law to protect caregivers (doctors, etc) who provide care against the law in their state (gender affirming care). They declined to exercise that authority and explicitly said they would not.

They also said they would consider provider discrimination only on a case by case basis (which they are not funded to do, and leaves poorer people more likely to suffer discrimination).

They added language stating "nothing in this rule imposes a requirement that covered entities provide gender affirming care".

They specifically struck the following language: "a providers belief that gender transition or other gender affirming care can never be beneficial for such individuals is not sufficient basis for a judgement that a health service is not clinically appropriate." Basically giving doctors the explicit right to say "I don't believe in gender affirming care and will not provide it".

Yes, you are right Biden did nothing to protect LGBTQ folks, but he did also take action to harm them.

Neither party is offering anything different.

No, the problem is people like you who try to convince others that Democrats and Republicans are the same, when some child-level reasoning is all that's necessary to disprove this tired bit of rhetoric.

> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.

Additionally, an extract from TikTok's later statement [1]:

> In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.

What the fuck? That's some incredible bootlicking by TikTok. They've done a great job making Biden seem like the bad guy for banning TikTok, while Trump saves the day by rescuing them. This is especially ironic considering Trump was the one who wanted to introduce the ban in the first place until he gained 15M followers on the platform.

[1] https://xcancel.com/TikTokPolicy/status/1881030712188346459

Legally, it’s unclear Trump can. (Practically, of course.)

July 7, 2020 - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considers banning TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53319955

July 31, 2020 - Donald Trump wants to ban TikTok and will not allow ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/tiktok-trump-bytedan...

August 3, 2020 - Donald Trump backpedals and allows ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/03/tiktok-ro...

August 6, 2020 - Donald Trump declares a national emergency based on the information TikTok collects: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...

"You are not immune to propaganda" as they say

And then there’s the fact that the conditions for an extension aren’t met as written in the law. There’s no way he can certify to Congress that the conditions are met, which is why he’s trying to use an executive order. But that’s illegal.

This was literally nothing but a political play intended to give Trump a boost.