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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

The actual legislation: https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/billpdf/SB0419.pdf

Seems facially unconstitutional. Will maybe force a proper court decision on whether the Bills of Attainder clause applies to corporations.

Why are legislators so focused on banning TikTok, rather than regulating whatever it is that TikTok does that they don't like?

Don't like data about your constituents being in the possession of a company with ownership ties to the Chinese government or communist party? Do the work to describe what kind of 'ties' are the ones that worry you, what kind of entities are the ones you don't like, what kind of data you don't like being in their hands, and write a law that codifies that.

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> Why are legislators so focused on banning TikTok, rather than regulating whatever it is that TikTok does that they don't like?

Because a foreign company succeeded in the US. If Tiktok had simply done what the US wanted, and done a fire sale to a US company, Tiktok would be welcomed with open arms and there isn't a privacy violation the company could commit that would get it into real legal trouble. Tiktok would be deeply embedded in society and not having it would be like not having a telephone number.

The Tiktok situation is what US companies face around the world when they enter a foreign market and dominate (see: Facebook/Google and GDPR, or Apple being forced to allow other app stores on the iPhone by the EU). Those countries suddenly discover they have principles and vigorously enforce them. This is just the first time that the US has been walloped so badly in this game that it's been forced to discover principles, too.

Regulating what Tiktok does that they don't like is too hard, we might end up harming US companies that do the exact same things. So the lazy workaround is to make noise about the principles but then just target the company directly.

Not a good look among the folks in Brussels.

They're probably going to push the limit even farther the next time a big piece of legislation comes around.

Agreed! But it's always so much easier to ban and get credit for "protecting Americans" than do the work and build a solid base for the future. We should hold our politicians to a higher standard.

It's virtue signalling amongst white nationalists against their arch enemy: anyone not them.

Countries have the right to ban foreign adversaries. US companies are a different problem with different solutions.

Do states?

(edit - oops, see correction below) There's nothing in this law that would unban TikTok if its ownership were transferred to a US corporation.

As I understand it, nope. States can't negotiate treaties on the US' behalf. Commerce and sanctions would fall under that as I understand it.

States also can't regulate interstate trade, which I believe trying to penalize Apple and Google would constitute, since neither has a office in Montana.

Couldn't it target the shops and companies that sell devices with Apple/Google app stores on them, instead?

Why can California require auto manufacturers to comply with their emissions standards if it is in effect regulating interstate trade?

California doesn't require auto manufacturers to do anything. They require dealers and individuals to only buy cars that meet said emissions standards, on penalty of refusing to allow them to be registered to be driven on the state's roads.

Actually - correcting myself. There IS a clause that unbans TikTok on ownership transfer. I didn't read far enough down:

> Section 4. Contingent voidness. [This act] is void if tiktok is acquired by or sold to a company that is not incorporated in any other country designated as a foreign adversary in 15 C.F.R. 7.4 at the time tiktok is sold or acquired.

If TikTok is transferred to a company not owned by China the act goes away.

So they could just do that, then reacquire the company and this law vanishes in a puff of logic.

The law would still be on the books. Presumably it would become non-void, and immediately active, if a Chinese company repurchased TikTok from a non-Chinese company. Much like unconstitutional laws prohibiting abortion became immediately active again after the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Yes there is. It's right there in section 4.

>Countries have the right to ban foreign adversaries

This is the same logic that China uses to ban all western apps. Fortunately in the west, countries don't have rights, people do, and citizens generally have the right to run whatever software they want on the hardware devices they own. Governments that violate such rights get challenged in court.

Aren’t there other foreign goods that you can’t get in the United States?

Apart from the asinine war drugs, risky foods, weapons, counterfeit goods, and dangerous devices, ordinary prohibited goods aren't arbitrarily decided by fiat of Big Mother.

Kinder Surprise were banned due to the letter of the 1938 FFDCA law as "non-nutritive object".

There's usually a regulatory reason, such as homologation on automobiles. There are some protectionist laws around types of automobiles that can be imported.

> citizens generally have the right to run whatever software they want

Fortunately this isn't a restriction on citizens.

Instead, is a law regulating businesses.

We have all sorts of laws, regulating businesses, all the time.

It's a very convenient arrangement - first you get a couple of tech megacorps to monopolize the device and app store market to the point where the vast majority of apps are only ever published on their platforms and through their distribution channels. And then you regulate those megacorps and claim that this has nothing to do with restricting what the citizens have access to, even though the net result is the same.

If you don't like the fact that businesses can be regulated, then there is a whole bunch of other laws you are going to have to object to first.

For example, very recently there was a ruling that allowed California to have food regulations for pork sold to its residents.

Do you think that this food regulation is some sort of huge infringement on citizen rights?

Because it isn't much different than other regulations that you are complaining about.

I don't mind regulation when it serves a useful purpose, but 1) this one does not, and 2) pretending that it doesn't affect individuals because it only directly targets companies is misleading. If you genuinely believe that TikTok should not be available to anyone, then argue that openly.

> 1) this one does not

Well, it does if you think that TikTok is a national security threat.

> If you genuinely believe that TikTok should not be available to anyone

This statement of yours just means that you can't argue against the actual point, and instead have to make up a new one to attack, instead of the actual stated position.

The actual stated position is that we put regulations on businesses all the time.

And it is better to do that, than enforcement on individuals.

The reasons why it is better to do completely standard, and normal business regulations, is because if enforcement was on individuals instead, it would have to involve draconian things like checking everyone's phones all the time.

Nah. There is no need to do that. App store regulations are perfectly fine instead, and there is no need to defend some absurd position, that nobody is arguing, like that everyone's phones should be investigated by the government.

And this is no different than when California puts laws on pork businesses.

Why is this distinction important?

>This is the same logic that China uses to ban all western apps

Except it doesn't. It's just that apps are required to follow local laws, and many companies - like Google - don't want to, because their entire business is exploiting users' privacy.

That's a pretty weird read on why Google pulled out of China.

Because you only know the Google's side of the narrative.

What makes a company a "US Company"? Aren't the big social media companies all global with offices in the US and most other countries? I get that a lot were founded here, but I don't get the impression that they feel that they derive any particular allegiance to the US because of that. Isn't it to the shareholders?

Montana isn't a country.

> Why are legislators so focused on banning TikTok, rather than regulating whatever it is that TikTok does that they don't like

There are two issues with TikTok: privacy and national security. The latter is what this is about. (Related to e.g. our foreign media ownership rules.)

The federal legislation is trying to create an extensible system for forcing divestiture based on requirements you describe. This is more ham fisted.

There's also the third issue, which is much more problematic to fix with regulation: short-form video is absolutely killing youth attention span. I know students who will ask another student a question, and then lose focus and zone out within literally 3 seconds and not hear the answer. This was not nearly as prevalent a decade ago.

> the third issue, which is much more problematic to fix with regulation: short-form video is absolutely killing youth attention span

We age gate tobacco, alcohol and even pornography. Is it impermeable? Of course not. Does it prevent Adam Mosseri from contemplating PornHub for Kids [1]? Yes.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/27/adam-mo...

But this ban clearly has nothing to do with that, because it's only about Tiktok and ignores all other short form video.

Yes. It also has little to do with the other point the parent of my comment mentioned (privacy), as they said.

Then ban all social media altogether.

And the 4th option - it’s eating American companies lunch and apparently the free market party thinks it’s now okay to take away things from its citizens based on scaremongering and innuendo.

I think most of us who are concerned about TikTok are equivalently concerned about Meta.

Not the politicians.

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