Yes, the US Government Threatening to Block TikTok Violates the First Amendment
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Instead we get this sort of national-security justification, which can be applied arbitrarily and leaves everyone uncertain about what the limits actually are.
Or that they'd give the auditors the real system to inspect, not a dummy with the "spy" and "propaganda" plugins removed?
I agree that having some baseline limits to data sharing would be a much more principled approach here!
It may sound oxymoronic that for a law to provide "freedom" to people it must also encumber that freedom with restrictions in order to actually provide the freedom it is trying to provide, but that is the simple truth of it.
Otherwise the law would have no power to enforce any law it passed.
With that being said, the exceptions are actually quite reasonable.
The "No shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater" laws still apply (i.e., it would still be a crime to create and publish a fake bomb threat even if it were intended as a joke if there is any chance whatsoever that any partially reasonable person would possibly take it seriously), as well as common sense laws like, nothing involving underage people being nude (or worse) or not publishing private nude videos without the subject's consent, things like that.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that…
> "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Utterly unsurprised to find it was WW1 time-period constraint, as I'm reading the utterly fabulous American Midnight about how the USG built a huge surveillance network & vigilante groups to destroy labor, human-rights, socialistic causes, and anyone not signing up for an incredibly propogandized Big Business lead war.
So... Is TikTok creating incitement of illegal acts? What other clear standards might apply to curb citizens use of this medium? Keeps smellingike horseshit to me.
The first amendment isn't a law that says "these people have freedom of speech".
Instead the law is written such that it's a restriction placed upon the legislature.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech..."
It doesn't indicate whose freedom of speech cannot be abridged by congress, so (barring any overriding jurisprudence or "original intent" I'm unaware of), this therefor apparently refers to the freedom of speech of everyone... everywhere. (I feel compelled to point out that I do not have a law degree of any kind)
Later amendments draw a clearer and more deliberate distinction between who the law is targeted at.
For example, in the 14th Amendment, it states in the first clause:
"nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
It's still a law designed to restrict the power of government. However, "any person" is a clearly and deliberately defined category of people that's different from "citizens of the United States" (a phrase which was used in the same section). It's therefor clear that this protection is meant to cover non-citizens as well.
But I don’t know whether the founders would have considered the actions of foreign-government-controlled-corporations as ‘speech’, which they wanted to enjoin their government from being able to pass laws to restrict.
Can someone show me the receipts!?
As the author points out, there are these vague claims by now two administrations of different political parties. Or I hear sort of hazy assertions from The Verge that TikTok is doing bad things.
What is the evidence? If we don't have the evidence, why are we still making the murky claims? If we DO have the evidence, why on earth haven't we done something about it yet?
I have to assume I'm really quite ignorant, that there is some reason for the inaction by political leaders, and so I come here genuinely from the standpoint of wanting to learn. Maybe I'm naive in either case! XD
All the threats are theoretical, about a future where TikTok is even more ubiquitous. No one can argue against such hypothetical, and would be suicidal for any politician to do so. So, here we are.
I think this debate would be much clearer if people didn't (probably without even realizing it) think they understand how China works because they understand how American works.
Embargo is a fairly powerful stopgap to both hit countries that we disagree with while also de-escalating the threat of all-out war.
but I am not a lawyer and certainly not a constitutional one.
I didn't read the article, but I don't think it violates the First Amendment as it stands now if they provide a good enough basis grounded in national security. The way people want the Constitution to be, versus how it is, aren't the same thing as you pointed out.
It might. But, in this case, I think that’s less likely. If Biden tries to ban TikTok, he’ll simply be doing what Trump already tried to do. If both Trump and Biden want something, it ends up looking bipartisan-which increases the odds SCOTUS will uphold it.
What they will do is find relatable, young, all American creators who have ideological overlap with CCP values, then you give these creators disproportionate weight in the algo. There is enough noise on any social media platform nowadays that you just have to have control over what is promoted in order to gain traction.
Take reddit for example, where bot armies are used to shape comment sections in artificially promoted stories posted by innocent bystanders. The person pushing whatever agenda doesn't have to create or post anything. The noise of the platform is high enough that any narrative can be shaped if you have enough power to push around the algorithm.
All this being said, it should be clear why you wouldn't want a communist dictator who granted themselves a life term to control the country gunning to take Americas place on the world stage...control over what content people in America consume.
Data privacy concerns be damned, those are secondary, far secondary.
FWIw, I think these concerns are valid. But it is sad that US comes to the same conclusion as China.
I have for a while now held the opinion that social media needs to be hyper-locally locked down to be “healthy”. However, that is practically impossible to pivot to now. That said, Nextdoor model hasn’t exactly been a role model community so maybe I’m just old now.
If Biden wanted to show you videos of daises on youtube, their really isn't any practical way of doing so. If Xi wanted to show you videos of daises on tiktok, you would open tiktok and get wall-to-wall flower videos tomorrow.
China is functionally a dictatorship. The US is not. Hence why we even get to have a debate about a foreign adversary controlling the the most popular app on the country's phones.
Not if that conclusion is correct though. Both China and the US think the sky looks blue and the ocean is wet. Both are concerned about the power of social media to shape the narrative for millions or billions of people.
If that actually works for the CCP, it would be a good counterweight to the capitalist propagandists that drive how the rest to of social media is incentivised
So the only question is does it infringe the rights of the users posting content. This is a better argument. One thing on the government's side is that content-neutral bans are a lot easier to justify as long as they serve a significant government interest and provide alternative avenues for expression. The latter seems easy to argue since TikTok has many alternatives (YouTube, Instagram, and others). And I think they could probably convince judges that national security is compelling enough.
Note that the comparison to Trump's actions in 2020 isn't really valid since that wasn't done via law. It seems like the author just threw in Trump's name because he is unpopular?
In what other trade context would it be acceptable for one trading partner to block all access to its own market (social media) whilst still enjoying full access to everybody else's?
How is this remotely acceptable?
The EU banned TikTok from official devices[1]. Anyone who thinks a "real" privacy law would alleviate the concerns people have about TikTok should explain how this "real" privacy law would differ from EU privacy law.
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/28/tech/tiktok-eu-ban-intl-h...
Tik Tok has 1.534 billion users out of which 1 billion are monthly active users. Only Facebook (2.9 Billion), Youtube (2.5 billion), Whatsapp (2 Billion), Instagram (1.4 Billion), and Wechat (1.2 Billion) have more Monthly Active users than TikTok.
It's working its way towards becoming the predominant social media app the world over and has been enough of a threat to both Google and Facebook that they have changed their systems to imitate TikTok to try to stop the hemorrhaging.
If America passes a law to lock TikTok out, it would be a Federal Act to help America's wealthy elite. The fact that this fact is disguised as a "desperate attempt to protect America's people from malicious foreign actors" is maddeningly pathetic, the actions of a whiny crybaby bully who used to beat up the weaker kid until they had a growth spurt and started fighting back fairly.