Questions to Ask Before Backing the TikTok Ban | Hacker News Reader

Questions to Ask Before Backing the TikTok Ban

eff.org

15 pointsjudiisis12 comments

Re "it's not a ban, it's forced sale" I think EFF makes a very good point. I'd put it as follows. We tend think of banning X unreflectively as not allowing X to continue to exist, but it's perfectly possible to ban X by allowing X (i) to continue to exist but (ii) not to continue to have such-and-such (important) property.

For example, suppose a left-wing administration does not like a right-wing publication and demands that it be sold to one of a list of potential left-wing owners or face a ban. It would then clearly be absurd to say: "it's not a ban, it's forced sale," because it clearly is a ban of the right-wing publication's as it currently exists, i.e. a ban of its right-wingness. Even if, legally, the right-wing publication is allowed to continue to exist as the same legal entity after the sale, its former right-wing character has been banned and for all intents and purposes it's no longer the same publication.

(Needlessly to say, this is not intended as an exaxt analogy to the TikTok situation. It's intended rather as an example showing that the inference from "the bill allows X to continue to exist" to "the bill does not ban X" is invalid.)

What's a better way to refer to the bill than a "ban"? I want to know what other people would use as a more "accurate" term. I know that reducing an entire bill to a single term runs the risk of oversimplifying, but it can also be a normal technique of communicating with laypeople like myself.

From the law in question, here is the excerpt that I think is the most important part [1]:

> (a) In General.—

> (1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:

> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

Copying what I wrote elsewhere: An alternative to getting banned is divesting to a US company. You might think of that as "getting banned is an alternative to divesting to a US company", but I think that's the wrong framing in consideration of US TikTok users, who by default have a First Amendment right to use TikTok as long as TikTok willingly continues offering service to the US.

This is a bad take by EFF. First, it’s not a ban. That’s TikTok’s propaganda.

All of the fears for TikTok were proven correct when they launched a call to action that resulted in thousands of phone calls to congressional staffers.

They literally manipulated their audience, confirming everyone’s fears.

As much as I want privacy laws for all social media, I’m not entirely upset about TikTok. They 100% did this to themselves…

This is ridiculous: "Look: the fact that they complained and talked with their users like any other company would do in this situation prove that they are guilty". Do you think that Facebook would not lobby if it were being banned? You are also dismissing the users intelligence calling that they "are being manipulated" just because they are upset because they may lost access to the social media that they like. This new McCarthysm in USA looks ridiculous here from outside.

But it’s not a ban…

EFF replied this in their page: "A forced sale based on objections to content acts as a backdoor attempt to control speech". Saying that it is not a ban is just a way to find an excuse so that the government can accomplish indirectly (forcing the sale so that it tries to get rid of unwanted content) what it cannot do directly (just directly censor the content).

I agree that EFF calling it a "Ban" is not accurate. Like it or not that's what everyone seems to be calling it.

The linked 1965 SCOTUS ruling "Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301" is fascinating: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/107064/lamont-v-postma...

The USPS detained this piece of communist propaganda ( https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1963/PR... ) addressed to the appellant who responded by suing them.

The USPS was acting in accordance with the following statute:

  When it is determined that a piece of mail is "communist political propaganda," the addressee is mailed a notice identifying the mail being detained and advising that it will be destroyed unless the addressee requests delivery by returning an attached reply card within 20 days.

The contentious thing was the reply card. It was ruled that the added friction of the reply card system infringed on first amendment rights.

IANALegal Scholar, but an outright ban seems to violate precedent. A forced sale however? I'll be watching this issue closely as it develops.

This is about control of what people see and the ones pushing for this particular bill have received the manjority of their campaign money from AIPAC [1] . The US congress is corrupt to the core we're they are willing to kill free speech for their own benefits.

It's difficult to run a genocide if people see what you are doing.

[1] https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-03-14/ty-article/.premi...

Eff really fumbled this. Maybe not badly but they fumbled

Starting with calling it a ban

I really don't know if the naivety is willingly or comes from too much academicism honestly (I'm not blaming them, but it's like a quant trader trying to use statistics on a rigged street game)

1 - Might be a worthy conversation to be had, though I think both problems exists

2 - Right? Right? "Oh but GDPR is bad, no?"

3 - I think very few people are arguing that Meta/Twitter etc should take out their filters for violent content, free speech still doesn't mean your content needs to be prioritized and pushed to everybody (especially as it is not "evident" tiktok is doing the editorializing of it).

4 - it was done to Grinder

5 - Yes but to let China off the hook because somehow we need to take the high path is just naive. China is free to unban western social networks first before playing the victim here

It is a shakedown and a repeat of Trump's ban 4 years earlier.

An attempt to force a sale at a suppressed price to politically connected US investors.

Funny thing is that if the US allowed TikTok to IPO in the US, Bytedance probably would be happy to do so.

Only it would be at a price closer to that of Meta than that of Reddit.

What is preventing TikTok IPOing in the US? Are there rules against foreign owned companies or something?

> Starting with calling it a ban

It's a threat of a ban of a medium of US users' speech. Is calling a threat of a ban a ban too much academicism? Perhaps in certain cases, but in this case here's the law text [1]:

An alternative to getting banned is divesting to a US company. You might think of that as "getting banned is an alternative to divesting to a US company", but I think that's the wrong framing in consideration of US TikTok users, who by default have a First Amendment right to use TikTok as long as TikTok willingly continues offering service to the US.

> 2 - Right? Right? "Oh but GDPR is bad, no?"

What does the GDPR have to do with a US ban of TikTok? The EFF is referring to US lawmakers, probably Congress in particular.

> 4 - it was done to Grinder

After the forced sale of Grindr, the US should've passed a privacy law to ban nonconsensual collection of personal data by first party services and ban nonconsensual distribution of personal data by first party services to third parties (including both non-goverment parties and government parties) and from those third parties to other third parties (the way data brokers do). Anyway, I'm not entirely convinced that the way the US government forced the Grindr sale passed the First Amendment.

> 5 - Yes but to let China off the hook because somehow we need to take the high path is just naive. China is free to unban western social networks first before playing the victim here

The EFF's appeal to morals is not very robust in the context of China. I think it's still important to consider the legal angle that the EFF didn't bring up: What China does to US social networks has nothing to do with the First Amendment of the US. National security can override the First Amendment, but "other countries do XYZ too" doesn't.

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

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