National security has always beaten First Amendment (and many other rights.) I love watching TikTok but even i know how this will shake out.
Now the question will be, who will rush to fill in this void? Will Bliesky release short form videos, too?
Now the question will be, who will rush to fill in this void? Will Bliesky release short form videos, too?
My guess is that Meta will capitalize on the ban and is in a good position to given their AI prowess and ubiquity on most people's devices.
Maybe ByteDance has expertise on a wholly different sort of AIs that Meta isn't great at? I've always been very perplexed by this.
This is absolutely not the case, as evidenced by the fact we all have access to encryption, which the security establishment tried to ban in the '90s. The First Amendment is the reason why secure encryption isn't restricted to government and military usage only.
The right to communicate math ended at the US border. It's entirely feasible given the laws for that kind of walling off of content to be legal.
There's also the chilling effect of the government doing it anyways, even if they will eventually lose that legal battle in court.
But the argument that TikTok bears any relationship to "national security" is ludicrous on the face of it. They're not posting nuclear secrets, they're posting short videos.
For Google, sideloading TikTok remains an option, both for new installs and updates. This is not an option for Apple.
Is there a point where the installed app itself becomes illegal?
Because the government cannot ban the "receiving" part, it obviously also cannot ban the "relaying".
I don't know how the Court will rule, but if TikTok is poised to lose I'm very curious about how the Justices will deal with the conundrum I explained above.